They said it couldn’t be done. Austrian economics is so different, they said, that it couldn’t be integrated into standard “neo-classical” textbooks. Consequently, college students learn nothing about the great Austrian economists (Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter). Professor Mark Skousen’s Economic Logic aims to change that. Based on his popular course taught at Columbia University, Skousen starts his “micro” section with Carl Menger’s “theory of the good” and the profit-and-loss income statement to explain the dynamics of the market process, entrepreneurship, and the advantages of saving.
Author Skousen takes a refreshing, intellectually independent approach to economics, beginning with sound economics from all free-market schools of thought and using it to analyze all competing theories.
The new edition of a comprehensive and rigorous but concise introduction to symbolic logic. Logic Primer offers a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to symbolic logic, providing concise definitions of key concepts, illustrative examples, and exercises. After presenting the definitions of validity and soundness, the book goes on to introduce a formal language, proof theory, and formal semantics for sentential logic (chapters 1–3) and for first-order predicate logic (chapters 4–6) with identity (chapter 7). For this third edition, the material has been reorganized from four chapters into seven, increasing the modularity of the text and enabling teachers to choose alternative paths through the book. New exercises have been added, and all exercises are now arranged to support students moving from easier to harder problems. Its spare and elegant treatment makes Logic Primer unique among textbooks. It presents the material with minimal chattiness, allowing students to proceed more directly from topic to topic and leaving instructors free to cover the subject matter in the way that best suits their students. The book includes more than thirty exercise sets, with answers to many of them provided in an appendix. The book’s website allows students to enter and check proofs, truth tables, and other exercises interactively.
This text offers a presentation of the mathematics required to tackle problems in economic analysis. After a review of the fundamentals of sets, numbers, and functions, it covers limits and continuity, the calculus of functions of one variable, linear algebra, multivariate calculus, and dynamics.
“Eureka! Skousen has done the impossible. Students love it! I will never use another textbook again.”—Harry Veryser, University of Detroit-Mercy They said it couldn’t be done. Austrian economics is so different, they said, that it couldn’t be integrated into standard “neo-classical” textbooks. Consequently, college students learn nothing about the great Austrian economists (Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter). Professor Mark Skousen’s Economic Logic aims to change that. Based on his popular course taught at Columbia University, Skousen starts his “micro” section with Carl Menger’s “theory of the good” and the profit-and-loss income statement to explain the dynamics of the market process, entrepreneurship, and the advantages of saving. Then he uses a powerful Hayekian four-stage model of the economy to introduce “macro,” including a new Austrian measure of spending at all stages of production (Gross Domestic Expenditures). Economic Logic also offers chapters on: The international gold standard, the defects of central banking, and the Mises/Hayek theory of the business cycle. A full critique of the Keynesian Aggregate Supply and Demand (AS-AD) model, and a revolutionary Austrian alternative. Entrepreneurship, the financial markets, environmental economics, monetary policy and inflation, federal spending and taxes, and government regulation. Leaders of all schools, including Austrian, Keynesians, Marxist, Chicago, and Public Choice.
Here is a bold history of economics - the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built today's rigorous social science. Noted financial writer and economist Mark Skousen has revised and updated this popular work to provide more material on Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and expanded coverage of Joseph Stiglitz, 'imperfect' markets, and behavioral economics.This comprehensive, yet accessible introduction to the major economic philosophers of the past 225 years begins with Adam Smith and continues through the present day. The text examines the contributions made by each individual to our understanding of the role of the economist, the science of economics, and economic theory. To make the work more engaging, boxes in each chapter highlight little-known - and often amusing - facts about the economists' personal lives that affected their work.
The Logic of the Market by Weiying Zhang—considered China’s “leading market liberal”—comprises his most influential essays on economics over the past three decades. First published in China in 2010, this revised edition contains three new essays, which offer those outside China a deeper understanding of the Chinese economy. “Market competition is a really just competition to create value for others... Only through this approach did the Western economy advance over the past 200 years. It is also the reason for China’s economic marvel over the past 30 years,” writes Weiying. Readers will appreciate Weiying’s ability to address both everyday economic issues and the questions that confront a nation’s leaders, not the least a nation seeking to escape mass poverty. The economic reforms and subsequent growth in China may be the most astonishing and hopeful event of our age. Weiying was among the leaders who set China on its path of change. Here he elucidates the pitfalls and the progress of economic reform, celebrating leaders who mixed sustained idealism with judicious compromise. Readers seeking to learn from China’s successes will find much of interest here. Weiying emphasizes the importance of entrepreneurs in the new China. He concludes, “The key for China, as the country with the world’s largest population, to return to being the largest economy lies in allowing the entrepreneurial spirit to develop the potential of the domestic market.” For that to happen, Weiying recommends that China continue to reduce the state-owned economy, lessen government control over the economy, and—over the next 30 years—emphasize political reform to build a constitutional democracy. His thinking is not limited to China. Some of these essays also focus on the global financial crisis—how Keynesian policies can only be effective for the short term and will bring long-term negative consequences. Weiying provides a unique perspective on his country’s market economy, implementation of economic policies, and the potential for Chinese economic development. “I hope that the logic of the market becomes every person’s ideal,” he writes. “That is my reason for writing this book.”
In Economic Logic, Mark Skousen offers a step-by-step approach to economics showing how microeconomics and macroeconomics are logically linked together. The fully revised sixth edition introduces a major breakthrough in macroeconomics: a "top line" in national income accounting called Gross Output. Also included: a powerful four-stage universal model of the economy, a new "growth" diagram, a new diagram of the optimal size of government, and new alternatives to the standard Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand curves. Economic Logic is also the first and only textbook to begin with a profit-and-loss income statement to demonstrate the dynamics of the economy. To aid students in comprehending the economic lessons, many other disciplines are integrated into the study of economics, including finance, business, marketing, management, history, and sociology.
Thomas Sowell “both surprises and overturns received wisdom” in this indispensable examination of widespread economic fallacies (The Economist) Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the reader. These include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as mistaken ideas about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries. One of the themes of Economic Facts and Fallacies is that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power-and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important, as well as sometimes humorous. Written in the easy-to-follow style of the author's Basic Economics, this latest book is able to go into greater depth, with real world examples, on specific issues.
Eliot Freidson has written the first systematic account of professionalism as a method of organizing work. In ideal-typical professionalism, specialized workers control their own work, while in the free market consumers are in command, and in bureaucracy managers dominate. Freidson shows how each method has its own logic requiring different kinds of knowledge, organization, career, education and ideology. He also discusses how historic and national variations in state policy, professional organization, and forms of practice influence the strength of professionalism. In appraising the embattled position of professions today, Freidson concludes that ideologically inspired attacks pose less danger to professionals' institutional privileges than to their ethical independence to resist use of their specialized knowledge to maximize profit and efficiency without also providing its benefits to all in need. This timely and original analysis will be of great interest to those in sociology, political science, history, business studies and the various professions.
