What are good introductory economics books? Options

[FreEMan]

Hi everyone,

I'm a first year college student, and it seems very much a waste of tuition money to take the introductory economics classes here, since they are all reported to be extremely easy. Instead, I'd like to learn the subject on my own and then test out of the lower division requirements. Does anyone know of some good books that would be worthwhile for self-study? I'd like to do this for both macro and micro econ if possible.

Thanks

[Alexander Marrio...]

Micro is somewhat harder to find a good intro text that would be worth reading and still get all the concepts you're supposed to learn in intro microeconomics.

Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson is very good. Maybe Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics would also be adequate.

[Petter Sandstad]

Hazlitt's economics in one lesson is very good. I also found Frederic Bastiat's The law, and Carl Menger's principles of economics, to give a very good introduction to economics, over a short span of pages.

[Megan_Robinson]

I suggest a book called:

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science
by Charles Wheelan

It's a great introductory book, and it's not a text. It's written in an appealing style (in that it's not as dry as most econ texts) that's especially great for someone who just wants to know more about econ.

[FreEMan]

Thanks for the suggestions

[HeroicLife]

I'm a first year college student, and it seems very much a waste of tuition money to take the introductory economics classes here, since they are all reported to be extremely easy. Instead, I'd like to learn the subject on my own and then test out of the lower division requirements. Does anyone know of some good books that would be worthwhile for self-study? I'd like to do this for both macro and micro econ if possible.
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Unfortunately, even the intro-level macro and micro-level textbooks are full of algebra and Keyenesean nonsense (which is why so many econ students get turned off early on), so if your purpose is to test out of the lower-level courses, you will probably have to bite the bullet and read whatever relevant textbooks your professors use. Fortunately, reading of one of the books mentioned above should make that process much easier.

[Paul's Here]

Hi everyone,

I'm a first year college student, and it seems very much a waste of tuition money to take the introductory economics classes here, since they are all reported to be extremely easy. Instead, I'd like to learn the subject on my own and then test out of the lower division requirements. Does anyone know of some good books that would be worthwhile for self-study? I'd like to do this for both macro and micro econ if possible.

Thanks
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Three books by Von Mises are an absolute must for beginners: Planned Chaos, Planning for Freedom, and The Anti-Capitalist Mentality. I'm not sure if they're in print these days but they're worth tracking down.

[FreEMan]

Awesome. Much thanks for the suggestions, I've ordered them from Amazon

[R Wray]

Don’t miss George Reisman’s, Capitalism. It’s a gold mine and you can dig into it as much as you like. It has both a mico and a macro portion, and it has a great table of contents and index. At least check out the introduction where he describes his meetings with Ayn Rand and her influence on him.

[SteveGrossman]

Don’t miss George Reisman’s, Capitalism. It’s a gold mine and you can dig into it as much as you like. It has both a mico and a macro portion, and it has a great table of contents and index. At least check out the introduction where he describes his meetings with Ayn Rand and her influence on him.
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It's organized in a significantly better way than typical economics texts as a result of Objectivism.
It's available a a free pdf. from Capitalism Magazine. Its a big book, maybe 1000 pages. I believe that some Objectivists differ with some of its economics views but not with its philosophy of economics, which, after the cynicism, floating abstractions and emotionalism of typical economics texts, is a relief.

[The General]

Don’t miss George Reisman’s, Capitalism. It’s a gold mine and you can dig into it as much as you like. It has both a mico and a macro portion, and it has a great table of contents and index. At least check out the introduction where he describes his meetings with Ayn Rand and her influence on him.
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I will definitely second this reccomendation. Dr. Reisman's book (and many of his lectures, which you can purchase through his website (http://www.capitalism.net), are the best material I have seen on economics.

[ejm]

Hi everyone,

I'm a first year college student, and it seems very much a waste of tuition money to take the introductory economics classes here, since they are all reported to be extremely easy. Instead, I'd like to learn the subject on my own and then test out of the lower division requirements. Does anyone know of some good books that would be worthwhile for self-study? I'd like to do this for both macro and micro econ if possible.

Thanks
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Hi...

Yes, I’ve been going thru the “grind” with Economics courses at Pace University in NY, my MBA program certainly is not friendly towards those whose views are like mine. In spite of having one class with Professor Joseph Salerno, a highly regarded Austrian Economist, I find myself returning to a number of very good books to dispel the Keynesian dogma that is present in almost every class I’ve taken. The winners are:

“Economics on Trial” by Mark Skousen. Skousen’s work is very similar to George Reisman’s Capitalism [which I highly recommend, but George has to come out with a version that’s split into three or four separate sections---just to make it easier to carry!]

“The Failure of the ‘New Economics’” by Henry Hazlitt. After reading this book and Skousen’s book (above), you will be well prepared for any university level class on Economics.

“Time will Run Back” by Henry Hazlitt. Out of print, but part of it is available for viewing at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute web site. Available used, generally. Very good Economics “primer” book, in the form of a fiction story. VERY readable and enlightening.

“Human Action” by Ludwig Von Mises and “Mises made Easier” by Percy Greaves Jr. I put these books together because Human Action can get to be very hard to read without a guide to the terms that Von Mises uses. You should read Human Action with care---the first 100 or so pages are quite wrong headed, to put it lightly. Von Mises explicit philosophy is Kantian but his implicit philosophy is Aristotelian. For a better explanation, Richard Salsman has an excellent taped course on the Austrian school’s major Economist’s. It’s a must listen.

Finally, for the history of Economic thought, I recommend Mark Skousen’s “The Making of Modern Economics.” An unusually readable history of Economic thought, you should like it.

Best of Luck in your studies.

[Stephen Speicher]

“Time will Run Back” by Henry Hazlitt. Out of print, but part of it is available for viewing at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute web site. Available used, generally. Very good Economics “primer” book, in the form of a fiction story. VERY readable and enlightening.

Though out of print, used copies of this nice book are available here for as little as $10.

... Richard Salsman has an excellent taped course on the Austrian school’s major Economist’s. It’s a must listen.

I am not very knowledgeable about economics, but all of the Salsman tapes and printed matter that I have heard and read have been excellent.

p.s. Nice recommendations, all around.

[A.West]

When looking for economics books, it helps to know exactly what your specific goals are. The original poster was looking to understand economics, and to also be able to pass some tests.
For a beginner seeking to understand economics, I recommend Carl Menger's Principles of Economics. Look also at Richard Salsman's recommendations in his area for fundamental texts.

For a textbook that will help one pass a test on Micro & Macroeconomics, I haven't looked at them all, but "Economics: Private and Public Choice" by Gwartney and Stroup was better than a number of alternatives I've seen (I encountered it in my CFA study program), though far from perfect. To pass a standard test on economics, sadly, one must become quite familiar with the mechanics of some very false theories.
(See the following essay as a worst-case example:
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1452)

Beware of reading just books of polemics, if your goal is to do something practical with your understanding of economics. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of "free-market" books on economics are primarily polemical - why Keynesianism is wrong, why Socialism is wrong, etc. I see far fewer books that provide positive insight into how an economist should approach economics.

In my work in investment research, I'm trying to identify specific relationships between various prices and economic factors to revenues and profitability of various industries, as well as investor reaction to these items. Mises' bias against mathematics to some degree stunted my interest in quantitative methods in economics early in my studies, but I've tried to recover from this. I don't know many modern Austrians interested in or able to tackle real-life short to medium term analyses like this.

In my view, there is a gaping hole in the economics literature. I wish I could see a pro-capitalist texbook which builds upon Menger's and Ayn Rand's foundations to develop a new theory of macroeconomics that attempts to at least some degree codify and quantify how the productive process of people and firms aggregate to create economic progress, and explain how various influences, innovations, negative surprises, external impacts, and government distortions can create changes in the economy. This would be a VERY useful book.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen much come close to this ideal. I have seen some presentations from Richard Salsman that were in the same vein, but a text like this would require 800 pages or so, and would require a huge amount of integration. Econometrics may provide some industry studies, but tends to be full of floating abstractions. Mainstream macroeconomics is terrible, but even the better macroeconomics perspectives are hobbled by a lack of a good and specific base.

Because I think economics can be better understood as being driven by the process of profitable production, I'd recommend that budding economists also study finance and investments. That field is full of errors too, but one must understand concepts like how firms perform capital budgeting and estimate the present value of projects over their estimated lives to really understand the underpinnings of economic progress and economic mistakes on a more concretized level. I would recommend the CFA self-study program as something worthwhile to budding economists, because it includes economics as one part of an integrated study of financial markets. (See www.cfainstitute.org.)

[Rose Lake]

A. West: The link to The Capitalism Magazine article didn't work. Maybe you could offer a title.

I would add to the recommendations, if one wants to see economics philosophically, Ayn Rand's "Egalitarianism and Inflation" published in Philosophy: Who Needs It.

[A.West]

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1452
take out the parenthesis that sticks to the end.
The essay was written originally for NYU's Stern School of Business MBA student newspaper to attack a professor and class after a particularly bad experience of mine.

[Tom Rexton]

...
In my view, there is a gaping hole in the economics literature. I wish I could see a pro-capitalist texbook which builds upon Menger's and Ayn Rand's foundations to develop a new theory of macroeconomics that attempts to at least some degree codify and quantify how the productive process of people and firms aggregate to create economic progress, and explain how various influences, innovations, negative surprises, external impacts, and government distortions can create changes in the economy. This would be a VERY useful book.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen much come close to this ideal. I have seen some presentations from Richard Salsman that were in the same vein, but a text like this would require 800 pages or so, and would require a huge amount of integration. Econometrics may provide some industry studies, but tends to be full of floating abstractions. Mainstream macroeconomics is terrible, but even the better macroeconomics perspectives are hobbled by a lack of a good and specific base.

...
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There is such a book--and it's over a thousand pages. Reisman's Capitalism, mainly in Part III of the book. His macroeconomic theory is rather original, especially with respect to aggregate economic acounting, labor productivity and real wages, and most of all--aggregate profit. Have you ever heard of his net-invest/net-consumption theory of (aggregate) profit?

He presents in the book as a whole "how the productive process of people and firms aggregate to create economic progress"; uses a principle calls "uniformity of profit rate" to explain profitable and continuous innovation; and spends much of chapters 6-8 of his book explaining how "negative surprises, external impacts, and government distortions can create changes in the economy." (He uses the example of the oil crises in the 1970's, chronic shortages in socialists economies, as well as price controls in general.)

He does, however, share with Mises the belief that most economic activities cannot be accurately quantified--much less forecasted--by mathematical equations, so don't expect to find differential equations all over the pages.

[A.West]

I have Reisman's book, and it's not at all what I'm envisioning. It was a real disappointment. Inputs and outputs and industrial sectoral relations do not necessarily have to be presented mathematically, though the author should be capable of measuring something. Mark Skousen (otherwise a thouroughly reprehensible person in my view) did do some things worthwhile in his text "The Structure of Production" and I think that could be a rough starting point for a better investigation. http://www.markskousen.com/article.php?id=1093

I found Reisman's book to be in need of much more editing and integration, and saw it as overly polemical. A textbook shouldn't be about what you're against, and pointing out the mistakes of others. Most of Reisman's polemical points had been identified and catalogued many times previously.

It's been about ten years since I read Reisman's book. There are some usefull concepts buried in its bloated mass. I vaguely remember the items in part 3 you are referring to, but I also remember that I was looking for the same thing then that I'm looking for now, and deciding that Reisman's approach didn't suffice. While I agree with the idea that both final and intermediate goods are important, I don't think that adding both together and calling that the economic product accomplishes a whole lot. Plus Reisman's Mises-inherited aversion to quantification left much of his assertions floating in air without substantial verification, in my view.

[Stephen Speicher]

While I agree with the idea that both final and intermediate goods are important, I don't think that adding both together and calling that the economic product accomplishes a whole lot. Plus Reisman's Mises-inherited aversion to quantification left much of his assertions floating in air without substantial verification, in my view.
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Those are interesting comments that I have not heard expressed quite that way before. Could you explicate both of your points a bit?

[Tom Rexton]

I have Reisman's book, and it's not at all what I'm envisioning. It was a real disappointment. Inputs and outputs and industrial sectoral relations do not necessarily have to be presented mathematically, though the author should be capable of measuring something. Mark Skousen (otherwise a thouroughly reprehensible person in my view) did do some things worthwhile in his text "The Structure of Production" and I think that could be a rough starting point for a better investigation. http://www.markskousen.com/article.php?id=1093

I found Reisman's book to be in need of much more editing and integration, and saw it as overly polemical. A textbook shouldn't be about what you're against, and pointing out the mistakes of others. Most of Reisman's polemical points had been identified and catalogued many times previously.

It's been about ten years since I read Reisman's book. There are some usefull concepts buried in its bloated mass. I vaguely remember the items in part 3 you are referring to, but I also remember that I was looking for the same thing then that I'm looking for now, and deciding that Reisman's approach didn't suffice. While I agree with the idea that both final and intermediate goods are important, I don't think that adding both together and calling that the economic product accomplishes a whole lot. Plus Reisman's Mises-inherited aversion to quantification left much of his assertions floating in air without substantial verification, in my view.
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So you believe that unless economic principles and theories are presented as a set of equations capable of accurately forecasting effects such as prices, wages, unemployment, and profits, such theories are "floating in air"? Why are equations necessary to substantiate it (economic theory)? Not all phenomena can be quantified accurately, especially phenomena involving humans--because of the element of volition. There are also many economic factors that are unpredictable in any case: scientific discoveries, technological innovations, etc.