Books: Economics

My review of this book is here. If you find it helpful, please click 'yes'. (See the whole review)

Bernstein places the origin of capitalism in the mathematics of chance.  For Ayn Rand, capitalism began with the recognition of individual rights in the Enlightenment.  That identification of those rights rested on a largely implicit realization of the individual as such, which began in the Renaissance.  We ascribe the idea of the Re... (See the whole review)

Game theory explorations with 15 "primitive" societies reveals what makes us WEIRD people special. What is it to be "Western Educated Industrialized Rational Democratic"?   The Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies edited by Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, et al... (See the whole review)

My review of the book is on Amazon. The book does not mention Ayn Rand or her moral defense of capitalism.

Here is a related video and short article. ... (See the whole review)

I just finished reading this book and put my review of it on Amazon. If you find my review helpful, please click on the Yes button below my review.

Dickens pioneered serialization and responded to public demand.  Not our favorite writer, he nonetheless is to be lauded as a capitalist among authors. ... (See the whole review)

Selected quote from the back panel of the book: "Professor Buechner presents a new theory of price in this book. A lifelong admirer of Ayn Rand, he has built his theory on her philosophy of Objectivism and created an original conception of the economy and how it works. His book is written for the economist or noneconomist, particularly for t... (See the whole review)

This is a great book with a lot of interesting content.  The theme of the book is why we should be optimistic about the future. ... (See the whole review)

Yesterday I finished reading Financial Fiasco. There are other good books about the recent financial crisis covering different aspects of it -- the drama, the bankers, the rating agencies and especially "Wall Street." "Wall Street" makes a good scapegoat for those in Washington, D.C. (The book does not hold Wall Street innocent.) Published ... (See the whole review)

The Myth of the Robber Barons describes the role of key entrepreneurs in the economic growth of the United States from 1850 to 1910. The entrepreneurs studied are Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill, Andrew Mellon, Charles Schwab, and the Scranton family. Most historians argue that these men, and others like them, were Robber B... (See the whole review)

Suppose that two strangers have agreed to an exchange that must be kept secret. They agree on the money price for the good being exchanged, and they agree on separate pickup locations for the money and the good. The purchaser of the good then calculates: If I leave the money and she leaves the good, that is good (R = reward for cooperation). But if... (See the whole review)

Link to Video (I don't know how long this will stay up) ... (See the whole review)

Occasionally a book will appear on the scene that embodies the written equivalent of jewels among feces.  This book represents such an example.  I found it both enlightening and infuriating at the same time.  I only read it back in late 1999 because I received it at no charge as a bonus "best seller" for joining a book club. ... (See the whole review)

From the aptly named Galt Press comes the Complete Guide to Asset Protection Strategies by Mark Warda, Attorney at Law.  In modern America, no one remains safe from frivolous lawsuits.  A person's entire life savings can vanish overnight thanks to a tort system that rewards envy and careless living.  The American legal system authorizes tort lawyer... (See the whole review)

The late millionaire Charles Givens gained fame, fortune and notoriety as the leading American financial advice author in the 1990s.  His first book, Wealth without Risk, remained for many weeks on the bestseller list.  His follow-up book, Financial Self-Defense, also became a bestseller.  He later revised and updated his first book and published i... (See the whole review)

Florida Objectivist John White tackles the difficult situation in which many who face middle age find themselves: Broke, in debt and facing retirement age with no savings.  With wit and style, the author outlines a step-by-step plan for assessing the reader's current condition and helping the reader to reach a place of financial solvency in the sho... (See the whole review)

“Were there a bureaucrat controlling any other industry (e.g., farming, fishing, furniture making) who did for it what Alan Greenspan does for monetary policy, we would have no difficulty in labeling him as an economic czar, a socialist of the worst stripe. We would tell him to go back, not to Russia, or East Germany, but to Cuba o... (See the whole review)

In this 75 page essay Murray Rothbard outlines his proposal for replacing the existing dollar with the equivalent of a 100 percent gold backed currency. In fact, he goes as far as to advocate, "the return to gold by every nation, at 100 percent of its particular currency, and the subsequent blending of all these international currencies into one go... (See the whole review)

Why have Jews risen to the top of the business and professional world in numbers staggeringly out of proportion to their percentage of the American population? Steven Silbiger has the answer. Combining the huge appeal of the bestsellers The Millionaire Next Door and The Gifts of the Jews, The Jewish Phenomenon sets forth the seven principles that f... (See the whole review)

In this book, Bastiat defends free markets by crushing the arguments for intervention.  He goes through one economic fallacy after another, demolishing them with logic and especially wit.  Bastiat explains his ideas through stories and examples, always showing the absurdity of these bad ideas.  The style is funny and light-hearted, and he makes the... (See the whole review)

This is the magnum opus of Ludwig von Mises. Being one of the best books on economics ever written, its philosophical content is often ignored. This is applied philosophy at its best, and a careful analysis will show a variety of ideas useful outside of this particular field.

Literally encyclopedic -- almost the length of a volume of the Britannica in terms both of number of pages and content per page --" Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics" is regarded by some as philosophically and intellectually the strongest and most comprehensive book in the defense of laissez-faire capitalism that can be found anywhere in the worl... (See the whole review)

This book annihilates the false notion that natural resources are limited and diminishing. In fact, the market price of every raw material has steadily decreased over the years. Why? Because people are the true ultimate resource. On average, each person produces more than he consumes. The more people, the more abundant the production and the cheape... (See the whole review)

Basic Economics has been written with the thought that learning economics should be not only a relaxed experience, but also an enjoyable one. This is the revised and enlarged edition of a new kind of introduction to economics for the general public-without graphs, statistics, or jargon. In addition to being updated, Basic Economics has also ... (See the whole review)