tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22781533.post4381890613280586533..comments2024-03-23T14:04:57.635-05:00Comments on Father Hollywood: Book RecommendationRev. Larry Beanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06705910892752648940noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22781533.post-61172097103897920142010-12-08T10:18:05.970-06:002010-12-08T10:18:05.970-06:00A Christian friend doing an Economics PhD at a Big...A Christian friend doing an Economics PhD at a Big Ten school (after a bachelor's in religion, an MDiv and a masters in economics) sent me a list of economics books as a set of primers on the various economic theories:<br /><br />1. <i>The Worldly Philosophers</i> - R. Heilbronner. An enjoyable retelling of the contributions of great economists. This is the book that made me want to study economics. Heilbronner was a classical economist at New School and the foremost scholar on Adam Smith.<br /><br />1.2 <i>Adam's Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology</i> - D. Foley. Similar to <i>Worldly Philosophers</i> in that it recaps the influences of great economists but its argument is different. This book argues that economics is not a math driven science but a moral philosophy. Foley is a pragmatic Marxist at New School.<br /><br />2. <i>Rational Choice</i> - I. Gilboa. Outlines the paradigmatic underpinnings and necessary assumptions for neo-classical economics which is founded on rational choice theory. This is the most scholarly of the books but reads more like puzzle solving then textbook. Gilboa is a neo-classical economist at MIT.<br /><br />3. <i>The Armchair Economist</i> - S. Landsburg. This applies the same principle - the people react to incentives in ways that often surprise us - that <i>Freakonomics</i> did but did so a decade before. It has some awesome stories in it that I often use in my classes. I enjoy it more than <i>Freakonomics</i> and include it because I assume some of you may have already read Dubner and Levitt's book. Landsburg is a libertarian neo-classical economist at U. Rochester.<br /><br />4. <i>The Affluent Society</i> - J.K. Galbraith. An early (1958) warning about the quandary we are currently in. Galbraith saw income inequality and a lack of government re-investment as a sickness of Western Capitalism that needed to be fought if our civilization was to thrive. His work, immensely popular at the time, set the tone for public policy until Reagen. Galbraith was a Keynesian and Institutional economist at Harvard.<br /><br />5. <i>Kicking Away the Ladder</i> - H-J. Chang. This book is an historical study of how Western Capitalist countries developed: Chang argues that the Western world grew by subverting copyrights, protecting infant industries, imposing tariffs, and manipulating exchange rates - all things neo-liberalism now demands that developing countries abandon. Chang is an Institutional economics at Cambridge.<br /><br />6. <i>The Great Transformation</i> - K. Polanyi. Polanyi is the anti-Hayek. His book, written the same year as Hayek's <i>The Road to Serfdom</i> (1944), takes the opposite approach. Hayek, an Austrian economist, argued that liberalism, freedom, and individualism were the only things that kept socialism, and by extension totalitarianism, at bay. Polanyi's book is a historical study, as detailed at Marx's <i>Capital</i>, Vol. 1, of the growth of capitalism and societies perpetual refusal to allow for unfettered capitalism. Polanyi's argument is that the thorough application of capitalism to a country would destroy it. The only thing standing in the way are social movements which continually rise up legislatively or violently to hinder the progress of capitalism. Social protectionism in its opposition to capitalism market society was the only thing keeping the Western world from a totalitarian imposition of laissez-faire economics. Polanyi was a substantivist economist (a form of heterodox economics) at Columbia.<br /><br />They lean more left than it sounds like you are, but it's always good to step outside the echo chamber and talk to people we don't already (assume we) agree with, no questions asked. I've been told there are non-Austrians who also saw the recent crisis before it came.123https://www.blogger.com/profile/14514075641944568806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22781533.post-87525692572861511122010-11-27T12:16:28.690-06:002010-11-27T12:16:28.690-06:00Thanks for posting this story! As you can see, I&#...Thanks for posting this story! As you can see, I've linked to your post at our blog.LambertsOnlinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17731421792571406434noreply@blogger.com