When most students think of "principles of economics" textbooks, they think, "long, boring, and expensive." Economic Principles: Seven Ideas for Thinking... About Almost Anything is designed to be none of those things. Instead, the book is relatively short, and focuses on the essential ideas in microeconomics; it is not encyclopedic, and doesn't read like an encyclopedia. Appropriate for a Principles of Microeconomics course, the book's main emphasis is on explaining economic behavior, rather than crunching numbers. It is full of interesting real-life examples, applications, and humorous stories-and no mention of "widgets"! There are several end-of-chapter appendices to for those who want to better understand the mathematical models; however, the entire book can be read and understood without them. The overriding emphasis of Economic Principles is on explanation. Repetitive curve shifting and theoretical policy discussions are not to be found, as the most important aspect of a principles course is to teach students how to think like an economist, and this begins with explaining behavior. Economic Principles will engage students in this way, without overburdening their wallets or their backpacks.

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 Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike.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 21st 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.

Reporting on cutting-edge advances in economics, this book presents a selection of commentaries that reveal the weaknesses of several core economics concepts. Economics is a vigorous and progressive science, which does not lose its force when particular parts of its theory are empirically invalidated; instead, they contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. By discussing problematic theoretical assumptions and drawing on the latest empirical research, the authors question specific hypotheses and reject major economic ideas from the “Coase Theorem” to “Say’s Law” and “Bayesianism.” Many of these ideas remain prominent among politicians, economists and the general public. Yet, in the light of the financial crisis, they have lost both their relevance and supporting empirical evidence. This fascinating and thought-provoking collection of 71 short essays written by respected economists and social scientists from all over the world will appeal to anyone interested in scientific progress and the further development of economics.

From the former economics columnist for Harper’s and The New York Times, a bold indictment of some of our most accepted mainstream economic theories—why they’re wrong, and how they’ve been harming America and the world. Ideas have the power to change history. But what happens when they are bad? In a tour de force of economics, history, and analysis, Jeff Madrick shows how theories on austerity, inflation, and efficient markets have become unassailable mantras over recent years, to the detriment of the country as a whole. Working backwards from the Great Recession, Madrick pulls no punches as he reconsiders seven of the greatest false idols of modern economic theory, from Say’s Law to Milton Friedman, illustrating how these ideas have been damaging markets, infrastructure, and individual livelihoods for years. Trenchant, sweeping, and empirical, Seven Bad Ideas resoundingly disrupts the status quo of modern economic theory.

With over a million copies sold, Economics in One Lesson is an essential guide to the basics of economic theory. A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, Hazlitt defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication. Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than 50 years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong — and strongly reasoned — anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.

This book is the first work dedicated to the key ideas of Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase on pollution and public goods with sustainable development in mind from the perspective of an economist-town planner. The seminal contributions of Ronald Coase, foretold in the form of the Coase Theorem by another Nobel laureate, George Stigler, have been much analyzed and often misinterpreted by friends and foes alike. In this book, Lawrence Lai attempts to revisit Coase's seminal works and bring to the fore their importance in economic and urban planning policy analysis. Coase's comparative institutional approach offers an important vehicle for the analysis of pressing social issues such as sustainable development, and all those interested in the creation of new platforms for performing policy analysis will welcome this important work.

Choices matter. And in your teens and twenties, some of the biggest life decisions come about when you feel the least prepared to tackle them. Economist Robert T. Michael won’t tell you what to choose. Instead, he’ll show you how to make smarter choices. Michael focuses on five critical decisions we all face about college, career, partners, health, and parenting. He uses these to demonstrate how the science of scarcity and choice—concepts used to guide major business decisions and shape national legislation—can offer a solid foundation for our own lives. Employing comparative advantage can have a big payoff when picking a job. Knowing how to work the marketplace can minimize uncertainty when choosing a partner. And understanding externalities—the ripple of results from our actions—can clarify the if and when of having children. Michael also brings in data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a scientific sample of 18 million millennials in the United States that tracks more than a decade of young adult choices and consequences. As the survey’s longtime principal investigator and project director, Michael shows that the aggregate decisions can help us understand what might lie ahead along many possible paths—offering readers insights about how their own choices may turn out. There’s no singular formula for always making the right choice. But the adaptable framework and rich data at the heart of The Five Life Decisions will help you feel confident in whatever you decide.

For nearly ten years, readers of the Sunday Boston Globe and newspapers around America have delighted in David Warsh's column, "Economic Principals." This collection shows why. Taken as a whole, Warsh's writings amount to a vast and colorful group portrait of the personalities who dominate modem economics -- from the luminaries to unknown soldiers to eccentrics who add sparkle to the tapestry. Partly a history of controversies in economics, partly an essay on the evolution of the field, Economic Principals offers a glimpse of one of the most important stories of our time: the metamorphosis of a priestly class of moral philosophers into the mathematical mandarins of today, whose ideas are reshaping society even as they reveal its workings in ever more subtle detail. Warsh first recounts the rise of the economic paradigm, deftly treating the rediscovery of Adam Smith and the centrality of markets. He then turns to the generation of economists for whom the Nobel Prize was created in 1969, the men who forged the modern field in a few years during and after World War II. Some, like Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman, are well known to the public; others, like Trygvie Haavelmo and George Dantzig, are less quickly recognized. But all have interesting stories which Warsh brings to light. Tracing the high tech revolution to the current generation, he sketches younger scholars such as Jeffrey Sachs, Martin Feldstein, and others less popularly known, who rule the field today. Marking the most powerful applications of modern economics, Warsh explains how the ingenious "rocket scientists" of Wall Street are creating new markets and the business school wizards and leading corporate executives are reinventing the organization. Finally, in exploring the implications of modern economics, Warsh introduces us to scholars operating on the boundaries of the field, from Jane Jacobs to Noam Chomsky, and to the critics, like Donald McCloskey and Robert Reich, who have brought a bit of moral philosophy back into the economist's brave new world. At every step, Warsh maps the field with the journalist's eye for detail. Readers will see why he is considered one of the most consistently stimulating economic journalists in America today.