50 Economics Classics

Your shortcut to the most important ideas on capitalism, finance, and the global economy

Tom Butler-Bowdon

• Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781399800990
• eBook ISBN: 9781399804394
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

Economics drives the modern world and shapes our lives, but few of us feel we have time to engage with the breadth of ideas in the subject. 50 Economics Classics is the smart person's guide to two centuries of discussion of finance, capitalism and the global economy. From Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations to Thomas Piketty's bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, here are the great reads, seminal ideas and famous texts, clarified and illuminated for all.
The revised edition will:
· include 5-6 new titles addressing some more up to date areas of the subject such as The Bitcoin Standard, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Discrimination and Disparities
· have a revised introduction to reflect on the current turbulence and challenges facing the global economy over the next decade
· have some of the less relevant titles removed
'Something of a modern classic in its own right.'
E&T magazine '50 Economics Classics is a celebration of the large imaginative canvasses of the great economists. Butler-Bowdon's choices are broad, interdisciplinary and compellingly idiosyncratic. His chapters are not simply straight summaries of the chosen works, but thoughtful reflections on why we should care about this or that book and what its relevance is for us today. Butler-Bowdon's renderings are done so well that one might never bother going back to the original! Professional economists, students and general readers alike will find much here to delight in and many new byways to explore.'
Niall Kishtainy, Fellow in Economic History, London School of Economics

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Liaquat Ahamed – Lords of Finance (2009)
• 2 Saifedean Ammous – The Bitcoin Standard (2018)
• 3 William Baumol – The Microtheory of Innovative Entrepreneurship (2010)
• 4 Gary Becker – Human Capital (1964)
• 5 Ha-Joon Chang – 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (2012)
• 6 Ronald Coase – The Firm, the Market and the Law (1990)
• 7 Diane Coyle – GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History (2014)
• 8 Peter Drucker – Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985)
• 9 Niall Ferguson – The Ascent of Money (2008)
• 10 Milton Friedman – Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
• 11 J. K. Galbraith – The Great Crash 1929 (1955)
• 12 Henry George – Progress and Poverty (1879)
• 13 Robert J. Gordon – The Rise and Fall of American Growth (2016)
• 14 Benjamin Graham – The Intelligent Investor (1949)
• 15 Friedrich Hayek – The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945)
• 16 Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson (1979)
• 17 Albert O. Hirschman – Exit, Voice and Loyalty (1970)
• 18 Jane Jacobs – The Economy of Cities (1968)
• 19 Stephanie Kelton – The Deficit Myth (2020)
• 20 John Maynard Keynes – The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
• 21 Naomi Klein – The Shock Doctrine (2007)
• 22 Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner – Freakonomics (2005)
• 23 Michael Lewis – The Big Short (2010)
• 24 Deirdre McCloskey – Bourgeois Equality (2016)
• 25 Thomas Malthus – An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
• 26 Alfred Marshall – Principles of Economics (1890)
• 27 Karl Marx – Capital (1867)
• 28 Hyman Minsky – Stabilizing an Unstable Economy (1986)
• 29 Ludwig von Mises – Human Action (1940)
• 30 Dambisa Moyo – Dead Aid (2010)
• 31 Elinor Ostrom – Governing the Commons (1990)
• 32 Thomas Piketty – Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014)
• 33 Karl Polanyi – The Great Transformation (1944)
• 34 Michael E. Porter – The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990)
• 35 Ayn Rand – Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
• 36 David Ricardo – Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817)
• 37 Dani Rodrik – The Globalization Paradox (2011)
• 38 Murray Rothbard – Anatomy of the State (1965)
• 39 Paul Samuelson & William Nordhaus – Economics (1948)
• 40 E. F. Schumacher – Small Is Beautiful (1973)
• 41 Joseph Schumpeter – Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942)
• 42 Amartya Sen – Poverty and Famines (1981)
• 43 Robert Shiller – Irrational Exuberance (2000)
• 44 Julian Simon – The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996)
• 45 Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations (1778)
• 46 Hernando de Soto – The Mystery of Capital (2000)
• 47 Thomas Sowell – Discrimination and Disparities (2018)
• 48 Richard Thaler – Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics (2015)
• 49 Thorstein Veblen – The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
• 50 Max Weber – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904)
• 50 More Economics Classics
• Chronological List
• Credits
• Acknowledgments