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Good Introductory Book

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  • 14-05-2010 3:12pm
    #1
    El Tarangu
    Registered Users Posts: 1,615 ✭✭✭


    I'm looking for a good introductory book on economics for the layman (I did economics is secondary school and quite liked it, but it's been a while).

    Something not too dense, but better than 'Freakonomics' (which I wasn't too mad about). And not anything by David McWilliams - I dislike his overuse of buzzwords.

    Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

    Regards,

    El T


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    #2
    Économiste Monétaire
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,208 ✭✭✭Économiste Monétaire


    El Tarangu wrote: »
    I'm looking for a good introductory book on economics for the layman (I did economics is secondary school and quite liked it, but it's been a while).

    Something not too dense, but better than 'Freakonomics' (which I wasn't too mad about). And not anything by David McWilliams - I dislike his overuse of buzzwords.

    Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

    Regards,

    El T
    I would recommend Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics. It's a first-year college textbook, so it's a bit heavy on length, but quite readable.


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    #3
    El Tarangu
    Registered Users Posts: 1,615 ✭✭✭El Tarangu


    Thanks chief


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    #4
    edanto
    Registered Users Posts: 2,809 ✭✭✭edanto


    Économiste Monétaire wrote: »
    I would recommend Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics. It's a first-year college textbook, so it's a bit heavy on length, but quite readable.

    No doubt thousands of first year economics students around the world are quite happy with Mankiw's textbook, but I'd like to point to one reasonably short and succinct critique of it.

    https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/85/neocon-indoctrination-%E2%80%93-mankiw-way.html

    Excerpt...
    Gilles Raveaud wrote:
    By repeating his trivial examples, Mankiw accustoms the students to the idea of individual choices and preferences. The words “poor” and “rich” are rarely used. But more surprisingly, there is also no mention of the power of corporations to shape tastes. This is because Mankiw’s world is a world of small firms operating in perfectly competitive markets. “Corporate America” is not part of the picture. No McDonald’s, no Nike, no Microsoft.


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    #5
    Économiste Monétaire
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,208 ✭✭✭Économiste Monétaire


    edanto wrote: »
    No doubt thousands of first year economics students around the world are quite happy with Mankiw's textbook, but I'd like to point to one reasonably short and succinct critique of it.

    https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/85/neocon-indoctrination-%E2%80%93-mankiw-way.html

    Excerpt...
    Almost as amusing as the last 'critique' of Mankiw's book that you linked to :rolleyes:.


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    #6
    El Tarangu
    Registered Users Posts: 1,615 ✭✭✭El Tarangu


    And there I was about to rush out and buy Mankiw's book until I realised what a dirty anti-worker neo-liberal he is! :mad:Curse you for trying to indoctrinate me, Economiste Monetaire! (although your user-name should have provided me with some hint) :rolleyes:

    That's a really good article you linked to Edanto, informative without being too dry, accessible without being glib or simplistic (a book along those lines would be super!)


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    #7
    Time Magazine
    Registered Users Posts: 8,452 ✭✭✭Time Magazine


    El Tarangu wrote: »
    dirty anti-worker neo-liberal he is!

    Good to know you approach new academic subjects with an open mind.

    And Mankiw is a New-Keynesian.


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    #8
    edanto
    Registered Users Posts: 2,809 ✭✭✭edanto


    El Tarangu wrote: »
    That's a really good article you linked to Edanto, informative without being too dry, accessible without being glib or simplistic (a book along those lines would be super!)

    I thought that was a great idea of yours! So, I asked the author of that article what he would recommend, and here is his list. I haven't read any of them yet, but if anyone has a comment about a book feel free to PM it to me and I can edit this post and add it in (in the interests of keeping discussion to a minimum in this particular thread!).

    Alternative Introductory Texts

    General
    Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards, and Frank Roosevelt, Understanding Capitalism. Competition, Command and Change, Oxford University Press, 2005.

    David Colander, Economics, McGraw-Hill, 2009.

    Edward Fullbrook, A Guide to What's Wrong with Economics, Anthem Press, 2004.

    Edward Fullbrook (ed.), Real World Economics: A Post-Autistic Economics Reader, Anthem Press, 2007.

    Edward Fullbrook, Pluralist Economics, Zed Books, 2008. http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=4288

    Steve Keen, Debunking economics. The naked emperor of the social sciences, Zed books, 2002.
    http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=3794

    Micro
    Rod Hill & Tony Myatt, The Economics Anti-Textbook. A Critical Thinker's Guide to Microeconomics, Zed Books, 2010.
    http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=4326

    Neva Goodwin, Julie A. Nelson, Frank Ackerman, and Thomas Weisskopf, Microeconomics in context, Sharpe, 2008. http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/publications/textbooks/microeconomics.html

    Macro
    Dollars and Sense, Real World Macro, 2010. http://www.dollarsandsense.org/bookstore/infomacro.html
    Real World Macro asks the questions that standard textbooks try to avoid: What's so great about growth? Is unemployment "natural?" Why should inequality matter?

    Neva Goodwin, Julie A. Nelson, Jonathon Harris, and Brian Roach, Macroeconomics in context, Sharpe, 2008.
    http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/publications/textbooks/macroeconomics.html


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    #9
    El Tarangu
    Registered Users Posts: 1,615 ✭✭✭El Tarangu


    Thanks Edanto, I will be sure to give at least one of the above a go :)


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    #10
    Flamed Diving
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,609 ✭✭✭Flamed Diving


    Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards, and Frank Roosevelt.

    Bowles, Edwards & Roosevelt do not have IDEAS pages. Not a great deal of reliable info on them.

    Edward Fullbrook

    Can I have an IDEAS page?

    David Colander

    Certainly an improvement on Edward, but 71 of his listed papers are from the Middlebury Working Paper Series. A college where he is currently a professor. Although he does seem to have some sort of publishing history.

    Steve Keen

    Doesn't seem to have performed much research, over the years. Not exactly a stellar record.

    Rod Hill has scarcely any record. No IDEAS page. Tony Myatt is the same. Neva Goodwin hasn't published a paper since 1994. Julie A. Nelson has a decent publishing history. Frank Ackerman is the same. Thomas Weisskopf has no IDEAS page.

    "Dollars and Sense" seemingly has no author.

    Jonathon Harris has published five times, in twenty years. Brian Roach has no IDEAS page.


    Now, I can sense your initial reaction, because I have just told you something that you didn't want to hear, and perhaps didn't want to be true. You will probably choose:

    a) This is an ad hominem attack!

    b) IDEAS is a conspiracy/it's only one website, etc, etc.


    My response to this is as follows. Firstly, when I read your post, I didn't recognise a single name on the list. This, in spite of the fact that I have just completed a five-year journey through economic textbooks and articles/papers...
    But you weren't looking at this type of stuff

    But yes, I was. I was quite interested in the heterodox spectrum of economics. But when I looked in behavioural economics, I never came across Samuel Bowles name, I'm afraid.

    Anyway, back to point. I am merely checking credentials. It is clear to see that the majority of this group have little or none. Finally, IDEAS is simply a searchable database for economic research. Sort of like Google for economics.


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    #11
    edanto
    Registered Users Posts: 2,809 ✭✭✭edanto


    Thanks for doing that research. I didn't know about IDEAS (I'm a student of biotech not economics), and it's helpful to know the published credentials of those authors.

    Having said that, it's not going to put me off reading their books and forming my own judgements of their concepts or research.

    For example, Mankiw is a highly respected and well published author, probably in the demi-god category on IDEAS.

    Yet, this story about him tells me more about his politics, and the way he sees the world than any list of publications, and I factor that into my judgement of him:
    Gilles Raveaud wrote:
    ....But when students and workers at Harvard asked for a “living wage,” Mankiw opposed it. As he told Harvard Magazine in 2001, even a modest raise in the minimum wage for janitors at Harvard would “compromise the university’s commitment to the creation and dissemination of knowledge.” No kidding.
    Of course, Mankiw does not discuss the possibility that the salary of tenured professors might be above its “equilibrium” value; not to mention the very existence of tenure, which goes against the principles of a perfectly competitive labor market.


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    #12
    Flamed Diving
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,609 ✭✭✭Flamed Diving


    Right, so a man's beliefs renders his scientific work invalid. Francis Galton's contribution to statistics is meaningless, because he dabbled in a dodgy bit of racial anthroprometrics?

    This isn't the politics forum. It is categorised under 'sci', not 'soc'.


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    #13
    Économiste Monétaire
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,208 ✭✭✭Économiste Monétaire


    Here is the full piece Mankiw wrote:
    When a group of students took over an administration building last spring to protest Harvard’s wage policy, many people found it easy to sympathize with them. Without doubt, life is hard for workers getting by on $8 or $9 an hour. Moreover, the protest was a welcome relief from the relentless careerism that infects too many students today. The protesters were admirable in their desire to reach beyond their own fortunate cocoons and help those who are less lucky.

    Despite the students’ good intentions, I cannot support their cause. If any institution should think with its head as well as its heart, it is a university. In my view, there are compelling reasons to reject the students’ pleas.
    Like most of the prices in our economy, wages move to balance supply and demand. A high minimum wage set by fiat, either through legislation or student pressure, prevents this natural adjustment and hurts some of the people it is designed to help. It is a timeless economic lesson that when the price of something goes up, buyers usually buy less of it. If Harvard has to pay its unskilled workers a higher wage, it will hire fewer of them. Some workers earn more, but others end up unemployed.

    Living-wage advocates say that Harvard with its huge endowment can afford to pay higher wages. That’s true, but it misses the point. Like all employers, Harvard faces trade-offs. Should extra money be spent hiring more professors to reduce class sizes, or should it be spent hiring more janitors to vacuum classrooms more often? It’s a judgment call. If the cost of unskilled labor rises, Harvard faces a new set of trade-offs. Over time, it will respond by hiring fewer of those workers.

    A higher wage would also change the composition of Harvard’s work force, for wages play a role in supply as well as demand. If the University posts a job opening at $10 an hour, it gets a larger and better mix of applicants than if it posts the same opening at $8 an hour. The person who would have gotten the job at the lower wage is now displaced by a more skilled worker. In the short run, a living wage might benefit those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In the long run, they would be replaced by those who are already a rung or two higher.

    Finally, the living-wage protest raises the issue of Harvard’s mission in society. The benefactors who give to the University do so to support education, not income redistribution. (And if Harvard were to take up the cause of income redistribution, it would have to acknowledge that even the poorest workers in Cambridge are rich by world standards.) Harvard needs to pay its workers—janitors and professors alike—enough to attract and motivate them. But it shouldn’t pay more than it needs to, given the competitive labor markets in which it hires. To do so would compromise the University’s commitment to the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

    http://harvardmagazine.com/2001/11/ways-and-means-harvards.html

    Have you actually read any of Mankiw's textbooks, edanto?


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    #14
    Flamed Diving
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,609 ✭✭✭Flamed Diving


    Wow, what a dishonest quote out of context that was.


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    #15
    Time Magazine
    Registered Users Posts: 8,452 ✭✭✭Time Magazine


    I often disagree with Mankiw for reasonably complicated reasons, but I don't disagree with his economics-for-beginners ideas. His point that enforcing higher wages for low-skilled workers creates unemployment is, excuse the pun, on the money.

    The more I think about what I thought of economics as an undergrad, the more I'm impressed by the subject. Oftentimes I didn't want to agree with its findings. But that's not the point of academic inquiry. In essence it is the opposite of intellectual thought; it is dismissing logic and going with your own preconceived notions.

    There is no point taking a class that doesn't alter your views on the world, otherwise you haven't really learned anything. Seeking out economics textbooks primarily because they agree with your pre-determined views is academic dishonesty of the near-highest order.

    Anyone is most welcome to provide econometric studies to disprove Mankiw's claim that higher long-term pay = higher long-term unemployment, but dismissing it as ex ante "unfair" is wholly adolescent.


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