Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception

Irrational Exuberance

Robert J. Shiller · 311 pages

"In this update of his 2000 bestseller, Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller returns to the topic that gained him international fame: market volatility. Shiller breaks new ground in this second edition by laying out in even clearer and starker terms the market excess that continue to destabilize the economy and disrupt our lives." "Building on the original edition, Shiller draws out the psycholog

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value

William Poundstone · 336 pages

Examines how "price consultants" and retailers convince consumers to pay more for less, and how negotiation coaches offer similar advice for businesspeople cutting deals Prices are a collective hallucination. Here, author William Poundstone reveals the hidden psychology of value. In psychological experiments, people are unable to estimate "fair" prices accurately and are strongly influenced by th

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein · 312 pages

Thaler and Sunstein develop libertarian paternalism as a middle path between command-and-control and strict-neutrality choice architectures. Libertarian paternalism protects humans against their damaging psychological traits (inertia, bounded rationality, undue influence) by exploiting those habits to nudge people into making better choices.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Dan Ariely · 352 pages

How do we think about money?What caused bankers to lose sight of the economy?What caused individuals to take on mortgages that were not within their means?What irrational forces guided our decisions?And how can we recover from an economic crisis? In this revised and expanded edition of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Predictably Irrational, Duke University's behavioral econom

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 400 pages

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

Tim Harford · 320 pages

This book outlines a counterintuitive approach to changing the world by assessing its failures, drawing on myriad disciplines to argue that complex challenges must be met through adaptive trial-and-error practices that do not depend on expert opinions or ready-made solutions. The author shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. When faced with comple

Behavioral Economics

Andrea Robbett

End the Fed

Ron Paul · 212 pages

In the post-meltdown world, it is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering and challenging the role of the Federal Reserve. Most people think of the Fed as an indispensable institution without which the country's economy could not properly function. But in END THE FED, Ron Paul draws on American history, economics, and fascinating s

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen · 350 pages

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

John Cassidy · 390 pages

John Cassidy describes the rising influence of what he calls utopian economics--thinking that is blind to how real people act and that denies the many ways an unregulated free market can produce disastrous unintended consequences. He then looks to the leading edge of economic theory, including behavioral economics, to offer a new understanding of the economy--one that casts aside the old assumptio

The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World

Greg Ip · 272 pages

"One positive side-effect of the recent financial market meltdown that toppled giant, century-old institutions and cost millions their jobs is that it created a strong desire among many Americans to better understand how the U.S. economy functions. In The Little Book of Economics, Greg Ip, one of the country's most recognized and respected economics journalists, walks readers through how the econo

The Economic Naturalist: Why Economics Explains Almost Everything

Robert H. Frank · 233 pages

The playful guide to how economics explains the simple but profound ideas that govern our world. Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando? For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of learning how economic

Economics: The User's Guide

Ha-Joon Chang · 365 pages

"Unlike many economists, who present only one view of their discipline, Chang introduces a wide range of economic theories, from classical to Keynesian, revealing how each has its strengths and weaknesses, and why there is no one way to explain economic behavior. Instead, by ignoring the received wisdom and exposing the myriad forces that shape our financial world, Chang gives us the tools we need

Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

Henry Hazlitt · 205 pages

An introduction to free-market economics.

Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity

James D. Gwartney, Dwight Lee, Tawni H. Ferrarini · 227 pages

Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

Robert Z. Aliber · 397 pages

Since its introduction in 1978, this book has charted and followed the volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a pattern. Events of recent years and the current Eurozone continue to dominate policy and headline debates around the globe. In this updated and expanded seventh edition, Robert Z. Aliber probes the mos

Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

Alvin E. Roth · 260 pages

"A Nobel laureate reveals the often surprising rules that govern a vast array of activities -- both mundane and life-changing -- in which money may play little or no role. If you've ever sought a job or hired someone, applied to college or guided your child into a good kindergarten, asked someone out on a date or been asked out, you've participated in a kind of market. Most of the study of economi

Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

Thomas Sowell · 627 pages

"Why are homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks of New York in the winter, when the abandoned apartment buildings in the city have four times as many dwelling units as there are homeless people in the city? Why are people hungry in Moscow when there are vast amounts of some of the richest farmland on the continent of Europe within easy driving distance? Why did unemployment reach 25 percent

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler · 432 pages

Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans―predictable, error-prone individuals. *Misbehaving* is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth―and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world. Traditional economics assume

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Niall Ferguson · 448 pages

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries

The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and The Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life

Uri Gneezy, John List · 288 pages

A colorful examination of why people do what they do--observed through the lens of incentives that can spur people to achieve--as reviewed by two superstars revolutionizing economics.

Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction

James Fulcher · 149 pages

This book deals with the basic issues that have preoccupied thinkers from Marx and Weber through to Cuddens and Soros. It also examines issues of great contemporary importance, such as globalization and ecological crisis.

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

Marc Levinson · 395 pages

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in t