Books about Economics

The author debunks many of the investment theories and practices that Wall Street analysts and stock traders use. He explains how no method can predict the stock market with any level of consistency because of the inherent lack of knowledge of the future. The author also provides financial guidance for people based on their life situation and their inclination towards risk. Read this book before you play the stock market.

Tags: economics finance

A history of the United States with a difference. The author covers the economic events that occurred in the period from the first European settlers on the American soil to the start of the 21st century. He explains the evolution of the American economic and financial system, and how the United States has managed to become the predominant economic power through its unique economic system.

Tags: economics history

This is one of the economics books that is a joy to read. The book is about the term "Creative Capitalism", a term introduced by Bill Gates to describe a new system that is meant to generate profits while helping to alleviate the suffering of the poor and the helpless in the world. Different economists air their views on the subject.

One of the main threads of discussion was whether the term "creative capitalism" is meaningful. Isn't capitalism already creative? Some economists object to this term because it implies that the present capitalism is insufficient in addressing poverty and other development problems. The discussion also centers around the social responsibilities of a corporation. Should a corporation be concerned only with profits for shareholders and leaving matters of charity, equality and development to individuals and the democratic systems? Does it have other obligations to society? What are the stakeholders for a corporation other than its shareholders?

The book covers a lot of ground not through one particular person's point of view, but through many different perspectives from all parts of the economic spectrum. As the world moves towards addressing the important challenges of this century (poverty, disease, and climate change), you will continue to hear and read more about this topic.

Tags: economics

This is the 2^nd edition of the book, first written in 2000 and then updated in 2005. In the first book, Shiller warns that the stock markets were heavily overpriced and had no relation to the fundamentals of the economy. He was prescient as the resulting bust showed. In the 2005 book, he talks about the real estate market to demonstrate another bubble in action. Once again he was prophetic, as the housing market slipped dramatically in the following years.

Shiller explains why people, including both sophisticated and inexperienced investors, fail to see the warning signs of a bubble. He shows the role of media in playing up good news that feeds the frenzy of speculation. He also explores the social, cultural and historical reasons behind booms and busts. A must read, especially if you are an investor. Shiller is a living repudiation of the fake financial experts in the media.

Tags: finance economics

Optimism about how the world is slowly emerging out of poverty combined with the knowledge that a lot more has to be done to complete the task. This is one of the best books I have read. It contains several case studies from various countries in different stages of the poverty cycle.

Tags: economics poverty

Anderson shows how the old 80/20 economics model based on scarcity is being turned upside down in the new economy of abundance and near-zero costs of production and distribution. He explains how three forces - democratized production, democratized distribution and easy means to connect supply and demand are driving business from mass hits to niche products and services, creating profits and value where little existed before. Whole businesses like eBay, Google and Amazon are succesfully taking advantage of Long Tail principles. The book follows from Anderson's popular original thesis posted online. The book elaborates upon the concept and shows the applicability of using the Long Tail in various industries. Hits will still rule, but niches will continue to grow as a bigger factor in business models.

Tags: business economics web

How little things make a huge difference in the way things work. Lots of good examples. The book has several implications for marketing and business in general.

Tags: economics marketing sociology

Friedman talks about Globalization 3.0 which has been brought about by a confluence of various factors - technological, economic and political. He talks about the benefits, the challenges and the dangers in this new world. This is a must-read for all employers and workers, because whether they want it or not, their world is going to change significantly with the shrinking of the world.

Read a Matt Taibbi takedown of Friedman's terrible use of metaphors.

Tags: economics

Following up from his earlier book, "The End of Poverty", Jeffrey Sachs lists some solutions for the major challenges facing our planet today: population growth, poverty, climate change, water availability and conflict. This is a contemporary book that combines the use of technology innovations with traditional methods to address those issues. One of the weaknesses of the book is that it does tend to repeat itself and digress into technical jargon, but overall, it is a meaningful book relevant to our times.

Tags: economics poverty

A very good theoretical analysis of various economic concepts as well as a discussion of different economic policies and their effects. The author emphasizes the need for looking at all aspects (short-term and long-term) of government-suggested remedies before implementing them. The book leans towards conservative economic policies, but considers all viewpoints and structures its arguments very well. Intellectually very pleasing.

Tags: economics

Using statistics, the authors try to disprove some myths and find new explanations for various happenings within society. A great eye-opener.

Tags: economics

This book is one of the most well-written and impassioned argument for laissez faire. The Friedmans demonstrate how government interference can create inefficiencies in the market that can be exploited by special interest groups. They discuss how government spending, however well-meaning, can degenerate into huge bureaucracies that fail to achieve their objectives, but keep requiring huge budgets.

The basic problem with a book like "Free to Choose" is that it turns into a propaganda book which explains only one side of the story. Since it is all about the evils of government, it fails to list where government can be a force for good. The modern government, for better or worse, plays a significant role in regulating finance, commerce and trade. What is acceptable for the better working of society? And what is not? What about the tragedy of the Commons? The Friedmans use Hong Kong as an example of unbridled capitalism. But Hong Kong is an outlier, being a small city-state and its condition may not be comparable to a vast nation such as the United States.

In the time since the book was published, the world has undergone significant changes - the fall of Communism, welfare reform, de-regulation, lower income taxes, globalization, booms, busts and, of course, massive technological changes. Government, however, still acts as a safety net for workers and the weaker sections of society, such as the elderly, children and the disabled. Government spending has increased, despite decreased regulation. The book does require a re-write in light of such circumstances.

Tags: economics

"Nudge" is about making progress towards economic and political goals through better implementation of how choices and defaults are designed. In theory, having more choices is better, but in real life, human beings rarely take proper advantage of choices because they procrastinate or fall prey to temptation by hyped-up choices. Instead of restricting choices (which can be infeasible in many cases), the authors advocate creating defaults for choices such that people automatically choose the best (or least harmful) choice by default. The right to choose a different option (based on personal inclination or capacity for risk) is preserved.

The authors offer different suggestions for investments, healthcare, education and the environment. In many cases, these ideas are low-hanging fruit - they would be generally acceptable to a wide section of the general public and can be easily implemented by policy administrators. However, the book ignores the effect of lobbyists on legislation and executive decisions. Industries, which may lose out on some suggestions, would fight harder to prevent such ideas from taking effect. The book also falters in its take in some areas, especially civil marriage, nor does it effectively address possible defects of its proposed ideas.

I like the general concept of the book. Too often, we see partisan fights over "perfect" solutions that consume time and energy, while people suffer for years. Incremental solutions move us ahead and provide some relief. Since they are, almost by definition, proposed to work with existing policies and procedures, they are more practical and can gain greater support. Of course, partisans do not like such ideas because they are always about ideology and never yielding an inch to the opposition. But incrementalism can overcome partisanship to a significant degree.

Tags: economics sociology

Mira explores 21st century India - a country of many contradictions: India is a country undergoing rapid development as the premier destination for software and business process outsourcing, yet at the same time, it is grappling with a host of issues - poverty, poor infrastructure, and social and religious tensions. The book does a great job of showing both the optimism that the country feels and the challenges that it faces.

Tags: economics

If "The World is Flat" provides hope for a better tomorrow, "Strapped" presents a bleak outlook for millions of young American adults who are unable to take advantage of the new economic order. Draut shows how a combination of increasing economic inequality, higher tuitions, low-paying basic jobs, and reduced government support for education has created a situation where young Americans in the 20 to 30 age range find themselves with high debts, low savings and a level of education that fetches no dividends in the globalized world. Very well-written with good examples, it also examines and discredits commonly-held assumptions such as the nature of credit card debts among young adults. Adding to the crisis is the unfortunate lack of participation by this class in the political process, because they have been led to believe that government has no role to play in this situation.

Tags: economics finance

One of the classic books in economics, it deals with fiscal and monetary policies during a time of prosperity (the 1950s) in post-war United States. This book coined the term "conventional wisdom" and indeed, it does a good job of examining commonly agreed-upon economic ideas and principles in light of history and political realities. The book takes a look at the importance of production and efficiency, price controls, taxation, inflation and supply-and-demand. It also addresses the ideas of other economists (Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes) considering the prevailing economic conditions then and now. Of course, Galbraith's book is also outdated to some extent due to the fundamental changes that have occurred in the world (globalization, free trade, outsourcing, etc.) in recent times.

Tags: economics

Thomas Friedman presents various aspects of globalization in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" - the new rules of the game, the benefits and disadvantages, the backlash and the role of the United States in promoting and furthering globalization. Friedman brings his immense experience talking to leaders, politicians, economists and ordinary people in several countries to this effort. It is an argument for more globalization and, at the same time, suggests social and economic measures to mitigate some of the problems caused by it. Events of the last 5 years have led to some portions of the book being anachronistic. Some of Friedman's rants (using other people as mouthpieces) are interesting and sometimes funny, but others feel unrealistic. Generally speaking, a good book with less of the coherent writing that defined "The World is Flat" by the same author.

Tags: economics

Krugman analyzes the many financial crises the world had in the 20th century and this decade. He derides the economists who say that the Depression is a thing of the past. The first edition of the book did not have anything to point out, but Krugman was proved right with the collapse of the financial markets in 2008.

Krugman uses the example of a baby-sitting co-op to illustrate how money supply and inflation play their part in financial booms and busts. He also provides solutions on how the simple lessons from the coop can be applied to large-scale economies of countries. He explains the dangers of large financial firms in creating modern banking crises that can devastate the financial workings of countries.

The major shortcoming of this book is that it does not consider realpolitik in the formulation of economic policies. Of course, this is not Krugman's domain as he is an economist, not a politician. But as a practical matter, economic and financial policies in democracies are based on political considerations. Ignoring that means that the solutions will remain idealistic.

Tags: economics

This economics book explains the classic laissez-faire theory. However, it does not do a good job in explaining the deficiencies and problems in this approach.

Tags: economics

It is somewhat tough to read Friedman's book after reading Matt Taibbi's takedown. Despite that, I think this is a good book on its merits because it discusses many aspects of climate change and explains many different initiatives that can be taken to protect our planet. It is worth a read.

However, Friedman makes a mistake when he tries to conflate too many different ideas into a grand theory. Friedman's thesis is that higher oil revenues prop up dictators and therefore environmentalism is good for democracy. But elsewhere he states that oil demand will only go up in the short run even if energy conserving mechanisms are put into place. So it is not possible to reduce oil revenues. So why confuse the issue by introducing democracy promotion into an environmental discussion.

The problem is that environmentalism is not Friedman's primary strengths. He has primarily been an analyst for political and economic themes and his foray into issues of climate change and energy is that of an amateur trying to learn the ropes. And hence, the paradox of the book. It is a good introduction to the topic because the author is still in a learning mode. At the same time, it has fluid concepts and lacks the purity, understanding and detail of a Jeffrey Sachs book.

Tags: economics sociology politics

This contains a series of New York Times articles written by Tom Friedman on the Middle East and the Arab/Muslim World before and after 9/11. It ends with a commentary on the problems that contribute to the negative attitudes towards the United States. It contains discussions with leaders and ordinary people through the Muslim world. The author believes that only internal political reform within these countries would help combat the menace of terrorism. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most visible contributors to ill-will against the United States, poor economic progress and lack of democratic governments play a much deeper role. While it is a good book, the use of the NYT articles has made the book repetitive at many places. Instead, the author could have written a more coherent and concise book assimilating the content in those articles.

Tags: economics politics

The book does a good job of cataloguing the various forces, trends and issues driving changes in the world today. But the information is presented in a rambling fashion without much focus - this may have to do with the fact that it was written over several years. In a sense, the book is a collection of news articles and new developments.

Tags: economics

Niall Ferguson has written a fascinating book about the history of finance and how it was instrumental in the development of advanced societies. He explains how the right choice of finance made and broke governments. He also takes a look at current financial developments including the credit derivatives market and how China lends money to America today.

One disappointment is that the book was written before the massive crash in September 2009 and therefore is a little behind on current affairs. I also felt that the book does a lot of jumping through history and is more Euro-centric. It hardly discusses events in America and Asia until it comes to the present day.

Tags: finance economics

The author explains the need to deliberate and think carefully before making decisions. He has framed and packaged his book in direct opposition to Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink!". That would have been a good argument, but in fact, Gladwell had a lot of examples pointing out the PROBLEMS with making decisions with thin-slicing. The rest of the book has no thoughtful analysis of the arguments in "Blink!" - making the packaging somewhat deceptive. LeGault, instead, uses the general concept of deliberative scientific thinking to take some political potshots at environmentalists and other items not on the right-wing agenda. The flow-stopping biographies illustrate the hacked-up nature of the book - probably he had to meet a publisher deadline - how much more easier to add a few thousand words than that!

Tags: economics sociology