Top 16 Economics Books For Beginners Updated 04 /2024

I'm always envious of how well economists understand a subject that seems so complicated. I've interviewed a lot of great people. However, most lists of great books about economics are made up of books that are too long to read. What I really need is a list of economics books for people who are new to the subject. So, who knows? That's what I set out to do! What makes a good economics book for people who are just starting to learn about the field of study? It must be easy to get to, interesting, and wide.

Those are the best economics books for new people to read now.

Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt

Linda Yueh:

Freakonomics is very good at explaining the interesting and sometimes surprising results of microeconomic studies to people who aren't experts in the field. In each chapter, we learn about a piece of economic research, like why drug dealers live with their moms. These studies give the reader a better understanding of how incentives work in microeconomics, as well as how other parts of the field work. It was written by an economist and a journalist, so it's easy for people who aren't very good at math to learn about microeconomics. It is about how people and businesses work together. This is one half of the field of economics. It's not the only thing that macroeconomics deals with.

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

Alberto Mingardi:

It was written by Henry Hazlitt in 1946, and it was called "Economics in One Lesson." True, the examples Hazlitt gives can't help but show how old the book is. And yet, in many ways, this short work is still the best economics primer ever written. She said that "economics is the science of our post-magical age." Instead of being unscientific or a hoopla-hoo, it's very against magic. That we can't do it, and that magic won't help. Hazlitt's book, in my opinion, is the best example of that. It relentlessly points out the misconceptions behind the use of "magical thinking" in our material lives, and how dangerous it can be.

When Robert Murphy says this, we can say that he is

As the title suggests, this book covers all of economics in a single lesson, which can be said in a very simple way: The good economist doesn't just look at the short-term and obvious effects of a government policy or event. He or she also looks at the long-term and hidden effects as well. Then, Hazlitt applies the lesson to a lot of different things, like the minimum wage, tariffs, and public works spending. Many people still think this book is the best introduction to economics for people who are smart.

Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar

Soumaya Keynes:

As you read this, you'll get a glimpse into the lives of some of the most famous economists, from Karl Marx to Milton Friedman. It shows how important it is to understand why they thought the way they did by looking at their lives and their ideas in the context of history. It also shows that these great people who studied society were human, too. They were shaped by their own experiences and had flaws that are very common for people. You should read this book before you start studying economics because it's a lot of work but worth it. It's the one book I wish I had read before studying economics.

What Would the Great Economists Do? How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today’s Biggest Problems by Linda Yueh

Linda Yueh:

My book was written to help people learn about the economic ideas that have changed the world. Even though it's awkward to choose one's own work, it's an easy way to learn about macroeconomics. Macroeconomics is about how the economy works and what makes it grow and be rich. People who came up with the ideas that have changed how we live and can help us deal with our current problems are shown in this book's colorful lives. This makes the subject easier to understand.

Each chapter looks at a big question in a bite-sized way, like, "Do we face a slow growth future?" It's easy to read because it has short biographies of great thinkers. In this book, you will learn about 250 years of history, from the Industrial Revolution in the 18thcentury to how technology and the digital age affect our lives in the 21st century.

The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg

Tim Harford:

The Armchair Economist is angry and a little outdated, but he is clear and witty. A great way to learn why economics can be so fun.

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and World Economy Bigger by Mark Levinson

Alberto Mingardi:

Mark Levinson's book, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, is not a book about how the economy works. It is a report on how the container came to be, and how it almost didn't work out because of regulations. This is a book about a seemingly common subject, but it forces us to look at innovations, how they work, and how they are dealt with in the real world of history, not in abstract terms but in the real world of history. If you're into history, you might like Samuel Smiles's books about great inventors, like "Men of invention and industry" (1884). If you want a modern version of these books, Levinson's book is the best you can get.

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Soumaya Keynes:

This book asks one of the most important questions in economics, which is how to help people who are poor become rich. Economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo talk about the results of "randomised control trials," which are a way to find out how effective poverty-busting policies are at reducing poverty. It can be easy to make bad assumptions about what helps the poor without them, they say. Even good intentions can have bad effects. Economists use data and careful thought to solve real-world problems, and this book should show how they do it. It should also make readers question their own assumptions about how the world works.

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

Linda Yueh:

In economics, game theory is an important branch that can be used to solve problems in conflict resolution, politics, and many other fields. John Nash won the Nobel Prize for economics, and this biography by a journalist is a great way to learn more about this field. Pioneering work by Nash was in non-cooperative games, which are games where there is no authority figure to keep an eye on the interactions of the players. This is often the case in real life, too. Nash had paranoid schizophrenia, which meant that he didn't get the credit he deserved for all of his work. In this book and in the movie that came out of it, Russell Crowe is the star. This biography is a good way for people who aren't very good at math to learn about game theory. If you want to learn more about a new subject, you can start with a biography. This one would be good for people who are just starting out.

 

In this book, Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff show you how to think strategically so that you have an advantage in business, politics, and every day life.

When Tim Harford says that, it means that he thinks that

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

Alberto Mingardi:

It was one of the most important debates in the social sciences in the 20th century. It was about how to calculate socialism. Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises made the point that socialism couldn't work in the early 1920s. He said that because socialism didn't have private property in the means of production, it couldn't make prices through bargaining in the market work. In the end, this leads to a bad use of resources. A lot of great economists took sides and learned from each other after Mises started the fight.

Now, it's hard to remember that the Soviet Union had a planned economy. For most young people, that's not even a thought. "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford is a collection of stories that show how Russia tried to plan its economy in the 1950s and 1960s, how its leaders tried to fix the most obvious flaws, and how it affected the lives of the people who lived there. People who read this book will learn a lot about money from it. It's a great book to read.

GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane Coyle

Soumaya Keynes:

It's a short and easy book by Diane Coyle (see Diane Coyle's reading list). She talks about how one of the most common measures of economic activity is made in it. GDP, or gross domestic product, is one of the most important terms in economics. You can't read very much about it without hearing about it. Explains what this book does and doesn't measure, which shows its value and flaws. To understand how hard it is to measure the economy, you should think about how the way we do it affects our views of the world, and how that affects how we act as a country.

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