Economic Theory

Robert Conquest has been called by Paul Johnson "our greatest living modern historian". As a new century begins, Conquest offers an illuminating examination of our past failures and a guide to where we should go next. Graced with one of the most acute gifts for political prescience since Orwell, Conquest assigns responsibility for our century’s cataclysms not to impersonal economic or social forces but to the distorted ideologies of revolutionary Marxism and National Socialism.

Few economists or historians write like McCloskey - her ability to invest the facts of economic history with the urgency of a novel, or of a leading case at law, is unmatched. She summarizes modern economics and modern economic history with verve and lucidity yet sees through to the really big scientific conclusion. Not matter, but ideas. Big books don't come any more ambitious or captivating than Bourgeois Equality.

David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Grundrisse builds upon his widely acclaimed companions to the first and second volumes of Capital in a way that will reach as wide an audience as possible. Marx's stated ambition for this text is to reveal "the exact development of the concept of capital as the fundamental concept of modern economics, just as capital itself is the foundation of bourgeois society."

In a sweeping narrative, the author of the mega-bestseller A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. It’s the epic story of the making of modern economics, and of how it rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate. Nasar’s account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing and publishing the condition of the poor majority in mid nineteenth-century London, the richest and most glittering place in the world.

When economists are called “influential,” it usually means they’ve changed the way other economists think. By that standard, Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of all time.

This entertaining and accessible introduction to the great economic thinkers throughout history - Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and more - shows how their ideas still apply to our modern world. In this revised edition, renowned economist Todd Buchholz offers an insightful and informed perspective on key economic issues in the new millennium: increasing demand for energy, the rise of China, international trade, aging populations, health care, and the effects of global warming.

Any group of people expected to work synergistically needs a system that structures their interactions. That system is “governance.” The Pragmatist’s Guide to Governance takes a first principles approach to exploring the ways governance structures affect the humans living under them (and vice versa), with a special focus on how human psychology interacts with the structures that facilitate our interaction with other people.

Richard Thaler challenges the received economic wisdom by revealing many of the paradoxes that abound even in the most painstakingly constructed transactions. He presents literate, challenging, and often funny examples of such anomalies as why the winners at auctions are often the real losers - they pay too much and suffer the "winner's curse"; why gamblers bet on long shots at the end of a losing day; why shoppers will save on one appliance only to pass up the identical savings on another; and more.

If you've ever sought a job or hired someone, applied to college or guided your child into a good kindergarten, asked someone out on a date or been asked out, you've participated in a kind of market. Most of the study of economics deals with commodity markets, where the price of a good connects sellers and buyers. But what about other kinds of "goods," like a spot in the Yale freshman class or a position at Google?

The Elliott Wave Principle, formulated by Ralph Nelson Elliott in the 1930s, stands as a prominent tool in technical analysis, aiming to forecast market trends by discerning recurring wave patterns in financial markets. Rooted in the idea that market price movements aren't random but rather follow identifiable patterns shaped by investor psychology, this theory has gained significant traction.

In the first half of the twentieth century the Keynesian brand of economics, which saw government spending as a necessary spur to economic growth, prevailed. Then in the 1970s, conservatives fought back. Once they got people to believe a few simple ideas instead—that only the free market could produce growth, that taxes and regulation stifle growth—the battle was won.

The Money Game by Adam Smith is a timeless classic that provides an insider’s account of the intricacies of money and how the stock market impacts every area of our lives. The book takes readers to Wall Street to learn about the role of intuition and the psychology of guilt in making wise, lucrative investments. Smith’s Irregular Rules shatter common myths and misconceptions, revealing why nothing works all the time and illustrating how greed and fear fuel the market.

In Ill Fares The Land, Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, reveals how we have arrived at our present dangerously confused moment. Judt masterfully crystallizes what we've all been feeling into a way to think our way into, and thus out of, our great collective dis-ease about the current state of things.

Like F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises moved beyond economics in his later years to address questions regarding the foundation of all social science. But unlike Hayek's attempts, Mises' writings on these matters have received less attention than they deserve. Theory and History, writes Rothbard in his introduction, "remains by far the most neglected masterwork of Mises". Here Mises defends his all-important idea of methodological dualism: one approach to the hard sciences and another for the social sciences.

En este magnífico libro, los autores aplican su amplia experiencia en la economía de América Latina a deconstruir los sofismas del capitalismo financiero global, sus dramáticas consecuencias para los pueblos, el ecosistema y la convivencia democrática. Una valiosa contribución al conocimiento de las especulaciones del actual capitalismo financiero en el conjunto de los países iberoamericanos –España y Portugal incluidos–, de la necesidad de evitarlas o de hacerles frente, de las respuestas que articulan los pueblos que no se resignan a sufrir sus efectos perversos.

We are living through a Long Emergency: a near-continuous train of pandemics, heatwaves, droughts, resource wars, and other climate-driven disasters. In Lifehouse, Adam Greenfield asks what might happen if the tactics and networks of care that spring up in response to these times might be brought together in a single, coherent way of life?

Starting with the publication of their seminal bestseller, Future Shock, Alvin and Heidi Toffler have given millions of listeners new ways to think about personal life in today’s high-speed world with its constantly changing, seemingly random impacts on our businesses, governments, families and daily lives. Now, writing with the same rare grasp and clarity that made their earlier books classics, the Tofflers turn their attention to the revolution in wealth now sweeping the planet. And once again, they provide a penetrating, coherent way to make sense of the seemingly senseless.

7 Secrets of Persuasion is the first book to take the latest scientific insights about the mind and apply them to the art of persuasion. It directly translates the revolution in neuroscience that has occurred over the last 40 years into practical new techniques for effective persuasion.

In this vital work, author Michael Levine offers compelling evidence that problems in business, large and small, typically stem from inattention to tiny details. Social psychologists and criminologists agree that if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, soon thereafter the rest of the windows will be broken - and the perception will build that crime in that neighborhood is out of control. The same principle applies to business.

Revolutionary Wealth is about how tomorrow's wealth will be created, and who will get it and how. But twenty-first-century wealth, according to the Tofflers, is not just about money, and cannot be understood in terms of industrial-age economics.