Reddit reviews New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought
We found 8 Reddit comments about New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I'll be wrapping up a B.S. in Economics with a minor in statistics this December.
Books:
I also highly recommend the Open Course series to develop the fundamental skillset. You can generally get these texts cheap:
Blogs are also okay, but be wary of partisan biases. These are what I check daily:
Ultimately when it comes to econ, there's no perfect substitute for a set of intro micro/macro texts and a university framework. This is contrary to what most pundits/americans seem to believe (seemingly everyone has strong opinions on issues best-explored in an economic framework, no matter how little they've studied it). Also, it's important to note that 98% of what's posted on this subreddit is NOT what economists are talking about. This subreddit is full of news links to stories that promote partisan agendas.
I'll also warn you that any legitimate study of economics requires a decent handle on math. Through at least half the calc sequence. "Good economists are reborn as physicists, mediocre economists are reborn as psychologists, and bad economists are reborn as sociologists."
non-Austrian economics is not a 'type' of economics - rather, the normal economics sub-reddit became swamped with adherents of this basically completely fringe quasi-philosophical, very political, and anti-scientific Austrian 'economics'. The wiki article for it is quite charitable. Basically you can discount about half of all comments in the main subreddit right off the bat.
Trying to think of non-text-books, not-too-mathematical books that are general in scope, fun to read, and minimise politicking...difficult
John McMillan, Reinventing the Bazaar - explanation of the limits and power of markets with many examples
Todd Buchholz, New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought - a sort of history of economists with a heavy emphasis on their thoughts and contributions using real world examples to illustrate
William Breit and Barry T. Hirsch, Lives of the Laureates - essays by many of the most highly-acclaimed recent economists mostly sort of mixed idea and personal life stories.
Hope these help. Have fun.
New Ideas From Dead Economists
amazon link
It was required for an Econ 101 class I had, and does a great job of covering the bases for each school of thought. It isn't very in depth, but can get you started pretty well.
I'd like to take this opportunity to go ahead and recommend Todd Buchholz's New Ideas from Dead Economists.
It's breezy, well-written, and basically accurate.
One book I'd recommend if you want a more accesible but less textbook-like style introduction is New Ideas from Dead Economists.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Ideas-Dead-Economists-Introduction/dp/0452288444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331074410&sr=8-1
Its really an interesting book that looks at the ideas of Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Marx, and others and puts them into context without having really a left or right slant. Its listed as a classic by the American Economics Association according to wikipedia and the author used to be a Harvard professor and has advised the White House as well as given talks to some fortune 500's. It goes into all of these old ideas and places them nicely into a modern context without getting preachy or bogged-down.
New Ideas from Dead Economists No questions asked. He goes over every major economic theory and notable figure. Presents their ideas. How their ideas played out in history and in our current history. He is completely unbiased and has a wonderfully captivating writing style.
My first four books were so heavily biased and I was never sure what 'school of thought' I was reading. It just confused me. This is a wonderful place to start since it describes how the field is divided up, different theories, and how they play out. There is no competition in 'first time books' in my opinion.
Depends on what you're looking for. For Economics, I always recommend "New Ideas from Dead Economists". It's a solid laymans introduction to economic theory.
For finance, I like Michael Lewis as an intro...He's been writing the ins and outs of Wall Street for 30 years. Liars Poker is his first book. He also wrote a couple of solid pieces on the crash of '07-'08 (The Big Short and Boomerang). Finally he also has written a good book about high frequency trading (Flash Boys). They're all non-fiction, but easily accessible, and serve as a jumping off point to other topics of interest.
Yup. It wasn't a class for me as much an excellent book that surveys the history of economic thought: http://www.amazon.com/New-Ideas-Dead-Economists-Introduction/dp/0452288444