Economic Textbooks / Recommended Reads
 

Hi to all the Econ students on RS! Do you have any good reading material regarding economics? Maybe a book that your prof recommended, your textbook, or something you've came across.

Thanks! :thumbsup:

Tim Harford - Undercover Economist. You can find a pdf download through google if you look around.

in terms of textbooks, try anything by krugman or bernanke.
as a magazine, "the economist" surprisingly consists of little actual economics, and instead focuses more on politics, news, and current events. the usual others are fortune, forbes and business week.
and the most interesting, easy-to-understand read for the economics newbie is probably freakonomics and the recently released superfreakonomics.

Naked economics is one of the best books I have ever read. But don't give me too much credit, I don't read books nor have I fully read any economic textbooks (I just don't buy textbooks) and im in my last semester for my econ degree!

This should really be in the Campus Forum

Try the Reluctant Economist by Richard Easterlin. Quite interesting if you're interested in the disparity between the First World and the Third World.

Do you want to read books to learn about theory, or do you want to read books with applied theory?

ECONOMICS OF MONEY BANKING & FINANCIAL MARKETS 3RD EDITION
BY: MISHKIN

Nice readings on bonds, stocks, Bank of Canada, and interest rates

+1

Principles of Microeconomics 4th CDN edition - Frank Bernanke


they have colourful graphs and tables

Why? This topic doesn't really have anything to do with schools. The only possible reference to schools is his address to econ students.

This is not related to school though.

This is actually for leisure... (yes I'm weird)!

I am asking students and insightful readers because I dun trust the book reviews for "Get Rich 101" or "Rich Dad Poor Dad" on most websites.
:)

Hmm... what's the difference? ;) As you can tell I should prolly start with a noob one.

Well, do you want to know about utility maximization, theories as to why we should and shouldn't have fixed exchange rates, how financial markets work, how firms maximize profits, oligopolies and game theory, and the theoretical reasoning for free trade....buy a text book.

If you want to know why abortion reduced the crime rate, descriptions on how gangs work, or someone explaining to you why the great depression happened, you probably wanna read some applied theory book like freakonomics.

Applied theories would certainly be more interesting to read; however, for someone who did not have prior knowledge in the field wouldn't it be less appropriate? Many of these theories may be false or simply crazy ideas, hence I'm trying to get opinions which are less commercially bias. Not to say that the textbooks UBC uses are 100% the best. Sometimes it may be beneficial to read new ideas with an open mind too...

A book like Freakonomics will teach you what you need to know in order to understand it. It's not an academic journal article.

i heard theres a great course based on just that

Mishkin +1
Prof. Newman (UBC) has a love/hate relationship with the guy lawl

Yea, at UBC It's ECON 345


If you would like to read something about Economic history of Europe I highly recommend "A Farewell to Alms" by Gregory Clark.

I couldn't find it. :( I thought I was reading it on google but it's a review.
I've seen Freakonomics, ranked way up on Amazon!
Economics and Politics are like Knife and Fork; actually more like chopsticks.
Thank I will definitely look into that when it's more in my league.

Mishkin is pretty basic text book on banking.

i am doing a masters in economics right now.

there are a lot of books to read, depending what you are interested.

if you have no background in economics, i would suggest just picking up a principles textbook in Macro and Micro. Mankiw is fairly easy to understand.

for intermediate level, if you are into simple math, then take a look at Varian's undergrad text.

if you are in the graduate level for real formal studies, the most popular textbooks for SFU would be

1. Varian - Micro
2. Greene - Econometrics (statistics, you need it to do any empirical work)
3. I don't know what book I use for Macro

to understand the above books, you need to be very good at math.

reading newspaper articles and books don't really help in understanding what's going on in the most basic side of things.

if you want to read real articles, i suggest you reading real empirical work written by universities.

One good book assigned in a graduate seminar I took was called Worldly Philosophers by Heilbroner.
http://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philos.../dp/068486214X

As someone with zero economics background, I found this book to be very helpful in understanding the development of economic theory. This is not so much a theory of economiccs book, but more of a historical development... but very helpful nonetheless.

Advanced Macro by Romer.

Personally wasn't a big fan of it, but it was sufficient.

Oh okay! :)
Well I'm in the middle of a design degree, so I can't really afford the time and money to study economics. I don't even think I can do grad school in economics or something since design/architecture is totally unrelated (academically).
Philosophy sounds like my kind of read! Thx. :)


So... where should I get these books? Would be nice if I can find them at library, probably not the textbooks tho. It is cheaper to get it from Amazon or from UBC/SFU bookstore? I can get my buddies to get it for me.

DUPLICATED