Economics  

Adam Smith (1723–90) is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas--that of the “invisible hand” of the market and that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” have become iconic. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This book shows the extent to which The Wealth of Nations and Smith’s other great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of a larger scheme to establish a grand “Science of Man,” one of the most ambitious projects of the European Enlightenment, which was to encompass law, history, and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics, and which was only half complete on Smith’s death in 1790.

Nick Phillipson reconstructs Smith’s intellectual ancestry and shows what Smith took from, and what he gave to, in the rapidly changing intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith’s ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume.

"Economic Journalism is often based on slip-shod analysis; scientific treatises are analytically coherent but unintelligible. This book is an effort to
bridge the awesome gap between these levels of discourse. It is solid economic analysis, simply presented.” --Nobel Laureate James Buchanan

“If this book had been written a century ago the wasteful experiments with command economies might have been avoided. After my college-age children read this new edition, their understanding of how markets create social cooperation and wealth and how they can personally be guided in their finances sharply advanced.” —Gary M. Walton, Professor of Economics, University of California, Davis and President of the Foundation for Teaching Economics

"I gave a copy of Common Sense Economics to one of my colleagues who teaches accounting here. He read it this weekend and thought it was so good that he is considering paying his students (half the cost) to read it. We both think the lessons are perfect."—Kelly Hunter Markson, Ph.D., Instructor of Economics, Wake Technical Community College

"My high school students really enjoy this book. It is easy for them to understand and it presents important economic concepts in plain language using clear, often clever, examples. They read the whole book, and we discuss it page by page during class discussion. I believe they get more out of it than their regular text."—David Gardner, Principal and Teacher, Frederica Academy (Georgia)

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives, which could make this book a hit. Malcolm Gladwell blurbs that Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America," an invitation Gladwell's own substantial fan base will find hard to resist.

From Publishers Weekly
Ever wonder what it means when the Fed raises interest rates? Or why there are occasional fears of inflation? To the rescue comes this simplified and chatty nontextbook textbook. Using words rather than math, it makes economics accessible, comprehensible and appealing. Wheelan, the Economist's Midwest correspondent, breezily explains the big picture, including finance, capital markets, government institutions and more. His informal style belies the sophisticated and scholarly underpinnings of his subject. Wheelan champions the often-maligned science: "Economics should not be accessible only to the experts. The ideas are too important and too interesting." Well before book's end, highly persuasive yet simply illustrated concepts sway the reader. Complex ideas are demystified and made clear, using familiar examples, such as the price of sweatshirts at the Gap. A chapter on financial markets compares a grapefruit and ice cream fad diet with get-rich-quick schemes. (He wryly offers the mantra "Save. Invest. Repeat.") Similarly, an explanation of interest rates compares them to "rental rates," an easy-to-grasp concept. And to convey what the major international institutions do, Wheelan writes: "If the World Bank is the world's welfare agency, then its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the fire department responsible for dousing international financial crises." Wheelan's simplicity does not mask the detailed encapsulation of complicated issues, such as relative wealth, globalization and the importance of human capital. He smartly shows that while economic consequences can be global, they are also a part of everyday life.

"PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL is wildly original. It shows why-much more often than we usually care to admit-humans make foolish, and sometimes disastrous, mistakes. Ariely not only gives us a great read; he also makes us much wiser." (George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001 Koshland Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley )

From Booklist
This is essentially the third edition of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, which originally came out in 1993 as The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics and was updated in 2002 with the new name. The 2002 version of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is available for free online from the Library of Economics and Liberty http://www.econlib.org/library/CEE.html for those who do not have the means of purchasing the newest edition. The entries are arranged in two sections: the first for article entries, and the second for biographical entries. These sections are ordered alphabetically and include 160 articles and almost 100 biographies of prominent economists. Entries vary in length from a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages. Each article entry includes information on the author who wrote the article and a short bibliography for further reading. The biographical entries include a list of selected works of the economist being discussed. A short appendix lists winners of the Nobel Prize in economics, chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors, and presidents of the American Economic Association. Compared to the 2002 edition, this one has approximately 34 new entries, and more than half of the entries have been thoroughly updated and revised. This edition also includes a new introduction and index. The encyclopedia contains a wealth of information that makes complex economics understandable in straightforward articles written by a variety of knowledgeable authors, ranging from Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker to financial columnists and numerous professors from around the country. A library that does not have this book in its collection could, of course, use the 2002 version online for free; but at such a reasonable price, this volume should be mandatory for any library supporting economics classes and is recommended for all academic and large public libraries. --Christy Donaldson

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