Economic Theory

Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin dive into the many theories of why modern economic growth happened when and where it did. They discuss recently advanced theories rooted in geography, politics, culture, demography, and colonialism. Pieces of each of these theories help explain key events on the path to modern riches. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in eighteenth-century Britain? Why did some European countries, the United States, and Japan catch up in the nineteenth century? Why did it take until the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries for other countries?

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has stirred vigorous debate ever since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau...

We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning-cost-benefit analysis-to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton reveals, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives.

China's economic growth is sputtering, the Euro is under threat, and the United States is combating serious trade disadvantages. Another Great Depression? Not quite. Noted economist and China expert Michael Pettis argues instead that we are undergoing a critical rebalancing of the world economies.

The National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning charts how “great replacement theory” has become a dominant political idea of our time and ushered in an antidemocratic age. “[Kendi] has a gift for tracing how historical ideas metastasize into present, real-world...

An insider of both the Bush and Obama administrations offers an irrefutable indictment of the mishandling of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailouts and the extreme degree to which our government officials—from both parties—served the interests of Wall Street at the expense of the public. From his first day on the job as the special inspector general in charge of overseeing the distribution of the bailout money, Neil Barofsky found that the officials at the Treasury Department in charge of the bailouts were in thrall to the interests of the big banks.

A bold and uncompromising feminist manifesto that shows women and girls how to defy, disrupt, and destroy the patriarchy by embracing the qualities they’ve been trained to avoid. Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud...

An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen. We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical...

Say's Law—the idea that "supply creates its own demand"—has been a basic concept in economics for almost two centuries. Thomas Sowell traces its evolution as it emerged from successive controversies, particularly two of the most bitter and long lasting in the history of the discipline, the "general glut controversy" that reached a peak in the 1820s, and the Keynesian Revolution of the 1930s.

Praxeology, the science of human action, is a lens through which truthfulness of the world is revealed. Truth goggles, if you will. Praxeology teaches us that everything going on in our society is rooted in the wills and desires of individuals. Starting from an irrefutable set of statements about human beings, we can come to conclusions about human behavior that are true regardless of what any political ideology might assert.

For over two-hundred years, capitalist systems have overtaken the global economy, spreading near-universal growth and opening the floodgates for limitless human potential. Yet something is going terribly wrong in the world economy. National bestselling author George Gilder explains how economics is not an incentive system but an information system. Redefining capitalism for the modern age, he reveals how free enterprise is a mind driven system, material resources are essentially as infinite as atoms, and what governs economic growth is human creativity.

Here is a bracing deconstruction of the framework for understanding the world that is learned as gospel in Economics 101, regardless of its imaginary assumptions and misleading half-truths. Economism: an ideology that distorts the valid principles and tools of introductory college economics...

Like F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises moved beyond economics in his later years to address questions regarding the foundation of all social science. But unlike Hayek's attempts, Mises' writings on these matters have received less attention than they deserve. Theory and History, writes Rothbard in his introduction, "remains by far the most neglected masterwork of Mises". Here Mises defends his all-important idea of methodological dualism: one approach to the hard sciences and another for the social sciences.

Economics makes the world go-round, whether you realize it or not. The world economy has a real effect on your daily life, and a better understanding of the principles at play in things like taxation and inflation can, quite literally, save you money every day. If you are interested in learning more, then Economics: A Beginner's Guide to Economics is just what you have been looking for.

Populist upheavals like Trump, Brexit, and Marine Le Pen happen when the system really is rigged. Citizens the world over are angry not due to income inequality or immigration, but economic unfairness: the sense that opportunity is not equal and reward is not according to contribution. This forensic book draws on original research, cited by the UN and IMF, to demonstrate that illiberal populism strikes hardest when success is influenced by family origins rather than talent and effort.

From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. Anthropocene antihumanism has been inspired by revulsion at...

“Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.” —New Yorker The famous bestseller with “concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement” (Wall Street Journal) by the legendary San Francisco longshoreman. A...

7 Secrets of Persuasion is the first book to take the latest scientific insights about the mind and apply them to the art of persuasion. It directly translates the revolution in neuroscience that has occurred over the last 40 years into practical new techniques for effective persuasion.

Economist on Wall Street is a collection of work from 1955 to 1970. The audio is especially interesting because so many of Bernstein's observations reflect the most important issues of the present - the outlook for inflation and its control, the intricacies of monetary policy, the future of the dollar, and the dilemmas of household finances. Bernstein was also concerned with developments in portfolio management, including the new influence of institutional investors and rules for optimal asset mixes.

La Riqueza de las Naciones es un tratado extenso sobre cómo se produce, distribuye y acumula la riqueza en una sociedad. Adam Smith examina los principios del trabajo, el comercio, los impuestos y el papel del Estado. Propone que la búsqueda individual del beneficio propio, guiada por principios de libertad y competencia, puede generar bienestar colectivo.