(Part 2) Best theory of economics books according to redditors
We found 670 Reddit comments discussing the best theory of economics books. We ranked the 232 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Further Reading
Michael Huermer - 'The Problem of Political Authority':
[Hard Copy]
Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in One Lesson':
[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
David Friedman - 'The Machinery of Freedom'"
[Illustrated Summary]:[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Ludwig von Mises - 'Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth':
[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[ePub]
MisesWiki - Economic Calculation Problem:
[HTML]
Murray N. Rothbard - 'For a New Liberty':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Murray N. Rothbard - 'The Ethics of Liberty':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Frédéric Bastiat - 'The Law':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]
Ludwig von Mises - 'Human Action':
[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]
Murray N. Rothbard - 'Man Economy and State, with Power, and Markets':
[Audiobook][HTML]:[PDF]:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]
What are you interested in learning about? I would be weary about the books peppajac217 suggested, I don't know anything about them, but such books usually don't go into any detail and are often very biased (some of the amazon reviews make them sound pretty awful). (Come on guys and girls, this is the math reddit, don't be like the rest of the idiots who claim economics is all bullshit and only ever used for bad reasons, that is incredibly naive and stupid).
Game theory (not sure if that needs explaining or not?) is used a lot for economic theory (particularly for microeconomics), so having at least a basic understanding of that can be useful, and it's a really fun topic. If you want a simple treatment, get Osbornes introductory text, otherwise get either Myersons or Fudenberg and Tiroles.
Microeconomics is mostly concerned with situations/decisions at the "micro" level, whether that be for individuals, producers, small groups etc. My favourite part of microeconomics is consumer theory which concerns itself with how people can optimally use their time and resources to maximise the enjoyment they get out of life. The core consumer theory basically assumes people/consumers are able to form a total order over the set of goods as otherwise you get messy properties (like cyclic ordering), a lot of people give economics flack for such assumptions, they're idiots, due to the impredictable nature of human decision making, economics is quite complicated, but it doesn't mean people shouldn't try to study it, such assumptions allow us to make interesting insights into the problem being studied (something physicists and other scientists do all the time) and one can always relax any of the assumptions they wish when analysing stuff if they want to. There is also producer theory which concerns itself with how producers can optimally produce to maximise benefit to society, profits or any other such objective, then general equilibrium theory basically takes these two subjects and throws them together to study it all at once, although the basics often take out producers and deal with a set of consumers with a starting allocation of resources. If you are more interested in learning about microeconomics, the most common graduate level text is the one from Mas-Collel, Green and Whinston, although you might want to look somewhere else to get a basic understanding of microeconomics before jumping right into that text. (People bitch about the amount of maths in that text, but if you have some background with differential equations, linear algebra and real analysis (ripping that straight from an amazon review, but it's about on par) then I don't see why you shouldn't be able to follow it).
Another part of microeconomics that is really interesting is industrial organisation (although one could possibly just class it with producer theory) which is concerned with studying the different types of market structure, like competitive markets, monopolies, duopolies etc. I'm not really sure about resources for this, I believe Tiroles text is considered good.
And now we get to macroeconomics, which is a beast. I work as an RA for a macroeconomist, have a degree in economics (I did undergrad majors in cs, economics and maths, I'm currently doing an honours year in pure maths) and yet the more I learn about macroeconomics, the less I feel like I understand what the fuck is going on. I feel like a lot of people equate economics with predicting the future state of an/the economy (like studying weather is only concerned with predicting the temperature long in the future? or biology is only concerned with predicting the exact population of a species long into the future?) which can be really annoying, but generally macroeconomics concerns itself with what happens aggregately and how that affects us as a whole. I'm not even going to attempt to suggest where the best place to look for learning macroeconomics, as I have no idea. Just note that it's rather complicated (anyone that claims otherwise is an idiot) and there is often a lot of disagreement on the topics that arise. Generally most economists consider most of the Austrian school to be a bunch of whackos (which is most certainly true for the large bulk of self called "Austrian economists" with absolutely no economics training, or a couple of undergraduate classes in college), I personally don't feel I have a good enough understanding to really hold my own opinions (not like it stops everyone else from it though right? It really annoys me how many people are willing to have an opinion on economics but not with physics or a lot of other subjects).
Edit: I should probably mention econometrics, which is basically the application of statistics to testing claims in economics. Sure that's a bit "shady", but as I've mentioned before, economics is complicated, having a "best approximation" of things is better than making wild guesses. One problem is that a lot of "economists" are idiots and shouldn't be calling themselves as such, and hence a lot of the work they do is absolute garbage as they aren't suitably qualified to analyse stuff at a level of rigour that I would consider acceptable with our current knowledge of maths and other subjects, this is also a problem in the natural sciences, but nowhere near as much as with economics and other social sciences.
Edit2: Actually, a fun topic is international economics (which arguably fits into macroeconomics), learn what comparative advantage is and why trade is generally considered good for society as a whole.
Personal story: I used to hate this book, but not because it was anti-hereditarian. Instead, I was irked by its determinism as such, and strongly disliked its "realist" view that rendered implausible my wish that politics could will itself free of physical limitations and the struggle for survival by adopting the right rules and becoming a wealth-creating utopia. It took a long time before I could accept a world shaped by geography, and not ideas.
It is. If you are interested in reading pop economics then Paul Krugman's book looking at trade is probably your best bet.
If you are looking for something more academic NBER's international trade program is a good first stop.
Chang represents a fairly extreme heterodox position and one that is trivial to empirically disprove.
Edit: Also obligatory economic consensus has no relationship to economic policy point even though its only slightly related. Pop economics usually inhabits the space where something can sounds good to the untrained ear but in reality is nonsense (like Krugman on his blog whenever he is not discussing trade), books telling people "you should be angry and do something" appeal to people more then "keep calm and carry on". In reality all these books do is further entrench the already awful bad economics mindset in the general public and politicians. Economics is not particularly divisive and usually there is a clear policy for every issue (and usually not what any politician is talking about) but it serves political interests to pretend it is divisive.
I would check out Paul de Grauwe's lectures. A good history on Behavioural Finance, including pioneers and specific papers, can be found in Richard Thaler's Misbehaving. Andrew Lo's Adaptive Markets is the most recent book for specifically markets. But all these books on markets tend to discuss the same anecdotes from Kahnemann and Tversky, without giving much thought to applicable models. De Gauwe's book on the other hand offers some ready-made code for matlab even.
Internal contradictions of Capitalism. Read more at Capitalism And Schizophrenia. Capitalists will sell their own family.
Krugmans Pop Internationalism would be perfect for you.
I would keep it. Studying biology teaches you to approach problem solving from a rational, scientific perspective. That method of approaching markets will be useful. Plus, if you believe Andrew Lo, markets are adaptive much like biology. He just wrote a compelling book called Adaptive Markets. Perhaps you should read it to help you decide. https://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Markets-Financial-Evolution-Thought/dp/0691135142
Here is a PARTIAL list of economics books I've read cover to cover, and why I appreciated Bitcoin earlier than most:
Adam Smith
Ludwig von Mises
Murray N. Rothbard
And many many more: https://forum.bitcoin.com/economics/blockstream-supporters-mock-those-who-study-economics-t49159.html
Get yourself some Chomsky, Hobsbawn, Foucault, Zizek and obviously if you haven't already, some Marx, Engels and more so some Lenin. Everyone and their granddaughter needs some Lenin.
The more you read and absorb the better you'll be versed in proper Socialist and Communist theory, which will in turn allow you to not only defend yourself against the imbecilic mouthbreathing conservative dumbshits that will inevitably spew 'Capitalism won cuz the USSR fell and, uh... Free markets! And...'Murica! And... Freedom!', but the more you'll be capable of applying what you learn to the world around you and acquire a more critical view of international relations, the global financial situation, the social makeup of society and of course the ramifications of your country's contemporary domestic and economic policies.
If you need some titles, you can't go wrong with Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism, State and Revolution and Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State
You know a latin word doesn't mean a political structure. Classical liberalism developed in the early 19th century, about 1800 years after the Romans.
And knowing what freedom means is one thing, but putting it into practice it certainly doesn't mean "no external regulations on any business between consenting people." Between you and I if I make a widget and you like widget and want to buy it-- what are you going to buy it with? Money? did we make the money? Agree on its value? or is that an external regulation? What if you're making a product next to my kids daycare, and it starts poisoning my kid and all my neighbours kids? Are we free to not be poisoned? Or does your freedom over-ride my kids? You concent to sell your product to another concenting people, but if you poison my land and water and life in the process of your freedom we have two choices; either we regulate, or we come after you with pitchforks.
>Fascist commonly means authoritarian
Utter BS, broflake. Fascist has a definition. Especcially an economic definition. Sure they end up authoritarian and dictatorial (like kings and communists) but the common meaning is the $$$
Maybe read some Guerin or get your hands on Harvard's breakdown heck, even SohnRethel's Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism could help you clarify what's happening. Though don't overlook Arthur Schweitzer's Big Business in the Third Reich. If you read these and still think the antifa are the fascists now, there may be no hope for smusalmon.
Thomas Sowell is excellent. Especially his book, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.
Fiction:
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is a great start (good critique of anarchist philosophy).
The Red Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson actually cites Mondragon and discusses cooperative economics in detail.
After The Deluge (of Critical Mass fame) by Chris Carlsson is a novel about a post-capitalist San Francisco.
Non-fiction:
After Capitalism by Seymor Melman.
America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz.
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism by Richard Wolff.
Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown by Richard Wolff.
After Capitalism by David Schweickart.
Against Capitalism by David Schweickart.
Capitalism or Worker Control by David Schweickart
Putting Democracy to Work by Frank T Adams.
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard.
Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital by John Restakis.
Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly.
For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America by John Curl.
Basic and Applied Economics by Sowell.
Ultimate classics: https://www.amazon.com/Misbehavior-Markets-Fractal-Financial-Turbulence-ebook/dp/B004PYDBEO/
> Being popular is one thing, but how can he be this close to mainstream considering this just boggles my mind.
I know it can seem mind boggling but with further contextualization of the current socio-political situation and historical investigation it shouldn't come off as a huge surprise.
Capitalism is in a state of serious crisis. What the capitalist class is doing by inviting JBP to their liberal media outlets is testing the waters. They want to see how big of a social base is available for this type of ideology and outlook. They know the conventional bourgeois democratic method of maintaining their rule is faltering; so they are preparing for plan B (fascism) in terms of being able to stay in power.
It might seem like I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but like I said before, it is important to conduct historical investigation of the capitalist system being in a deep state of crisis. Here is a book that takes up this very topic:
Fascism and Big Business
The title is a bit misleading because it covers a lot more than simply big business support of fascism. To see what I mean, here is the table of contents.
Welcome to Spendabit, CoinClub.io.
Would love to see some of the works of Murray Rothbard in your offerings, as I suspect would Satoshi Nakamoto. ;-)
I'd recommend this one for starters. No prior knowledge of economics or philosophy required.
Read Imperialism by Lenin. I'm a high school student myself, I read this in about three days. Absolutely fantastic read and provides a fair introduction to the fundamental flaws of capitalism.
What part of finance are you interested in?
Asset pricing?
Corporate Finance?
Behavioral Finance?
Financial Econometrics?
Market Microstructure?
I actually read a tremendous book Adaptive Markets by Andrew Lo and one of the chapters discusses game theory and other prominent trading strategies. Basically, if enough people believe TA works, then there will be millions of trades at those important levels because of those people. All of a sudden TA really works because those people are having an influence on the market price of a particular stock when they see a triangle form.
The sad news is once people catch onto a particular strategy you get a smaller and smaller slice of the pie as people move to that strategy. To combat this, play with margin so your numbers can stay high even if your slice of the pie is smaller. And then at the end of the day the house of cards falls and we start over
http://www.amazon.com/Vienna-Chicago-Friends-Foes-Economics/dp/0895260298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255323840&sr=8-1
I highly recommend the above book. It's an easy to read introduction to both the Austrian and Chicago schools of free market economics, as well as concepts like 'free banking' (which I know sounds like a line from a bank commercial, but is actually an interesting alternative to both fiat currency and the gold standard) and supply-side economics (which is actually apparently a school of consevative Keynesianism).
Yup, Even in stocks.
Highly recommend this book....
The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
Submission statement:
Andrew Heaton interviews P. J. O’Rourke. O’Rourke penned a summary of Adam Smith, On The Wealth of Nations. They banter through Smith’ s legacy.
Fiction
Nonfiction
I don't think Sowell, interpreted charitably, intends his argument here to be a nail in the coffin to Marxism. All he's pointing out is that some empirical facts would be expected if Marxist claims were true; yet we don't see these facts borne out in reality; therefore we've got some degree of evidence that Marxist claims are not true.
It's just a simple empirical argument he commented on in the form of a soundbite. It's not his formal criticism of Marxism, on which he's written an entire book published by an academic press, here.
If you'd like to know more he wrote a book on Marxism.
https://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Routledge-Revivals-Philosophy-Economics/dp/0415688035
I mean any end times myth is gonna be pretty socialist. It's all eschatology.
You might like Anti-Oedipus or A Thousand Plateaus tho
Just go with Shleifer's book. It explains everything in words.
This book explains things well. I think Skousen's from the Austrian side, but he gives an evenhanded look.
Sudhir Venkatesh, perhaps?
His book is very interesting--he's mentioned repeatedly in both "Freakonomics" books as well. Suhir, as well as Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (authors of Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics) are the reasons Behavioral Economics is kind of a "hobby" of mine.
How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes is a really good primer for macroeconomics and will set you on the right path.
Economics in One Lesson is a great book that will give you a solid theoretical foundation and perspective.
I also recommend anything by Thomas Sowell, such as Basic Economics or Applied Economics.
Krugman
Landsburg
Acemoglu
Also see the /r/economics reading list here.
Introduction to Game theory by Matt Osborne is a pretty good undergraduate level text geared towards economic applications (written by an economics prof at UToronto). I think some of the solutions are also posted on his webpage
I would start by making sure that you understand solution concepts for normal form games (i.e. Nash equilibrium, dominated strategies, simplex method, etc). If you are more mathematically inclined, you might want to focus a bit on Convex analysis/Fixed Point Theorems, which will help to elucidate the mathematical intuition behind these concepts.
After you are comfortable with normal form games, move onto extensive form refinements (subgame perfect/sequential/repeated games).
Unless you have a particulat desire to learn macro, you'll probably be most satisfied learning micro or game theory. For micro, Bowles' Microeconomics provides a nice balance between mathematical modelling and psychological or institutional details. The standard graduate textbook is Mas-Collel, Whinston, and Green, which is a reasonable place to start with a math degree, although the models are a bit decontextualized.
On the game theory side, Gintis' Game Theory Evolving is structured around problems, with good solutions in the back. Myerson's textbook provides a little more standard approach.
The Trusted Advisor is probably the best that I've read as far as general consulting is concerned. But, to be honest, any popular consulting book that you find is going to be 98% junk (fortunately, they're typically quick, if insipid and boring reads).
If you haven't read any strategy books, I'd start with Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy. There's such a love for Porter that even mentioning him in some circles earns you respect.
I might also recommend Crossing the Chasm, too. It's a book about innovation and market adoption which might not seem important if you're not doing startup strategy. However, whenever you're engaged in any effort to do anything (You're either providing a new product, new service, or making people change) you'll have to consider adoption down the road. This will help you segment your targeted audience and understand how and why they're responding the way they do.
Those are good non-mathematical introductions to behavioral economics. If you want to get more into behavorial finance specifically, you'll want to sources which talk more about how to use behavioral evidence to modify existing pricing models. I like Shleifer's Inefficient Markets for a technical introduction to the subject.
Well there's the sequel of course: Superfreakonomics. And everything by Malcom Gladwell kind of falls into the same genre: The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink... Then there's The Long Tail by Chris Anderson of Wired and Bad Science by The Guardian's Ben Goldacre....
A Short History of Nearly Everything is also absolutely brilliant 'popular science' but not as 'generation now' as the ones above.
That's just top of my head. All of these books are a few years old but still a great read. I'd say they're all typical Redditor reading if that makes sense.
Books:
#ACCELERATE
Inventing the Future (Left Accelerationism)
Libidinal Economy (Lyotard)
Anti-Oedipuis: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze and Guattari)
Capitalist Realism (Fisher)
K-Punk(Fisher, a newly released anthology)
Articles:
This is the best introduction I've come across
The MAP (Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics)
This article from The Guardian
I have to disagree with you on this one.
The mental health system may be underfunded, but I don't believe that good people are being born depressed or bipolar. It's as though we treat new wounds every day, but we ignore the fact that we are stabbing ourselves daily.
Ultimately, I believe we live in a society that is increasingly alienating ourselves from real humanity. I mean, we all know how important it is to connect to people, to have friends, to reach out, and yet there are many of us live for YEARS in a house and never know the names of their neighbors. This is stunning to me. What's even more revealing is that when you begin to examine the very poor places, the collapsing ghettos of Detroit, the falling-apart wooden shacks of rural georgia, the immigrant labor camps hiding in North Carolina, you actually see something quite the opposite. Entire families sitting on the porch sharing stories, doing hair, or gathered around a BBQ, telling jokes and laughing animatedly, or playing quitar and harmonica all afternoon, watching white people hurry past in expensive cars, chasing their tail.
It's telling. It's very telling that people in poor countries like Bali or Panama can be so much more content than we.
I'm not the first to notice or point out this obvious fallacy in our logic. (book)
So I want to interrupt your thought process before you agree with Hentez. Although he/she has a good point, and yes, the mental health system cannot keep up, the answer to our problems is not more mental health facilities or funding. The answer isn't more anything. The answer is that less is more, and it has never been truer.
Thank you for reading this. As you can no doubt tell, this is an issue I feel quite strongly about, and one I've rebuilt my life because of.
You mentioned game theory but not exactly at what level he would want to read (textbook level, popsci level) etc. If you want a good textbook level (that is also readable), I would go with
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-Analysis-Roger-Myerson/dp/0674341163/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1324407308&sr=8-5
If you wanted more of a popsci book, I would take a look at
http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/dp/038541580X/ref=pd_sim_b_7
I haven't actually read this one (I flipped through it a while ago) but I like Poundstone's writing style. It might frustrate you if you actually know some game theory.
In my opinion (as someone who is getting a phd in game theory), game theory really sounds a lot cooler and more profound than it really is. I don't think it really has the same type of allure once you peel away the fact that it has an awesome title.
My actual recommendation for this area would be
http://www.amazon.com/Networks-Crowds-Markets-Reasoning-Connected/dp/0521195330/ref=pd_sim_b_8
which is not strictly game theory but a really awesome way to view the world. I am biased since this book is a great primer for my research area but I think this might be interesting and a much better compromise between popsci and textbook.
https://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Markets-Financial-Evolution-Thought/dp/0691135142/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505410623&sr=1-1
Books I would add to balance this list out:
Anthropology
Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris. Unlike Germs, Guns, and Steel, this book is written by an actual anthropologist (sorry Mr. Diamond) and is a really easy read--it covers topics from the sacredness of cows to cargo cults. It's fun, too, as Harris is an entertaining and engaging writer, and it's a slim book.
Bonus Level Challenge Anthropology Read:
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio by Phillipe Bourgois. This is another monograph written by an actual anthropologist. This book is more challenging subject matter, and I should put a big Trigger Warning on it for violence against women.
Economics
Wages, Price, and Profit by Karl Marx. It's a shame more people don't read Marx beyond the Manifesto, which he wrote fairly early on in his academic life. W,P and P is a preparatory work for Capital and outlines one of the arguments Marx makes in the much denser and more complete work that was to follow. It's short, and one of Marx's more approachable writings, dealing with something we are all familiar with: how much we get paid, and why.
Bonus Level Challenge Economics Read:
Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V. I. Lenin. This book contains much drier material, as Lenin draws upon common economic sources (I hope you like talking about tons of iron) to illustrate phenomenon like World War 1--which he saw as a competition of imperialist powers to redivide the Middle East and Africa--and even the Iraq Invasion that would come almost 100 years later.
A Yale course uses Strategy: An Introduction to Game Theory by Joel Watson. Supposedly it's rigorous on the undergraduate level. Another one is Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict by Myerson.
Now that classes are out, I'm working on Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter, and I'm going through How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. If you're preparing to go on a mission, read the latter now. Also, if you're a human being, read the latter now.
> They're separate issues.
That's definitely the line. Iraqis just aren't capable of being economically free.
> How did you come to this conclusion about him?
By reading his material over the last thirty years.
One of his better works, all things considered and that's before he tried to jump the track into neurogenetics, constitutional law, and gynocology.
The man will write what he's paid to write, regardless of his degree of expertise.
This is the best way to read The Wealth of Nations.
Without hesitation for me, Competitive Strategy by Michael E. Porter and his five competitive forces.
http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Industries-Competitors/dp/0684841487/
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Title | Do We Crave Fascism? (Freud & Psychoanalysis) – 8-Bit Philosophy
Description | Join Wisecrack! ►► http://bit.ly/1y8Veir Press Start for "Do We Crave Fascism?" by 8-Bit Philosophy, where classic video games introduce famous thinkers, problems, and concepts with quotes, teachings, and more. Buy Anti-Oedipus here on Amazon ►► http://amzn.to/1DFzyvz Buy Anti-Oedipus here on iBooks ►► http://apple.co/1L3e4Ro More 8-Bit Philosophy: Is Capitalism Bad For You? ►► http://bit.ly/1NhhX2P What is Real? ►► http://bit.ly/1HHC9g1 What is Marxism? ►► http://bit.ly/1M0dINJ Thug Notes: ...
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https://www.amazon.com/Affluenza-All-Consuming-Epidemic-John-Graaf/dp/1576751996
I don't know much about Intel particularly, but if you invested in them because they were building chips for the cloud, and now you're second guessing it because other companies have decided to do the same, then you're probably investing for the wrong reasons.
You should rarely invest in a company because it's the first to a market. If that market is even remotely promising—let alone profitable—there will undoubtedly be competition. And more often than not, that competition is better capitalized, has more resources, better tech, etc.
The market oftentimes gets caught up in these short term views—new tech, first mover, etc.—but they are not long term drivers of business success. Everyone can adopt any a piece of technology or a manufacturing process, so these "advantages" are often just a mirage.
I'd recommend reading Buffett's thoughts on "moats" as well as Greenwald's Competition Demystified, Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy and Nick Gogerty's The Nature of Value
Oh so you’re not even aware of the history of the term you claim to know anything about.
Sure, you can start here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
Let me know when you finish.
I took a semester of an introductory course of Game Theory. We followed the textbook An Introduction to Game Theory by Osborne. The book is great for a first dive into the subject, has ample examples, easy explanations, and is not too mathematically involved. Don't trust the online ratings; this is a very clear-cut book that covers a lot of material.
We also had Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by Neumann and Morgenstern, the founders of Game Theory, as a reference. It covers the motivations for game theory, explains basic concepts (like utility) which are taken for granted, and also explains economic behavior using Game Theory. It's a 600-page monster.
You need to think 'beyond stage one' my friend.
I'll take a real economist over a 'wiki.' Thanks for the read though, but I had to stop after "If we assume that the labor market is monopsonistic (a situation where firms have some market power over employees) rather than perfectly competitive, our view of the effect of minimum wage changes." The labor market overall is not a monopsony.
Not occult in the 'requires the proper colored robe' sense, more in the 'nobody fucking knows this shit' sense.
http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Making-Science-James-Gleick/dp/0143113453/
http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Wu-Li-Masters-Overview/dp/0060959681
http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-Kiyoshi-Kuromiya/dp/0312174918/
http://www.amazon.com/Oh-Thinks-You-Can-Think/dp/0394831292/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1402754744/
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Game-Theory-Martin-Osborne/dp/0195128958/
http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-Vision-Possibility/dp/B006Q9RCV4/
http://www.amazon.com/Synergetics-Further-Explorations-Geometry-Thinking/dp/0025418807/
I don't know a single thing about you, who you are, what you are looking for, why you are interested, or why you care.
This just happens to be a great excuse to let people know about a couple books I care about.
A book is 'occult' by virtue of it containing information about which most people haven't a clue.
"Occult" anything need no special handshake.
Ha-Joon Chang's new book is an excellent, crush-in-a-day place to start: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Users-Guide-Pelican-Introduction/dp/0718197038
Otherwise: Read a summary of The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith).
Thinking fast and thinking slow (Daniel Kahnemann) is excellent, but is more of a physchology/behavioural economics text.
This https://imgur.com/tfW9LOO
Economics: The User's Guide
I like it a lot, it explains all the different schools of economy, what are the pros/contras of each and the history that brought us here with a very pragmatical approach to quick readers and bullet points for short explanations.
Here you can read the first pages to see what is about quickly:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Users-Guide-Pelican-Introduction/dp/0718197038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409484287&sr=8-1&keywords=economics+the+user+guide+chang
> his philosophy is obviously wrong.
It's not a "philosophy", it's an analysis.
> Right, because there is just one police over stolen cars
Start with one and expand. The point is to get something going so you don't have to wait until everyone signs off.
> How much do you think it costs just to securely store and realtime process and archive 880 video feeds originating in a remote location?
I'm not suggesting that. All you need is a single picture (to prove you saw it), the lat/lon of the occurrence, the text of the license plate and the time the picture was taken. It's not a lot of data.
> probably only costs a couple million dollars and probably covers hundreds of deliverables MORE than just 'scans license plates'
Potentially, but who's to say that extra stuff is legal or even useful? This solution is all about transparency while still solving the stated problem: car theft.
The problem with government is that they try to do too much when a much simpler solution would work just as well, if not better. The process should be:
The problem should be posted publicly so lots of individuals (universities, private companies, etc) have a chance to pitch an idea.
> > we should be reevaluating the requirements of the project
>
> No one here has those.
And that's really the problem here.
I work as at a private company that sells products to the government, and a lot of the time, we make our own requirements and our government customer uses those when evaluating competitors. Since we can set the requirements, it's very difficult for other companies to compete (though, to be fair, our product is pretty niche and there aren't many direct competitors).
My uneducated guess is that's what happened here. I'm guessing some company proposed a huge solution, lobbied it through government and got the contract without the government getting additional bids (or they set the requirements such that nobody else wanted to bother).
This is all speculation though, but I think the OP has a point. We should re-evaluate how government chooses solutions to its problems to see if there is a chance that a less custom, cheaper solution would work.
> If those solutions were effective and easy to implement someone would have monetized them already like they have in other sectors
That's just not true. I'm reading Superfreakonomics right now (highly recommend, it's also a pretty short read), which goes through lots of surprising sides of a variety of issues. In it, it lists typical government (read: political) solutions to problems (read: expensive) as compared to the much cheaper solution from the private sector. For example, they mentioned that the current solution to hurricanes is billions of aid to affected areas, whereas a few individuals have proposed stopping hurricanes in the first place by cooling the oceans (would cost far less than even a single year's expenses). Here's an article summarizing those types of solutions.
My point here is that anytime there's a large projected expense (such as the one the OP mentioned), it should be put to the public (e.g. universities, the private sector, psychologists like Daniel Kahneman, etc) to propose solutions, and in many cases, that just doesn't happen, so we get really expensive solutions when a simpler, cheaper solution may exist. Many of the problems government has are very unique, so there isn't a prebuilt solution already (though, in this case it sounds like at least part of the problem has a solution already).
Read Thomas Sowell's Marxism.
https://www.amazon.com/Marxism-Routledge-Revivals-Philosophy-Economics/dp/0415688035
I got recommended Economics: The User's Guide by Colossal and Shaun a while back and thought it was quite good. You won't really understand all the fancy formulas or whatever they're on about but it does give a very solid foundation to build on. Then again, looking over the table of contents I can't quite remember much of it so...
It's particularly good in that Chang seems very aware of biases in economics and quite skeptical of too grandiose claims people might make, which seems pretty rare for an economist. It's a pretty easy read anyway, minimal jargon etc.
For traders, Mandelbrot's The Misbehavior of Markets for a dose of humility.
Taleb's Black Swan talks about an investing strategy that seems relevant to crypto: keep mostly low-risk liquid assets and invest small amounts in things that can pay off big.
For developers, this is a weird one but my all-time favorite is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Affluenza? I liked it better the first time I read about it in 2002 (originally PBS documentaries).
I'm saying that while the dollar was... actually not worthless apparently (my grandpa found a quarter in his driveway and ate like a king, or something), that precious metals maintained value and that they can do so again, when the dollar collapses.
And as we may know from "on the wealth of nations" (see the interview), adam smith knew businessmen were evil, so he hoped evil would balance itself out with more evil.
The imbalance will sort itself out, but we may end up going through another depression as a side effect.
As someone who majored in economics as an undergrad and who is now studying decision-making/psychology in grad-school, I suggest you focus more on economic philosophy than on traditional intro to econ stuff, like the text books being suggested, which usually focuses on micro and macro models.
I feel this way for two reasons.
Utility theory was a useful first attempt at understanding how people make decisions, but like many first attempts, it just doesn't hold water 60 years later. Unfortunately economics has not adapted.
Much of this is focused on the micro side, but I can do an equally long rant about how ridiculously out of date metrics like GDP, CPI, etc are in the realm of macro economics.
So, with that being said, I suggest a broader approach. Something like The Big Three which details the lives and philosophies of the 3 most influential thinkers in Economics (Smith, Marx, and Keynes)
To further round out you knowledge I would also recommend Vienna & Chicago Which gives a good overview of classical and modern free market economics.
Finally, I recommend Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and Predictably Irrational, if you are unfamiliar with the work, as a good moderators of the two fields.
So I’m not sure if asking questions to a current economics student will be the best way to find out if you’re interested in the subject. Especially if you’re not very familiar with the subject. Instead. I’ll give you some resources that might give you a better understanding of the subject.
This link from the American Economic Association gives you an overview of the subject. Click all around the website because there is a plethora of information. As well, here’s a link from the AEA about careers for those with an economics degree (both undergrad and grad).
Next, I would read Freakonomics and it’s sequel, Superfreakonomics. They are much closer to the “pop-Economics” than “academic economics,” but the books give a very good intro into the “non-standard” topics that still fall under the domain of economics. And it would be true that many current graduate students and young professors’ interest in the subject was peeked by those books (myself included).
After that, I would read maybe an intro textbook. My recommendations on this depends on how comfortable you are with calculus.
qualifying trump as a fascist shows how ignorant you are on the matter
the banks, the military complex and the big corporations are in power for a long time! Controlling the economy, the media and the politics
crying like a little girl because they're gonna elect another silly puppet is a waste of energy, that's only a spectacle for the fools
here, have a read: http://www.amazon.com/Fascism-Big-Business-Daniel-Guerin/dp/0873488784