An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales

An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales PDF Author: George A. Akerlof
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521269339
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
A collection of essays exploring the consequences of making non-standard economic assumptions. Breaking away from traditional economic theory, they cover a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic fields as well as anthropology, psychology and sociology.

An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales

An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales PDF Author: George A. Akerlof
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521269339
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book

Book Description
A collection of essays exploring the consequences of making non-standard economic assumptions. Breaking away from traditional economic theory, they cover a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic fields as well as anthropology, psychology and sociology.

An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales China Edition

An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales China Edition PDF Author: George A. Akerlof
Publisher:
ISBN: 9787564217181
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
These essays explore what happens when a skilful economist makes unconventional assumptions. Economic theory has traditionally relied upon a tacit and 'classical' set of assumptions that have gradually acquired a life of their own in defining how economists write and how they justify economic models. Similarly, these assumptions have acquired an autonomous character: they guide the way economists think about the world. In consequence, consideration of alternative assumptions has become taboo. These essays are substantively and stylistically novel because they break these taboos and bring new assumptions into economic theory. The papers apply this adventurous approach to a wide range of issues - from insurance markets and trade in underdeveloped countries to unemployment and discrimination. Some of the essays derive the implications for economic markets of costly asymmetric information. Others explore the findings of other social sciences such as anthropology, psychology and sociology.

Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery

Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery PDF Author: David Warsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393329887
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Chronicling the story of what has come to be called the new growth theory, this text helps to explain dominant first-mover firms like IBM or Microsoft, underscores the value of intellectual property, and provides essential advice to those concerned with the expansion of the economy.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man PDF Author: John Perkins
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1576755126
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.

Economic Fables

Economic Fables PDF Author: Ariel Rubinstein
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1906924775
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"I had the good fortune to grow up in a wonderful area of Jerusalem, surrounded by a diverse range of people: Rabbi Meizel, the communist Sala Marcel, my widowed Aunt Hannah, and the intellectual Yaacovson. As far as I'm concerned, the opinion of such people is just as authoritative for making social and economic decisions as the opinion of an expert using a model." Part memoir, part crash-course in economic theory, this deeply engaging book by one of the world's foremost economists looks at economic ideas through a personal lens. Together with an introduction to some of the central concepts in modern economic thought, Ariel Rubinstein offers some powerful and entertaining reflections on his childhood, family and career. In doing so, he challenges many of the central tenets of game theory, and sheds light on the role economics can play in society at large. Economic Fables is as thought-provoking for seasoned economists as it is enlightening for newcomers to the field.

Narrative Economics

Narrative Economics PDF Author: Robert J. Shiller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212074
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
From Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller, a groundbreaking account of how stories help drive economic events—and why financial panics can spread like epidemic viruses Stories people tell—about financial confidence or panic, housing booms, or Bitcoin—can go viral and powerfully affect economies, but such narratives have traditionally been ignored in economics and finance because they seem anecdotal and unscientific. In this groundbreaking book, Robert Shiller explains why we ignore these stories at our peril—and how we can begin to take them seriously. Using a rich array of examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that influence individual and collective economic behavior—what he calls "narrative economics"—may vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises and other major economic events. The result is nothing less than a new way to think about the economy, economic change, and economics. In a new preface, Shiller reflects on some of the challenges facing narrative economics, discusses the connection between disease epidemics and economic epidemics, and suggests why epidemiology may hold lessons for fighting economic contagions.

Animal Spirits

Animal Spirits PDF Author: George A. Akerlof
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400834724
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
From acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, the case for why government is needed to restore confidence in the economy The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity. Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government—simply allowing markets to work won't do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life—such as confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes—and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them. Animal Spirits offers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits—the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today. In a new preface, they describe why our economic troubles may linger for some time—unless we are prepared to take further, decisive action.

Explorations in Pragmatic Economics

Explorations in Pragmatic Economics PDF Author: George A. Akerlof
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199253919
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
A valuable collection of papers illustrating Akerlof's 'modern', Nobel Prize-winning methodology at work. This ovlume covers the economics of information, the theory of unemployment, the demand for money, psychology and economics, and the nature of discrimination.

If You're So Smart

If You're So Smart PDF Author: Deirdre N. McCloskey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226556703
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In this witty, accessible, and revealing book, Deirdre McCloskey demystifies economic theory and practice to show that behind the economists claim to certainty is the ancient art of storytelling. If You're So Smart will engage, enlighten, and empower anyone trying to evaluate the experts who stand ready to engineer our lives. "Writing with delicious wit and great seriousness."—Publishers Weekly. " "McCloskey is more interesting on an uninspired day than most of her peers can manage at their very best."—Peter Passell, New York Times

John Law

John Law PDF Author: Antoin E. Murphy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198286493
Category : Capitalists and financiers
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
John Law (1671-1729) left a remarkable legacy of economic concepts from a time when economic conceptualization was very much at an embryonic stage. Yet he is best known-and generally dismissed-today as a rake, duellist, and gambler. This intellectual biography offers a new approach to Law, one that shows him to have been a significant economic theorist with a vision that he attempted to implement as policy in early-eighteenth-century Europe. Law's style, marked by a clarity and use of modern terminology, stands out starkly against the turgid prose of many of his contemporaries. His vision of a monetary and financial system was certainly one of a later age, for Law believed in an economy of banknotes and credit where specie had no role to play. Ultimately Law failed as a policy-maker, in part because of the entrenchment of the financiers and their aristocratic backers and in part because of theoretical flaws in his vision. His struggle for power took place against the background of Europe's first major stock boom and collapse. The collapse of the Mississippi System, which he had conceived, and the South Sea Bubble led to a lasting impression of Law as a failure. It is this impression that Antoin Murphy seeks to dispel.