Top 25 Best Economics Books

Title: The Wealth of Nations

It is symbolic that Adam Smith’s masterpiece of economic analysis, The Wealth of Nations, was first published in 1776, the same year as the Declaration of Independence. In his book, Smith fervently extolled the simple yet enlightened notion that individuals are fully capable of setting and regulating prices for their own goods and services. He argued passionately in favor of free trade, yet stood up for the little guy. The Wealth of Nations provided the first--and still the most eloquent--integrated description of the workings of a market economy.

Author(s): Adam Smith

ISBN 13: 9780553585971
Pages: 1231

This book is in (4) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Capital Vol 1

This new translation of Volume One, the only volume to be completed and edited by Marx himself, avoids some of the mistakes that have marred earlier versions and seeks to do justice to the literary qualities of the work.

Author(s): Karl Marx;David Fernbach

ISBN 13: 9780140445688
Pages: 1152

Title: Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Economic history states that money replaced a bartering system, yet there isn't any evidence to support this axiom. Anthropologist Graeber presents a stunning reversal of this conventional wisdom.

Author(s): David Graeber

ISBN 13: 9781612191294
Pages: 534

Title: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too

Now available in paperback, this timely book challenges the cult of the free market that has dominated all political and economic discussion since the Reagan revolution. Even many liberals have felt the need to genuflect before the altar of free markets, but in The Predator State, progressive economist James K. Galbraith suggests that, under the Bush administration, conservatives have clearly abandoned the Reagan dogma and replaced it with crony capitalism.

Author(s): James K. Galbraith

ISBN 13: 9781416576211
Pages: 240

Title: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

This new edition of Keynes' classic text includes a foreword by Paul Krugman.

Author(s): John Maynard Keynes

ISBN 13: 9780230004764
Pages: 463

Title: Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

Explains how the United States exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to provide a substandard response when the markets finally seized up.

Author(s): Joseph E. Stiglitz

ISBN 13: 9780393338959
Pages: 443

Title: Meritocracy and Economic Inequality

"Arrow, Bowles, and Durlauf have brought together a stellar collection of scholars of justice, inequality, and intelligence. These are the people the academic community wants to hear from on these issues. They do NOT disappoint.

Author(s): Kenneth Joseph Arrow;Samuel Bowles;Steven N. Durlauf

ISBN 13: 9780691004686
Pages: 348

Title: 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown

Provides historical context for the 2008 financial crisis and proposes a radical solution, the megabanks deemed "too big to fail" must be made smaller.

Author(s): Simon Johnson;James Kwak

ISBN 13: 9780307379054
Pages: 304

Title: Stone Age Economics

The book examines notions of production, distribution and exchange in early communities and examines the link between economics and cultural and social factors. It consists of a set of detailed and closely related studies of tribal economies, of domestic production for livelihood, and of the submission of domestic production to the material and political demands of society at large.

Author(s): Marshall David Sahlins

ISBN 13: 9780202010991
Pages: 348

Title: Late Capitalism

Late Capitalism represents the first ever attempt to combine the general theory of the 'laws of motion' of the capitalist mode of production developed by Marx with the concrete history of capitalism in the twentieth century.

Author(s): Ernest Mandel

ISBN 13: 9781859842027
Pages: 618

Title: The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities

Leading political economist Mancur Olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many periods of history and many parts on the world.

Author(s): Mancur Olson

ISBN 13: 9780300030792
Pages: 273

Title: Population, Capital, and Growth

The essays center on a few broad themes: population and its relation to economic growth, capital formation in long historical perspective, the broader features of modern economic growth, and recent changes in the gap between the rich and ...

Author(s): Simon Kuznets

ISBN 13: 9780393334517
Pages: 352

Title: Money: The Unauthorized Biography

Traces the development and evolution of money from its origins in the ancient world to the gold standard, challenging conventional understandings while exploring the world's complicated monetary systems.

Author(s): Felix Martin

ISBN 13: 9780307962430
Pages: 320

Title: The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers, Seventh Edition

The Worldly Philosophers not only enables us to see more deeply into our history but helps us better understand our own times. In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas—namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never more needed than in this age of confusing economic headlines.

Author(s): Robert L. Heilbroner

ISBN 13: 9780684862149
Pages: 368

Title: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

Now featuring a new introduction by Schumpeter biographer Thomas K. McCraw, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is essential readu00ading for anyone who seeks to understand where the world economy is headed.

Author(s): Joseph A. Schumpeter

ISBN 13: 9780061561610
Pages: 464

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Title: States and the Reemergence of Global Finance

Drawing on extensive historical research, Eric Helleiner provides the first comprehensive political history of the phenomenon, one that details and explains the central role played by states in permitting and encouraging financial ...

Author(s): Eric Helleiner

ISBN 13: 9780801483332
Pages: 244

Title: Development As Freedom

The 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics states that freedom is the most efficient means of sustaining economic life and securing welfare throughout the world, explaining how his theories can be applied today.

Author(s): Amartya Sen

ISBN 13: 9780385720274
Pages: 366

Title: The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

Mazzucato controversially argues that in the history of modern capitalism the State has not only fixed market failures, but has also shaped and created markets, paving the way for new technologies and sectors that the private sector only ventures into once the initial risk has been assumed.

Author(s): Mariana Mazzucato

ISBN 13: 9780857282521
Pages: 266

Title: The Theory of the Leisure Class

In his scathing The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen produced a landmark study of affluent American society that exposes, with brilliant ruthlessness, the habits of production and waste that link invidious business tactics and barbaric social behavior. Veblen's analysis of the evolutionary process sees greed as the overriding motive in the modern economy, and with an impartial gaze he examines the human cost paid when social institutions exploit the consumption of unessential goods for the sake of personal profit.

Author(s): Thorstein Veblen

ISBN 13: 9780199552580
Pages: 304

Title: Thinking, Fast and Slow

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

Author(s): Daniel Kahneman

ISBN 13: 9780374275631

This book is in (5) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All

inancialization is one of the most innovative concepts to emerge in the field of political economy during the last three decades, although there is no agreement on what exactly it is. Profiting Without Producing puts forth a distinctive view defining financialization in terms of the fundamental conduct of non-financial enterprises, banks and households. Its most prominent feature is the rise of financial profit, in part extracted from households through financial expropriation.

Author(s): Costas Lapavitsas

ISBN 13: 9781781682463
Pages: 416

Title: Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order

Critically analyzes the American capitalistic system using Marx's view of competitive capitalism as a model. This landmark text by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy is a classic of twentieth-century radical thought, a hugely influential book that continues to shape our understanding of modern capitalism. “This book… deals with a vital area of economics, has a unique approach, is stimulating and well written. It represents the first serious attempt to extend Marx’s model of competitive capitalism to the new conditions of monopoly capitalism.” — Howard J. Sherman, American Economic Review

Author(s): Paul A. Baran;Paul Marlor Sweezy

ISBN 13: 9780853450733
Pages: 402

Title: How Rich Countries Got Rich...and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor

In this refreshingly revisionist history, Erik S. Reinert shows how rich countries developed through a combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment—rather than through free trade. Yet when our leaders lecture poor countries on the right path to riches they do so in almost perfect ignorance of the fact that our economies were founded on protectionism long before they could afford the luxury of free trade. How Rich Countries Got Rich… will challenge economic orthodoxy and open up the debate on why self-regulating markets are not the best answer to our hopes of worldwide prosperity.

Author(s): Erik S. Reinert

ISBN 13: 9781586486686
Pages: 365

Title: The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Fully informed by comparative materials, this book will have great appeal to all those working on issues of economic development and postindustrialism. Its audience will include students of sociology, economics, and politics.

Author(s): Gøsta Esping-Andersen

ISBN 13: 9780691028576
Pages: 248

Title: Globalization and Its Discontents

Examines the effects of global economic policies on developing nations, discussing agencies and concepts including the International Monetary Fund, the East Asia crisis, trade laws, fair markets, and privatization.

Author(s): Joseph E Stiglitz

ISBN 13: 9780393051247
Pages: 282