Economics
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
What are the best economics books to read and study to understand it at a doctorate level?
Are these good choices? Any recommendations?
>Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
>Das Kapital - Karl Marx
>Capital asset pricing model - William Sharpe
>Theory of Games and Economic Behavior - Von Neumann
>Progress and Poverty - Henry George
>Principles of Political Economy and Taxation - Ricardo
>Principles of Economics - Marshall
I mean sure, read all the classical books for the sake of it - but when it comes to actually understanding modern economics you need to read things straight from the press.
>>8258876
the best way to understand economics at a doctoral level is to do a doctorate in economics, you stupid shit
>>8259028
Have fun with your student debt retard. All the information is online.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
Also, you forgot The General Theory by John Maynard Keynes.
Capitalism and Theory and The Road to Serfdom for lighter reading (you need to know Friedman and Hayek since they are so influential in economic thought).
>>8259007
>when it comes to actually understanding modern economics you need to read things straight from the press
lmao no
>>8258876
You can skip das capital. For all the things that Marx did to advance economics and sociology they are both now data driven sciences and his works do not utilize current methodology.
>>8258876
You have nothing on econometrics. You focus much to heavily on reading books by famous authors textbooks will allow you to learn the math and theory much more concisely. Try to find some syllabi from a good university.
>>8259117
>Friedman and Hayek since they are so influential in economic thought
Influential for inspiring a cult that ignores basic economic principles in favor of their fanatical beliefs. Those two are hacks.
A really good book I recommend is Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy by William Lazonick
If you want an overview of economic history read Schumpeter's "History of Economic Analysis" (but remember every "history" you read is ideological).
There's a lot of original sources from the mercantilists to neoclassicalism online here for you to read:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/
>>8259159
The "current methodology" is the entire weakness of economics and why economics is a total failure. All the analytical formalism crap cannot grasp the reoccurring crises of capitalism. Mainstream mathematical economics doesn't even believe capitalism is inherently cyclical (the business cycle is just a "mistake" due to interferences in the market)... wages and living standards in all countries should be moving towards some "equilibrium" (ya economists really believe that Sub-Saharan Africa will have American style suburbs and 7/11 soon)
>all these non-Econ majors giving advice on economics
Funny thread guys, thanks.
>>8259411
>I drank the kool-aid
uncritically believing everything a textbook and university (i.e. propaganda institution) tells you is the worst thing you can do desu
>>8259411
take your Freakanomics book and shove it up your ass
>>8259307
>fuck data
yup, there's a Marxist for you.
>>8259436
>muh data
Nate Silver posts on 4chan?
>>8259424
real-life example of why that is true pls
(not that guy)
>>8259424
>>8259433
Hey, check out these free-thinkers over here!
>>8258876
Honestly, OP, if you really want to have a handle of economics "at a graduate level" you need to study statistics at a graduate level, which is difficult to do alone straight out of a book with no background. Professional economists are just statisticians with inflated stock indexes.
Your book list is a joke, by the way. You should start with any well-vetted undergrad textbook, like Mankiw's.
>>8259478
>Honestly, OP, if you really want to have a handle of economics "at a graduate level" you need to study statistics at a graduate level, which is difficult to do alone straight out of a book with no background. Professional economists are just statisticians with inflated stock indexes.
Most American "economists" haven't even read Adam Smith but still have a strong opinion on him (if they actually read him they would find out he was actually anti-corporate and wanted to tax rentier incomes out of existence to finance state expenditure)
>Your book list is a joke, by the way. You should start with any well-vetted undergrad textbook, like Mankiw's.
Yup that's Americanism and the cause of the complete and utter intellectual bankruptcy of modern "economics".
These are the types of idiots who are allowed to spew all kinds of bullshit with no basis outside of pure mathematics and then hand wave away the actual consequences of the policy failures when implemented.
>>8259475
Read this, it's from 1918 but still VERY relevant:
The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men by Thorstein Veblen
http://www.ditext.com/veblen/veblen.html
>>8259531
>Most American "economists" haven't even read Adam Smith but still have a strong opinion on him
[citation needed
>Yup that's Americanism and the cause of the complete and utter intellectual bankruptcy of modern "economics".
I recommended OP read an introductory book on the subject he's interested in. What is "intellectually bankrupt" about that, exactly?
>>8259588
Ask pretty much any self proclaimed "economist" a basic questions about how Smith conceptualized profit or any other category of political economy and you won't get a straight or correct answer. The only thing they know about Smith is the "invisible hand" analogy he used in passing once in the WON and is reiterated out of context and distorted in textbooks.
Textbooks are pure ideology and garbage for morons, you can't explain or understand the dialectics of reality with basic schemas and formulas which can only ever really serve as pedagogical tools for exposition of a deeper dialectical structure of reality
>>8259613
The analysis of the Austrian school (even though very flawed) is superior to Friedman in many ways. Friedman (wrongly) believed that central banks have the power to control the money supply. The private sector's demand for money will just be meet by private bank credit creation or the production of the gold commodity. Central banks cannot actually control the supply of money.
Volcker's (a.k.a the neoliberal reformer) spike in interest rates just financialized, deindustrialized, and put everyday Americans into debt peonage to credit card companies because muh "phillips curve" demands state created unemployment to prevent the value of financial assets from diminishing. Monetarism was not in any way a "success" for normal workers since we shifted away from attempting to maximize domestic employment and economic potential towards aiming at maximizing the price of real estate, stocks and financial securities relative to wage levels.
>>8259701
>All this gobbledegook
Wealth of Nations is as essential to understanding economics as Origin of Species is to understanding evolution. And again, [citation needed] fir your stilt claims about economists regarding Smith.
What is ideology, anyway? What is its casual mechanism? I never get a straight answer out of you folks when I ask.
>>8259708
Maybe if economics was operating on a similar methodological level and had as successful a track record as evolutionary science you might have a point but the development of thought in a social science reflects more so ideological drives of groups trying to forward their interests. All I've got for my claim is my empirical experience but all you have to do is look at what universities give as required reading and question if you seriously believe students venture far beyond that.
Ideology, in the sense I'm using it here, is simply the distortions of perception in individuals caused by institutions which are in practice essiently explicitly financed by their donors for the production of intellectuals who operate as their functionaries in charge of managing consent for the dominate social system (sometimes in a more roundabout way such as with post-structuralism and various types of "criticism").
You're asking for economics advice on a mostly marxist and post-marxist board, what do you think you'll get? Other than marxist economics, which isn't really economics, you'll be recommended keynesian and neo-keynesian trash, neo-classical trash, Friedman and Chicago school trash, and Hayek, who is also trash. If you want real economics you can read Jean-Baptiste Say, William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Joseph Salerno, Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Robert Murphy.
Don't fall for the public choice theory and MMT (modern monetary theory) memes.
>>8259990
I actually agree with many of your points, but I don't think the field is so totally saturated with special interests as to be completely unsalvageable, or incapable of transforming or modifying its conceptual framework. One of the best immanent critiques of microeconomics is from the former Marxist Samuel Bowles, which you might check out.
>>8259007
>>8259128
He's right? If you want the doctorate level understanding you need to be in the literature (journals). TBF the fact he's saying economics not some subfield suggests he doesn't know what he's talking about.
>>8259084
Any self respecting school will pay you to do a doctorate. You might have to TA a fair amount but that's generally half-time.
>>8259478
This or math--expect lots of proofs or immense amounts of regressions and the like depending on where you go.
>>8259994
> If you want real economics you can read Jean-Baptiste Say, William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Joseph Salerno, Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Robert Murphy.
I seriously cannot tell if this post is satire or not, Böhm-Bawerk is the only one of those worth seriously reading
>>8260038
Not satire. What do any of these have to do with "alt-right"?
>>8258876
Basic economics by Thomas Sowell
written in plain english
common sense, no self-fellatio
Jesus christ I had no idea that economics was so convoluted.
>>8260237
Basic economics by Thomas Sowell gives you a nice firm grip on core economic concepts. Its not convoluted by complex math or ideology. Its lean meat
>>8260265
He's not a revolutionary and tis not written in medieval times. Just a no nonsense guy. Basic Economics -It's the one
The thing about economics - our economy is complete and total bullshit, in every which sector. Fluffed up professors intellectualize garbage. Keynes is garbage.
Many banking terms being taught in university are fancy names for fraud.
>>8260190
>>8260265
Sowell is a Friedmanite who works for the Hoover Institute (major neoconservative/neoliberalism propagators) and "Basic Economics" is aimed at the same type of plebs who would sincerely read self-help books.
"Common sense" is a good code word to watch out for that should start raising red flags what you're encountering is just intellectually weak. The entire point of theory is to overcome the failings of "common sense" to get at the deeper issues.
The advancement of Adam Smith over his predecessors was the break down of the "common sense" of his time who muddled rent and profit into one category. Smiths ability to clearly conceptualize profit as a category of class income uniquely associated with the use of capital in the employment of wage-labour as opposed to mere rental income deriving from property rights was his break with "common sense".
>>8260344
I don't suppose yo've read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. You just put in the toilet
“Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.”
― Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy
>>8259994
Yep, many people don't know that there is a difference between how the Austrian and the Chicago School approach economic science.
>>8260587
Abstracting away from any real political component to deal with mere ahistoric theoretical widget allocation issues explains some of the goofyness of the conclusions. Funnily enough a lot of the early neoclassical economists that Sowell would be inspired by like Walras were in fact socialists who thought their vulgar mathematical equilibrium approach to economics could be used to centrally plan an economy.
The older the source, the better: unfortunately, economics has been largely co-opted by political and other interests to the point that essentially everything post-1950 was written to benefit some political sponsor or other.
Ignore anything which emphasizes macroeconomics. Not because there can't be good macro, but just because most of it is laced with the finest bullshit written to prop up governments' organs of control. Anything which essentially depends on mathematical models is wrong as a given.
Pay attention to the forecasts economists make. If they are always wrong, consider it might be related to their models.
Contemporary economic theory is to the legitimacy of modern government as astrology was to the Babylonians. As such, caveat lector.
>>8259994
This.
Of those, the most contemporary and laudable imo is Hulsmann. His Ethics of Money Production is a fantastic historical overview as well as analysis of the effect of various monetary policies.
You can find it for free here:
https://mises.org/sites/default/files/The%20Ethics%20of%20Money%20Production_2.pdf
>>8259411
>actually unironically being an econ major
Whew lad I'm glad I'm sitting down, that was... whew, fuck.
>>8259411
barely any economics majors know anything about economics
>>8260381
Alternatively, he read it and then put it in the toilet since that's where it belongs.
>>8260784
Econ major here.
This is true.
Most econ majors are wannabe technocrats or international relations-types who want something that seems more scientific than political science or they are augmenting their business major.
>>8260786
lol disregard this.
Books listed in OP will provide much better economics education than that textbook.
>>8258876
Start with pic related OP
These are the only good posts in the thread
>>8259478
>>8260786
>>8259084
>want to doctorate in economics
>can't pay off student debt
Worthless doctorate to be earnest.
>>8260860
Econ doctorates are among the highest paid. Institutional economists make 6 figures easy.
>>8260883
Yeah I don't understand all of the hate in this thread for econ degrees. Economists make bank
>>8260883
That was the joke, that a person who after getting a doctorate in economics, couldn't pay off his student debt, would have to be a pretty shitty doctor of economics, and if such a person could get the doctorate, then there would be no purpose in getting it.
>>8259708
Origin of species is an important read too.
>>8260653
What conclusions?
I am aware you don't have an answer.
>>8259436
Lol
>>8260653
The political component is the abstraction. It's not ahistoric by any means, there are many examples from history contained in the book. You haven't read the book,
>>8259708
>Wealth of Nations is as essential to understanding economics as Origin of Species is to understanding evolution
yes
>What is ideology, anyway?
jesus christ
>>8258876
Well, you could just do what I'm doing right now and learn it straight from an Economics textbook.
Or you could watch Crash Course videos on Economics.
The joke of economics is that it is a social science. If it is a social science it is a study of man, and man in society. If your model of man is so absurd and untrue that your "man" is abstracted beyond recognition, your subject has no claim to be a social science or a study of man. Economics is currently the study of economic man.
My advice is to read Smith (so that you can read) Marx. If you want some passable classical economics maybe Malthus and Turgot are interesting. George is a bt of a wildcard and P&P might be worth a read. Ignore Ricardo, Marshall, and Say at this point. Jump straight into Sraffa and Schumpeter. Read Mises and Hayek as meta-economists, then read Keynes, post-crash Fisher, Minsky, Keynes again and not an interpretation of Keynes. C. H. Douglas is interesting, he's wrong, but wrong in an interesting way. Avoid Friedman and please, please, please, please do not subscribe to the cultist and hack, Sephan MOlllyNeux.
Try to avoid economic spooks, that is, avoid "ought" statements. "There ought to be wealth equality/inequality", "there ought to be employment", "there ought to be growth", etc because if you begin to slide into politics you will become trapped in a conformation bias like stephy and the libertarians. The economics will justify the morality which in turn justifies the economics. You will remain an ideologue and a moron and will be all covered in ectoplasm.
>>8260786
>Varian
KEK yes, read this for a laff. In fact, OP, read the whole thing. You don't need to tear it apart because Varian's manifesto is so intellectually rotten, it will crumble to dust by simply reading it. Most Econ students will read a page or two of it's conclusions. They will ignore the omniscient dictator that sets all markets in equilibrium before trading. They will ignore that there is only one consumer in the entire economy, a consumer that can walk into a shop with 20 goods and, through completeness, rank ~1,500,000 bundles of goods.
Revel in the laughs when they take this micro-economic comedy and aggregate it into "Macroeconomics" (applied microeconomics), and the circus becomes even more surreal. They actually believe that reductionism implies constructionism. Even Physicists don't have the arrogance or stupidity to argue this.
Most "economics students" and professors are mathematically incompetent. They write "political economy" as a way to shield themselves. Are you a hack that cannot write philosophy? study politics or "political economy".
hacks hacks hacks hacks the lot of them. The real geniuses are sucked into worthwhile fields: Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, etc and only the chaff remain.
>>8260825
Most econ majors are morons and don't actually know anything about economics. They come in for 3 years, learn falsehoods, and leave. They never probe the foundations of the subject, and professors will not teach students how these core principles are arrived at because it is "too complicated".
>>8258876
>doctorate level
you cant go from nothing to doctorate you retard
start with these
econometrics :waldridge
macro: mankiw or blanchard
microeconomics: krugman or perloff
>>8259411
Econ Undergrad: learning falsehoods
Econ Postgrad: questioning undergrad economics
Doctorate: unlearning undergraduate economics
It's such a waste of time and yet if you want to understand, you must go though the full process
>>8262495
>krugman
>perloff
>mankiw
lad...
>>8262502
>3 of the most cited economists today
yes they're textbooks are a reliable start point
>>8262506
there*
>>8262517
That should be "their", surely?
>>8262517
>theör
>>8262528
>grammer
>useless
spotted the retard (You)
>>8262480
>worthwhile fields: Literature
LOL. Literature is absolute shit tier. There is nothing from a lit degree that you can't obtain simply by reading.
>>8259708
>What is ideology, anyway? What is its casual mechanism?
I'm quite convinced by Althusser's account, according to which it is an imaginary representational structure by which subjects experience their "place" or "status" within the social totality. as for its causal mechanism, that would require a pretty lengthy discussion of his notion of structural effectivity, but i'll try make a few remarks here.
Althusser identifies three forms of causality or effectivity (note the shift in emphasis these words respectively imply), the third one being for him the only "marxist" one
1. Mechanical: this is "billiard-ball" causality, one thing directly by its actions causing another. this used to be favored for base/superstructure models: actions at the base cause actions in the superstructure directly, and vice versa, in what ultimately must become a cyclical pattern. no good, says althusser, too simple to capture totality.
2. Expressive causality. this gets a little closer to what he has in mind. in expressive causality, there is imagined to be an economic whole, which superstructural phenomena (social relations, politics, culture, ideology, the law) in some way "reflect" or imitate. rather than seeing a direct chain of events leading from one to the other, expressive causality merely implies a homology among the various levels of the mode of production. here, the "causal chain" is disrupted a little bit, but not completely given over to overdetermination.
3. Structural causality: totally mutual overdetermination among the levels. here, the mode of production is not understood as "the economic base," but rather, it is merely the name for the complete structure of society, including the parenthetical elements mentioned above, and then some, like science and the economic. each element in structural causality is deeply enmeshed with every other, and they are all at once determined by and determining each other. this is what has lead some people to label althusser a "poststructuralist," the idea being that overdetermination implies a certain illegibility: you can't ever really explain all the factors which a particular element determines and is determined by, so the structure, while it exists, cannot be theorized as such. i tend to disagree with this, as my explanation of ideology might go towards showing.
[1/2]
>>8262575
so, if ideology is an element which is on the hand imaginary, but on the other hand plays a determining role in the arrangement of the social structure, how can we describe the way in which it arises? how can we even really diagnose it? how can we know its PRESENCE, let alone its content? the standard reading, as noted supra, is that you can't, but jameson makes an interesting intervention here, noting that expressive causality "retains a purely locally validity" for cultural analysis, and one would imagine, for economic analysis too. so, when thinking about ideology, we must imagine, as a sort of methodological fiction, that it "expresses" the activities of some other level of the structure; using this fiction, we can understand its form and content, and then, after this is theorized, extrapolate the different levels and correct our hypothetical on the basis of their influences.
[2/2]
Economic history major here, I'd like to throw Marshall into the mix. OP, don't be afraid of reading people who are wrong, that's part of getting to a PhD level.
>>8258876
Von Neumann wrote a book on economics?
Well, figure I guess. That guy was the GOAT genius.
>>8260587
Do you guys think this is a wise definition of economics?
>>8258876
Taking seriously a book about economics coming from a man who never worked a single day in his life is a bad idea.
>>8259701
>Central banks cannot actually control the supply of money.
Agreed!
>>8260316
>Fluffed up professors intellectualize garbage. Keynes is garbage.
Agree
>>8264492
No. It is an ideological whitewash, tout simple.
>>8264959
>>8259701
They can't control it directly, but they can manipulate the money supply by changing the interest rate (i.e. the price of borrowing money) of inter-bank loans which can in turn affect the rate at which banks create money through loaning.
>>8264994
That definition of economics is the opposite. It does away with ideology. That's the theory behind the book.
Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell
>>8265291
I honestly can't even begin to parse the stupidity in this post.
>>8265345
Pares it for me will ya
>>8265383
>I honestly can't even begin
Can you honestly not even read?
>>8265386
I just want to talk about economics
>>8265389
Tough titty.
econ has the problem that many people deal with economic issues on a day to day basis, but its research level is closer to statistics or pure math than the other social sciences. PoliSci departments absorbed the "real-life applications", and Econ decided to abstract things in a more mathematical fashion. very few econ phds have read WON or Marx bc its honestly pointless for research purposes, save for historical reasons. The famous econ names among laymen are more famous by the "interesting" theories they espoused, not necessarily for a mind-blowing contribution to the way econ is done. it's also important to separate econ from business, as they are two different things. i dont need to know about supermodularity of functions to know how to be a financial analyst, or to run a regression of data. Also, avoid Austrian/Chicago books except if you're interested in Economic History (btw, Vanderbilt is very strong in econ history, i was impressed).
im in a very prestigious econ phd program and most of my mates in my cohort were math majors, and everybody is comfortable with Baby Rudin, even if not all of them will be doing proofs for their research.
OP, read Basic Economics by Sowell: its a good layman's approach to Economics. if you're interested at what's happening at the cutting edge, you might need a math major or to be comfortable in math at the Baby Rudin level for Micro, and at the level of Billingsley(Probability) for the Statistical side of things(Econometrics).
i dont know much about macro, but they use stochastic processes a lot.
hope this helped.
>>8266423
i don't think op knew what the fuck he was asking
>>8266433
probably. everytime theres an econ thread on /lit/ i sigh and tell myself "patience..."
you an econ phd as well?
>>8266457
no, polisci
not a quant
(we shit on them for pretending they are you)
>>8266590
polisci is tight.rock on
lol. if i had "mad l33t coding skillz" id become a quant. sadly my knowledge of coding is working at best
Would anyone recommend the Microeconomics textbook by Robert Pindyck and Daniel Rubinfeld?
