Butler-Bowdon - 50 economics classics: your shortcut to the most important ideas on capitalism, finance, and the global economy

Contents

Fixed ideas in economics can have disastrous results

Entrepreneurs are the engines of growth and must be valued

The most important investment we ever make is in ourselves

The most successful investing strategy is also the easiest

Technological revolutions must allow for the advance of everyone

Many nations succeeded by bucking the rules of orthodox economics

Why firms exist; the role of transaction costs in economic life

How we measure economic output has consequences for people and nations

Success comes from taking management and ideas seriously

Finance is not evil, it built the modern world

Free markets, not government, protect the individual and ensure quality

Its governments job to stop speculative frenzies ruining the real economy

The best and fairest way to ensure opportunity is a tax on land

Living standards keep rising, but the greatest gains have already happened

We grow in wealth through long-term investing, not speculating

Societies prosper when they give up planning and control, and allow decentralization of knowledge

Consumers have many options to get what they want

Cities have always been, and always will be, the drivers of wealth

To achieve social goals like full employment, governments must actively manage the economy

Neoliberal economic programs have proved a disaster for many developing countries

The postwar consensus on how to grow an economy has been hijacked by ideology

Economics is not a moral science, more an observation of how incentives work

Modern finance was meant to minimize risk, but it has only increased dangers

The world became wealthy thanks to an idea: entrepreneurs and merchants are not so bad after all

The worlds finite resources cant cope with an increasing population

To understand people, watch their habits of earning, saving and investing

The interests of labor and capital are perennially in conflict

Rather than creating equilibrium, capitalism is inherently unstable

Economics has laws which no person, society or government can escape

Countries grow and get rich by creating industries, not by addiction to aid

To stay healthy, common resources like air, water and forests need to be managed in novel ways

The scales of wealth are tipping towards capital; if inequality widens there will be social upheaval

Markets must serve society, not the other way around

Competition and industry clusters make a rich nation

Capitalism is the most moral form of political economy

A free-trading world will see each nation fulfil its potential

Globalization agendas are often floored by national politics

A combination of classical and Keynesian ideas creates the best-performing economies

A new economics must arise which takes more account of people than output

No form of political economy matches the dynamism of capitalism and its process of creative destruction

Small behaviors and choices of individuals ultimately produce tipping points with major effects

People starve not because there isnt enough food, but because economic circumstances suddenly change

Psychology, not fundamental values, drives markets

The world will never run out of resources, because it is the human mind that drives advance, not capital or materials

The wealth of a nation is that of its people, not its government

Clear property rights are the basis of stability and prosperity

Europes failed currency and its ideological underpinnings

How psychology has transformed the economics discipline

The great goal of capitalist life is not to have to workor to take on the appearance of not needing to

Culture and religion are the most overlooked ingredients of economic success

Milton Friedman Capitalism and Freedom

Friedrich Hayek The Use of Knowledge in Society

Deirdre McCloskey Bourgeois Equality

Karl Marx Capital

Ludwig von Mises Human Action

Karl Polanyi The Great Transformation

Ayn Rand Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Joseph Schumpeter Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

Julian Simon The Ultimate Resource 2

Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations

Thorstein Veblen The Theory of the Leisure Class

Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

William Baumol The Microtheory of Innovative Entrepreneurship

Gary Becker Human Capital

Ha-Joon Chang 23 Things They Dont Tell You About Capitalism

Peter Drucker Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Robert J. Gordon The Rise and Fall of American Growth

Jane Jacobs The Economy of Cities

Thomas Malthus AnEssay on the Principle of Population

Dambisa Moyo Dead Aid

Michael E. Porter The Competitive Advantage of Nations

David Ricardo Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

E. F. Schumacher Small Is Beautiful

Hernando de Soto The Mystery of Capital

Liaquat Ahamed Lords of Finance

John Bogle The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

Niall Ferguson The Ascent of Money

J. K. Galbraith The Great Crash 1929

Benjamin Graham The Intelligent Investor

Michael Lewis The Big Short

Hyman Minsky Stabilizing An Unstable Economy

Robert Shiller Irrational Exuberance

Joseph Stiglitz The Euro

Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee The Second Machine Age

Ronald Coase The Firm, the Market and the Law

Diane Coyle GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History

Henry George Progress and Poverty

John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

Naomi Klein The Shock Doctrine

Paul Krugman The Conscience of a Liberal

Alfred Marshall Principles of Economics

Thomas Piketty Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Dani Rodrik The Globalization Paradox

Paul Samuelson Economics

Amartya Sen Poverty and Famines