Our collection of popular economics books.
Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be
by Diane Coyle
In Cogs and Monsters Diane Coyle argues persuasively that the economics profession—what it researches and teaches and its use in public policy—needs to change. She argues that popular criticisms of economists—that their forecasting is poor and their assumptions about human society and behaviour simplistic and wrong—misses more important failures of the profession. In the digital age, economists need to grapple with the new challenges thrown up by the relationship between the private and public sectors and inequalities in society. Welfare economics needs to be revived and rethought to deal with the digital age and economists need to accept that their work needs to be done in a world that is unavoidably political. This book is vital for professional economists and those studying the subject, but also to anyone interested in how the world is governed and the role of economics in that.
“It very much reflects the positive direction of economics over the past decade or two. It’s focused on data and randomized control tests. It’s about developing policy improvements that will make life better for people and working out which kinds of policy interventions actually work and which don’t—without an excessively dogmatic starting point. So the general spirit is to say, ‘Let’s look at interventions by making sophisticated use of data,’ rather than rely either on theory or on the fairly sloppy testing that was done in the past. This approach has produced some striking results.” Read more...
The best books on Learning Economics
John Quiggin, Economist
“Factfulness is a book that very much embodies what Hans Rosling tried to do in his lifetime. He was a Swedish doctor and academic, who became quite famous because of his TED Talks where he presented, in a very entertaining and insightful way, the state of the world. In particular, he became famous for telling people that they kept getting everything wrong. He used to test Swedish students, politicians, and journalists, and he consistently found that people had a very warped and biased view of the world. In general, what he found is that people did not have an accurate sense of how much progress had been achieved. People, on average, tended to be extremely pessimistic about the state of the world, whether it was about deaths from natural disasters, child mortality, or how many girls in the world go to school now.” Read more...
“When Piketty gets into the data, you really see that the metaphor is peeling an onion: the top 10% has done better than the other 90% but the top 10% of them, the 1%, has done much better again. The professional classes have held their own but not really gained much, and within that 1%, the top 0.1% has done really well and so on and so forth until you get to the 26 people who own more than the bottom three billion.” Read more...
The best books on Learning Economics
John Quiggin, Economist
“Doughnut Economics tries to reconcile an environmental vision with the vision of widely shared prosperity.” Read more...
George Monbiot — with An Essential Reading List
George Monbiot, Environmentalist
“Thinking, Fast and Slow is a book about the psychological and cognitive factors that influence how humans make decisions and solve problems. It is relevant to artificial intelligence (AI) because many AI systems are designed to assist with decision-making and problem-solving tasks. In Thinking, Fast and Slow the author, Daniel Kahneman, describes two systems of thinking that the human brain uses: System 1, which is fast and automatic, and System 2, which is slower and more deliberate. Kahneman discusses how these two systems work and how they can influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. He also discusses how these systems can lead to biases and errors in judgment, and how they can impact our ability to make good decisions. Understanding these psychological and cognitive factors can be useful for those working in the field of AI, as it can help them design systems that are more effective at assisting humans with decision-making and problem-solving tasks. By taking into account the ways in which the human mind works, AI designers can create systems that are more intuitive and easier for humans to use.” Read more...
The best books on Artificial Intelligence
ChatGPT, AI Chatbot
The Undercover Economist
by Tim Harford
Tim Harford simply explains the fundamental principles of the modern economy, illuminating the economic concepts with real life examples.
“This is a great book. It still has not been equalled. It’s a run through where the classical economists came from, who they were, what they thought and why they thought what they thought and how they worked as a group to try to produce a more productive and peaceful and prosperous civilization. They regarded themselves as engaged in a holy mission to understand this commercial, and then later industrial, economy in which humanity was increasingly enmeshed and how to properly manage it. The book is truly wonderful. It still saddens me that no one has managed to write anything as good” Read more...
The Best Books on the Classical Economists
Brad DeLong, Economist
“In terms of understanding this top inequality, I mentioned the possibility that it might be about politics. How should we think about politics? What are the levers of politics? For that we need a conceptual framework and that’s what this book tries to provide. It’s co-authored with my long-term collaborator and friend Jim Robinson – and it’s not about US or UK or Canadian inequality. It runs through several thousand years of history, and tries to explain how societies work and why, often, they fail to generate prosperity for their citizens. It’s a very political story.” Read more...
Daron Acemoglu, Economist
“It is a difficult book, because it’s the first book that tries to figure this stuff out. You don’t teach Keynesian economics from Keynes anymore. Keynes was actually working on The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money before the Great Depression, but, obviously, the Great Depression gave it urgency. It’s a first stab – it’s one hell of a first stab – but because it is a first stab, it’s got all the awkwardnesses that go with that. He goes off on tangents that seemed important to him at the time, but don’t seem so important now. It’s not an easy read.” Read more...
Books that Inspired a Liberal Economist
Paul Krugman, Economist
The Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, is the founding text of modern economics. But as our interviews with experts below make clear, its author, Adam Smith, was a moral philosopher and no unabashed cheerleader for the capitalist system he saw flourishing around him in Glasgow, a city grown rich from trade with the American colonies:
“What Michael Lewis points out very forcefully is that they were deliberately created by Wall Street banks in order to produce non-transparent securities that could not be adequately evaluated by the rating agencies, which then could be sold to less sophisticated investors, who would buy the idea that this junk debt actually had triple A ratings. So what this book does quite brilliantly is show that there was actually a high degree of intentionality in creating the crisis. “ Read more...
Francis Fukuyama recommends the best books on the The Financial Crisis
Francis Fukuyama, Political Scientist
“Hayek believed—and Mrs Thatcher believed all this, as well—that socialism was about control and liberalism, in its true sense, was about letting people fend for themselves, to make their own decisions and go as they wished.” Read more...
The best books on Margaret Thatcher
Simon Heffer, Historian
“The Shock Doctrine explains some of the mechanisms by which patrimonial capital acquires power and enhances its wealth. It’s a brilliant piece of work, and one of those rare books that changes the way you perceive the world.” Read more...
George Monbiot — with An Essential Reading List
George Monbiot, Environmentalist
