Thomas Sowell both surprises and overturns received wisdom in this indispensable examination of widespread economic fallacies (The Economist)

Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the reader. These include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as mistaken ideas about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries. One of the themes of Economic Facts and Fallacies is that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power-and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important, as well as sometimes humorous. Written in the easy-to-follow style of the author's Basic Economics, this latest book is able to go into greater depth, with real world examples, on specific issues.

*The Sunday Times Bestseller

*A Financial Times Book of the Year

*A Forbes Book of the Year

*Winner of the Transmission Prize 2018

*Longlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2017

*Porchlight Best Business Book of 2017: Current Events & Public Affairs

The book that redefines economics for a world in crisis.

Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times.

Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike.

That's why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21^st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.

Named after the now-iconic doughnut image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like.

Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas--from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science--to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow?

Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.

This is sharp, significant scholarship . . . Thrilling.--Times Higher Education

Raworth's magnum opus . . . Fascinating.--Forbes

Doughnut Economics shows how to ensure dignity and prosperity for all people.--Huffington Post

Discover the ins and outs of the economy with this engaging, informative, and easy-to-navigate 2nd edition guide with all-new entries and updates.

Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy details of economics into tedious discourse that would put even Joseph Stiglitz to sleep. This new edition of Economics 101 cuts out the boring explanations and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you explore how societies allocate their resources for maximum benefit.

From quantitative easing to marginal utility, this primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining tidbits and concepts that you won't be able to get anywhere else. You'll learn the basics on terms such as monopolies and oligopolies, game theory, inflation, price ceilings, and so much more. Have you ever wondered about the origin of banking or how banks create money? This book has all the answers.

Whether you're looking to master major principles of finance or just want to learn more about why money matters, Economics 101 has all the answers--even the ones you didn't know you were looking for.

a fresh, thorough and practicable book for anyone who wants to sharpen their macroeconomic judgment, structured in an easily accessible and insightful manner. It offers an invaluable framework to better understand growth, the financial sector and the key trends shaping the global economy. -- Financial Times

An essential new guide to navigating macroeconomic risk.

The shocks and crises of recent years--pandemic, recession, inflation, war--have forced executives and investors to recognize that the macroeconomy is now a risk to be actively managed. Yet unreliable forecasting, pervasive doomsaying, and whipsawing data severely hamper the task of decoding the landscape. Are disruptions transient and ephemeral--or permanent and structural? False alarms are costly traps, but so are true structural changes that go undetected.

How can leaders avoid these macro traps to make better tactical and strategic decisions?

In this perspective-shifting book, BCG Chief Economist Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Senior Economist Paul Swartz provide a fresh and accessible way to assess macroeconomic risk. Casting doubt on conventional model-based thinking, they demonstrate a more powerful approach to building sound macroeconomic judgment. Using incisive analysis built upon frameworks, historical context, and structural narratives--what they call economic eclecticism--the book empowers readers with the durable skills to assess continuously evolving risks in the real economy, the financial system, and the geopolitical arena.

Moreover, the authors' more nuanced approach reveals that the all-too-common narratives of economic collapse and decline are often false alarms themselves, while the fundamental strengths of our current era of tightness become visible.

With rational optimism rather than gloom, Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms speaks to the key financial and macroeconomic controversies that define our times--and provides a compass for navigating the global economy. Rather than relying on blinking dashboards or flashy headlines, leaders can and should judge macroeconomic risks for themselves.

The fully revised and updated fourth edition of the classic Common Sense Economics.

As the global economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and debates over the future of work challenge our long-held preconceptions about what careers and the market can be, learning the basics of economics has never been more essential. Principles such as gains from trade, the role of profit and loss, and the secondary effects of government spending, taxes, and borrowing risk continue to be critically important to the way America's economy functions, and critically important to understand for those hoping to further their professional lives--even their personal lives. Common Sense Economics discusses these key points and theories and more, using them to show how any reader can make wiser personal choices and form more informed positions on policy.

Now in its fourth edition, this classic from James D. Gwartney, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni Hunt Ferrarini, Joseph P. Calhoun, and Jane Shaw Stroup has been fully updated to include commentary on the effects of the pandemic on the global economy and the workplace; it offers insight into political processes and the many ways in which economics informs policy, illuminating our world and what might be done to make it better.

Central banking is magic. With a few words, the Fed can lift the stock market out of desperation and catapult it towards euphoric highs. With a few keystrokes, the Fed can conjure up trillions of dollars and fund virtually unlimited Federal spending. And with a few poor decisions, the Fed can plunge the entire world into a recession. The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and also one of the most difficult to understand.

The Fed acts through its Open Markets Desk, which sits at the heart of the global financial system as the world's ultimate and limitless provider of dollars. On behalf of policy makers, the Desk gathers market intelligence from all the major market participants, sifts through reams of internal data, and works behind the scenes to keep the financial system intact. It is responsible for all of the Fed's market operations, from trillions in quantitative easing to hundreds of billions in repo and FX-swap loans. The financial crises of 2008 and 2020 abated only through the emergency interventions of the Desk.

Joseph Wang spent five years studying the monetary system as a trader on the Desk. From that vantage point, Joseph saw firsthand how the Fed operates and how the financial system really works. This book is a distillation of his experience that aims to educate and demystify. After reading this book, you will understand how money is created, how the global dollar system is structured, and how it all fits into the broader financial system.

The views in this book do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System.

Caught in the crossfire between climate deniers and catastrophists, the intelligent layperson is understandably bewildered when faced with the complexity of climate change. How To Think About Climate Change shows that economics provides not just a suitable, but an indispensable perspective to understand the root causes of the climate-change problem: scarcity of resources, externalities and free riding. Riccardo Rebonato argues that there are no silver bullets or easy solutions. However, he shows that the new-generation economics models offer a radically different insight about our best course of action from what most early models recommended - in particular, they suggest that fast and large-scale climate action can now be justified as the most cost-effective strategy without requiring the 'infinite altruism' of earlier models. Given the conceptual tools provided in this book, readers can decide whether they agree with these conclusions - and, if they do, what the most effective courses of action are.

Learn the basics of economics and keep up to date on our ever-changing economy

Whether you're studying economics in high school or college, or you're just interested in taking a peek into the complexities of how money moves, Economics For Dummies is the go-to reference that transforms complex economic concepts into easy-to-understand reading. With the simple explanations in this book, you'll master key topics like supply and demand, consumer behavior, and how governments and central banks attempt to avoid--or at least ameliorate--business downturns and recessions. Plus, you'll learn what's going on these days with inflation, interest rates, labor shortages, and the Federal Reserve. Studying for an exam? This Dummies guide has your back, with online practice and chapter quizzes to help you get the score you need. It's time to recon econ, the Dummies way.

• Get a grasp on the unchanging fundamentals of economics
• Dive into behavioral economics and consumer decision making
• Learn what drives economic growth and inequality
• Solidify your knowledge with practice questions and quizzes

Economics For Dummies is an approachable reference book for students, as well as an informative guide for anyone interested in learning more about today's economy.

The winners of the Nobel Prize show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our day.

Figuring out how to deal with today's critical economic problems is perhaps the great challenge of our time. Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known it.

Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change--these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there--what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable.

In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.

In this ambitious, provocative book Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo show how traditional western-centric thinking has failed to explain what is happening to people in a newly globalized world: in short Good Economics has been done badly. This precise but accessible book covers many of the most essential issues of our day--including migration, unemployment, growth, free trade, political polarization, and welfare. Banerjee and Duflo will confound and clarify the presumptions of our times, such as:

• Why migration doesn't follow the law of supply and demand
• Why trade liberalization can drive unemployment up and wages down
• Why macroeconomists like to bend the data to fit the model
• Why nobody can really explain why and when growth happens
• Why economists' assumption that people don't change their minds has made has made polarization worse
• Why quite often it doesn't take a village, especially if the villagers aren't that nice

In doing so, they seek to reclaim this essential terrain, and to offer readers an economist's view of the great issues of the day--one that is candid about the complexities, the zones of ignorance, and the areas of genuine disagreement.

In the Eighth Edition of this classic text on the financial history of bubbles and crashes, Robert McCauley joins with Robert Aliber in building on Charles Kindleberger's renowned work. McCauley draws on his central banking experience to introduce new chapters on cryptocurrency and the United States as the 21st Century global lender of last resort. He also updates the book's coverage of the recent property bubble in China, as well as providing new perspectives on the US housing bubble of 2003-2006, and the Japanese bubble of the late 1980s. And he gives new attention to the social psychology that leads people to take the risk of investing in Ponzi schemes and asset price bubbles. For the first time in this revised and updated edition, figures highlight key points to ensure that today's generation of finance and economic researchers, students, practitioners and policy-makers--as well as investors looking to avoid crashes--have access to this panoramic history of financial crisis.

What is creative destruction? Creative destruction, what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called the essential fact about capitalism, describes change or disruption in the economy caused by innovations that replace traditional technologies and practices. Creative destruction is a force so powerful that it has not only shaped economies but also politics, culture, and social relations. In clear and accessible prose, Dalton and Logan illustrate the nature and varieties of creative destruction, how it is central to innovation and entrepreneurship, and why it is important for economic growth. With in-depth case studies of how Netflix challenged and displaced Blockbuster, and how Uber and other ride-sharing companies are disrupting traditional taxi services, this book examines how economies, societies, and cultures change due to the innovation and experimentation that is central to the prosperity of free societies.

This book conveys a simple idea: that the economic framework established by Smith and Coase is very useful in describing and explaining many facts in the real world.Smith's logic in the Wealth of Nations is simply the following: the extent of market transactions→division of stock→division of labor→economic growth. The logic of Coase in the Coase Theorem is that 'the delimitation of rights is an essential prelude to market transactions.' The logic of these two great economists can therefore be combined in a comprehensive way: delimitation of rights→the extent of market transactions→division of stock→division of labor→economic growth to the author calls this comprehensive version the Smith-Coase framework in economics.This framework will be repeatedly used in this book to explain various economic problems such as the law of demand, growth and development, monetary theory and policy, among others. According to Lucas, the approach of this book is classical because it 'makes no use of utility theory, ' and because 'a household is truly a 'small factory'' à la Becker; household production function approach will be used to study the behavior of consumers.This makes the substitution structure of production the focus of this book. We view all economic agents as following the least cost principle, meaning that they would try to produce the goods and services they need by using factors of production in the least costly way. But there are at least four factors: labor, capital, land, and organization if we would like to accept the definition of Marshall. What economic agents will do is to substitute one factor for another in order to save the cost of production. The ease of substitution between various factors is therefore important for determining the shape of the substitution structure of production. Based on the principle of least cost, a simple mathematical model will be derived and used to explain various economic problems.

This book provides insight into the history, goals, and potential of the Federal Reserve System (Fed). Synthesizing into a unified vision research and reflections developed over 15 years in the academy and at banking institutions, Robert C. Hockett recovers the sensible founding vision of the early 20th century Fed and updates it to solve the new challenges of the 21st century, especially as America now strives to recover its lost productive preeminence worldwide after decades of outsourcing and consequent deindustrialization.

The book presents both the original 1913 Fed and Hockett's modern restored Fed as a unique public/private and federal/local partnership specifically inspired by German industrial development banking and adapted to continent-spanning American conditions. It shows that the original Fed's focus on endogenous money and productive (not speculative) credit allocation was sound and effective as far as it went, while its ignoring exogenous sources of monetary disturbance prevented its properly handling the bubble and bust of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The reaction to that error after the mid-1930s, the book shows, fell into the opposite error, pretending that monetary aggregates could be adequately modulated without being forthrightly allocated in productive rather than speculative directions. A Goldilocks Fed must both productively allocate endogenous money and sensibly modulate exogenous money - twin prerequisites to both productive investment and financial stability. Hockett illustrates how the twelve regional Federal Reserve District Banks were founded for just these purposes and can be revitalized to achieve them anew.

There is no better guide than Paul Krugman to basic economics, the ideas that animate much of our public policy. Likewise, there is no stronger foe of zombie economics, the misunderstandings that just won't die.

In Arguing with Zombies, Krugman tackles many of these misunderstandings, taking stock of where the United States has come from and where it's headed in a series of concise, digestible chapters. Drawn mainly from his popular New York Times column, they cover a wide range of issues, organized thematically and framed in the context of a wider debate. Explaining the complexities of health care, housing bubbles, tax reform, Social Security, and so much more with unrivaled clarity and precision, Arguing with Zombies is Krugman at the height of his powers.

It is an indispensable guide to two decades' worth of political and economic discourse in the United States and around the globe, and now includes a preface on Zombies in the Age of COVID-19. With quick, vivid sketches, Krugman turns his readers into intelligent consumers of the daily news and hands them the keys to unlock the concepts behind the greatest economic policy issues of our time. In doing so, he delivers an instant classic that can serve as a reference point for this and future generations.

A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.

This book forces you to see American poverty in a whole new light. (Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America and Evicted)

Three of the nation's top scholars -- known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America - turn their attention from the country's poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America's most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there.

This revelation set in motion a five-year journey across Appalachia, the Cotton and Tobacco Belts of the Deep South, and South Texas. Immersing themselves in these communities, poring over centuries of local history, attending parades and festivals, the authors trace the legacies of the deepest poverty in America--including inequalities shaping people's health, livelihoods, and upward social mobility for families. Wrung dry by powerful forces and corrupt government officials, the internal colonies in these regions were exploited for their resources and then left to collapse.

The unfolding revelation in The Injustice of Place is not about what sets these places apart, but about what they have in common--a history of raw, intensive resource extraction and human exploitation. This history and its reverberations demand a reckoning and a commitment to wage a new War on Poverty, with the unrelenting focus on our nation's places of deepest need.

The non-economist's accessible, pocket-sized refresher on the basics of macroeconomics and how it affects local and global economies--from an academic economist and 2-time Chilean Finance Minister.

Macroeconomics takes a broad perspective on the economy of a country or region; it studies economic changes in the aggregate, collecting data on production, unemployment, inflation, consumption, investment, trade, and other aspects of national and international economic life. Policymakers depend on macroeconomists' knowledge when making decisions about such issues as taxes and the public budget, monetary and exchange rate policies, and trade policies--all of which, in turn, affect decisions made by individuals and businesses.

This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an introduction to the basics of macroeconomics accessible to the non-economist. Readers will gain the tools to interpret such economic events as the 2008 financial meltdown, the subsequent euro crisis, and the current protectionist dynamics seen in some developed countries. You'll also learn about:

- Economic development--why some countries flourish while others reamin stagnant
- Economic activity and employment
- Employment and unemployment rates
- The factors behind economic growth
- Money, inflation, and exchange rate systems
- Fiscal deficits, fiscal policy, and balance of payment crises
- Consumption, savings, and investment decisions
- The process of globalization and its macroeconomic implications

Written by an academic economist and two-time Chilean Finance Minister, this is an easy-to-understand and pocket-sized guide to the fundamentals of macroeconomics.

This original and panoramic book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalisation will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends - it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality. Whatever the future holds, the authors argue, it will be nothing like the past. Deflationary headwinds over the last three decades have been primarily due to an enormous surge in the world's available labour supply, owing to very favourable demographic trends and the entry of China and Eastern Europe into the world's trading system. This book demonstrates how these demographic trends are on the point of reversing sharply, coinciding with a retreat from globalisation. The result? Ageing can be expected to raise inflation and interest rates, bringing a slew of problems for an over-indebted world economy, but is also anticipated to increase the share of labour, so that inequality falls. Covering many social and politicalfactors, as well as those that are more purely macroeconomic, the authors address topics including ageing, dementia, inequality, populism, retirement and debt finance, among others.

This book will be of interest and understandable to anyone with an interest on where the world's economy may be going.

The fifth edition of Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics continues its tradition as the standard text and the starting point for graduate macroeconomics courses and helps lay the groundwork for students to begin doing research in macroeconomics and monetary economics. Romer presents the major theories concerning the central questions of macroeconomics. The theoretical analysis is supplemented by examples of relevant empirical work, illustrating the ways that theories can be applied and tested. In areas ranging from economic growth and short-run fluctuations to the natural rate of unemployment and monetary policy, formal models are used to present and analyze key ideas and issues.
The book has been extensively revised to incorporate important new topics and new research, eliminate inessential material, and further improve the presentation.

An economist examines three modern forces that have redefined what money means, who controls it, and what the future of finance might look like.

Money is increasingly cheap, digital, and mobile. In Money in the Twenty-First Century, economist Richard Holden examines the virtues and risks of low interest rates, mobile money, and cryptocurrencies, and explains how these three elemental forces will continue to play out--in our wallets, on the blockchain, and throughout major economies--in the decades to come.

Holden weaves in the stories of three people who have exerted massive influence over the future of modern money: US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, and Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Moving from micro to macro, Holden investigates the infrastructure that permits digital transactions, the currencies that underpin them, the race for control of those currencies, shifts in policy and the international monetary system, and the impact on our politics of money in the digital age. Ultimately, Money in the Twenty-First Century asks if governments can keep these three tectonic powers of low interest rates, mobile money, and decentralized finance under control.