(Part 2) Top products from r/academiceconomics

Other 'essential' readings

It's hard to list the essential readings in economics but your list seems like a good start though I must mention that I had never heard of Progress and Poverty. If I were to recommend additional readings I'd definitely add something on mathematical economics and the history of econometrics. There is an immense gap in style, presentation, and overall methodology between a book like Keynes' General Theory and the more recent On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets. The latter is cited amongst the top 20 articles from the American Economic Review I mentioned before and it reads almost like a mathematics paper. Grossman and Stiglitz begin their work presenting a mathematical model and then follow it by listing conjectures and then go on to postulate and prove theorems and to derive corollaries from these theorems. Economics has become a mathematical and statistical science. You won't find much equations or mathematical theorems (if any) in the books you've mentioned. Even Hicks' Value and Capital, the most 'mathematized' of them is still fairly light compared to modern economics. Indeed, several of the most important economists of the 20th century had a thorough training in mathematics. A short list includes: Jan Tinbergen , Ragnar Frisch , Kenneth Arrow , Simon Kuznets, Leonid Hurwicz, Wassily Leontief, Leonid Kantorovich, Tjalling Koopmans, Gérard Debreu, Maurice Allais, Trygve Haavelmo, John Harsanyi, Harry Markowitz, John Forbes Nash, Daniel McFadden, and many others could still be mentioned. All the names I listed received a Nobel Prize in Economics and all had academic training in either mathematics, physics, statistics or engineering.

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This is perhaps the single most important change in economics and I believe it is essential to understand it to properly appreciate contemporary economic theory. The change was rather swift and intensified itself in the post WWII period. Grubel and Boland (1986) notes that "[i]n 1951 only 2.2 per cent of all pages [of the American Economic Review] contained at least one [mathematical] equation. By 1978 this proportion had risen to 44 per cent.". A broad overview of mathematical economics is offered by Debreu, a French mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in general equilibrium theory, in the New Palgrave. The historical context of postwar economics is summarized by Backhouse (2008). Interwar economics is contrasted to postwar economics in Morgan and Rutherford (1998). Blaug (2009) calls this change in the 1950s the formalist revolution noting how mathematical economics began mainstream and arguing that economists began to emulate the "formalist" or axiomatic programme associated with German mathematician David Hilbert.

Perhaps the most comprehensive study on the 'mathematization' of economics is Weintraub's How Economics Became a Mathematical Science. Weintraub goes deep into questions of mathematical rigor and formalization. His study of Gérard Debreu brings him to the Bourbaki Group in mathematics and to the turn of the century Foundational Crisis. Another important book is Ingrao and Israel The Invisible Hand: Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science. This book narrates the history of general equilibrium theory in economics, starting from important economists such as Léon Walras and Vilfredo Pareto, some of the first to introduce mathematics to economic theory.

Econometrics is the other topic I suggested and to keep my argument short I will simply state that a typical graduate course in economics is divided into three major branches: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics. The Econometric Society was founded in 1930 and it's journal Econometrica is one of the most influential until today. A history of econometrics is available in Morgan's History of Econometric Ideas. Finally, another book that I highly recommend is also from Morgan, The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think. Models are a central part to economic thinking and theorizing. As early as Quesnay's Tableau and Ricardo's model farms economists use models as ways to not only understand but, to some extent, experiment with reality. Throughout the years, economists have changed their perspectives on how to construct and properly utilize models, but, overall, it's safe to say that they remain one of the major workhorses in economic theory.

"Masters Level" Economic Textbooks.
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I've picked these texts as they are ones that I ran across in the year I spent as a masters student, or in advanced economics classes when I was an undergraduate/undergraduate tutor.

Hal Varian, Microeconomic Analysis Relatively outdated graduate level textbook in microeconomic theory. I'd imagine his intermediate book would prepare you well for this text. It requires understanding of partial derivatives and some matrix notation to get through, but compared to today's texts comes off comparably light. I'd imagine it'd old and used enough that there exists comprehensive answer guides online that you can track down.

David Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics is used in some undergraduate programs, and some masters/graduate programs. Again, compared to standard texts, it is wanting, but does a good job of covering many of the introductory models that are used in modern economic analysis. This text requires knowledge of at least single variable integration (might require multiple in the later chapters, but when I was tutoring students with it classes never got that far), and the usual multivariate calculus.

Jeffrey Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach this was the textbook that I first saw econometrics through, and I still think its a fantastic applied text. It has a decent mathematical appendix covering some probability and math topics required for the text. On the flip side, the text gives you some pretty good how-to methods to implement a lot of the common econometric techniques and some intuition behind why they are used.

Simon & Blume, Mathematics for Economists This text is usually used in graduate programs math camps as a book saying "you should feel comfortable using these techniques before entering the program." Covers a wide range of topics from calculus, optimization, and linear algebra, to differential equations and some topics in real analysis. It has a fair amount of exercises to work through, and again, the book has been used enough that answer guides may be available online.

As you've probably heard, graduate school is very mathematical, and very little that I learned in intermediate micro ends up bridging the gap outside of some of the intuition I gathered through it. Most of the books I cited above are a solid jump up in difficulty from most intermediate books I've seen, and still a solid jump away from the common PhD level texts (Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green "Microeconomic Theory". Sargent and Ljungqvist "Recursive Macroeconomic Theory". Greene "Econometric Analysis", respectively).

As a result, depending on what you plan on doing in the near to short term, its usually better to take more calculus, linear algebra, and other mid level mathematics classes.

I know this is a bit old but maybe it still helps. Simon and Blume is a very good book, I think at a similar level than A. Chiang. Also, Sundaram's book is very good for everything related to optimization. It's much narrower in terms of topics but it's great and pretty cheap for a textbook. Finally, you may be able to find Silverberg's book in your library. It's great for the mathematical approach to microeconomics. It's probably to advanced for an into to micro class but keep it in mind for more advanced classes.

Micro isn't short... :(

But yes, macro is pretty broad. Here's what I read to get started for intermediate/advanced macro:

Sargent:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/recursive-macroeconomic-theory-fourth-edition

Stokey:

https://www.amazon.com/Recursive-Methods-Economic-Dynamics-Stokey-ebook/dp/B00J8CVOHO

These two should be a good starting point but still workable enough for a solid 2nd-4th year undergrad or 1st year PhD. For more advanced treatment of growth, business cycles etc. you can always find textbooks for those specific topics.

If you're not confident with your math yet, I guess Mankiw? Another options I know of is wickens. I started with Wickens during undergrad but found it boring. If you tell me your mathematical level I might be able to get a better book for you. Economic ability doesn't mean much imho for these introductory macro texts. If you're serious about studying macro take a course or self study analysis, the rest of the math should be easy to pick up once you've trained yourself with analysis.

Also, try one of the MIT open courses for intermediate macro. They're not bad.

The only possible issue I see is your selection of textbook: Principles of Mathematical Economics - I've honestly never heard of this book.

The graduate school go-to textbook is Mathematics for Economists by Simon and Blume. However, I think this book would be overkill for you, as it is geared towards pure, PhD level, economics. Also, I was in a similar place to you, with respect to mathematical training at one point, and Simon & Blume proved to be too large a leap.

My advice would be to use one of the following books (in order of my preference):
1. Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis by Sydsaeter
2. Mathematics for Economics
by Hoy
3. Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics
by Chiang

They'll bring your basic command, of the basic required mathematics up to scratch AND these books cover linear algebra. You will also then be in a good place to tackle Simon & Blume if you ever need to in the future. Another piece of advice: PRACTISE PRACTISE PRACTISE. For what you are doing, you don't need to have a deep understanding of the mathematics you are using BUT, you do need to be very comfortable with applying the techniques.

So, as you are working through (for instance) Sydsaeter, I would be attempting the related practice questions you find in:

1. Schaum's Outline of Calculus
   
2. Schaum's Outline of Linear Algebra
   
3. Schaum's Outline of Introduction to Mathematical Economics
   
   Hope this helps.
   
   P.S. Almost all of these books are available for 'free' on Library Gensis

It isn't math related but if you want to skip a course on banking but still learn a great deal about how money markets work (spoiler alert: courses in Econ departments on "banking" are often just a combination of intermediate macro and money markets), I would strongly recommend Marcia Stigum's Money Market. New editions are pricey but most of the content is there in older editions. I recommend this book mostly because it gives an intimate and practical account of the channels through which macro policies effect other markets--something which is liable to be glossed over until later in your studies unless you focus on financial markets.

There are not many undergraduate level books, but the main one on asymmetric information is

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Economics-Information-Incentives-Contracts/dp/0199243255/ref=pd_cp_14_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0B89BW0MXS2476VVNGXT

It goes through adverse selection (akerloff, Stiglitz and Rothschild), signaling (spence), and moral hazard.

As for evolution, you may want to look into agent based models of how information spreads in a market. Microeconomics by Bowles is good, but maybe a bit too advanced to start with. Schellings "Micromotives and Macro..." Is a good popular introduction to these issues.

The point of much of the principal agent literature has been to show how markets mitigate asymmetric information and moral hazard problems.

Stachurski, Economic Dynamics: Theory and Computation is a computational economics book written entirely in Python. Seems like a good place to start.

As a slightly more applied/topical text that's very intuitive and easy to read, I'd also suggest Personnel Economics. It was a good guide for intuition when I took my Grad Micro 2 course.

Tilman Börgers has one of the best books on MD in the current market (imo). Krishna's Auction Theory contains a very nice section on MD as well, should you want to check that out. Bolton and Dewatripont is also an excellent choice, as /u/jazzninja88 pointed out.

The mathematics, unfortunately or not, is part and parcel of this specific field, but the stuff in the above mentioned texts is quite manageable.

I just took Macro theory (aka intermediate macro at basically every other school), and enjoyed our book quite a bit.

http://www.amazon.com/Macroeconomics-Third-Edition-Charles-Jones/dp/0393123944

Current grad student here who, like you, took something of a break and forgot math (the little I ever knew of it, anyway):

What makes a lot of the math hard is notation, but at its core, a vast majority of it is high school level math. Take vector autoregressive models for example...in some sense, it's nothing more than algebra with some wicked notation. Don't feel bad revising algebra, even grad students can get tripped up on old rules that they haven't seen for a bit.

Grad programs don't recommend it (because they want your level to be higher), but I would maybe snag a "mathematics for economists" book. That will carry you through most of what is done in probably the most efficient way possible. I personally got this to freshen up before beginning my second year. It's well written, has examples, etc. If you really tear through it, you'll be more or less up to snuff.

Also, be sure not to skimp on matrix algebra, also. Shits everywhere.

Rudin.