The Wisdom of Ants: A Short History of Economics
The Wisdom of Ants: A Short History of Economics

Author: Shankar Jaganathan

Publisher: Westland Business

Published:

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9360456705

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A short history of economics starting from 400 BCE to the present. As the fable goes, in the summer when the ants were busy gathering food, grasshoppers lived a carefree life. Come winter, the ants lived off their store, while the grasshoppers were left starving. It appears that this lesson was eventually learnt by humans, who shifted from hunting and gathering to agriculture. The wisdom of ants that they borrowed did not end here but helped to lay the foundation of economics as a distinct discipline. This book takes the reader through the history of economics through the ages and the four major world civilisations: European, Islamic, Indian and Chinese, pointing out the ways in which we think of economics today were formed. In the process, Shankar Jaganathan asks us to question our ideas of the importance of these ideas and their ability to drive the world. Written in a lucid, easy style, with many historical examples, The Wisdom of Ants views economic ideas through an ethical, social and political lens, allowing readers to understand the relevance of this history to their own daily lives.

The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wisdom of Crowds

Author: James Surowiecki

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2005-08-16

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0307275051

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In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

The Return of Depression Economics
The Return of Depression Economics

Author: Paul R. Krugman

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9780393048391

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The author of "The Age of Diminished Expectations" returns with a sobering tour of the global economic crises of the last two years.

A Short History of Man
A Short History of Man

Author: Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute

Published: 2015-03-19

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1610165918

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A Short History of Man: Progress and Decline represents nothing less than a sweeping revisionist history of mankind, in a concise and readable volume. Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe skillfully weaves history, sociology, ethics, and Misesian praxeology to present an alternative — and highly challenging — view of human economic development over the ages. As always, Dr. Hoppe addresses the fundamental questions as only he can. How do family and social bonds develop? Why is the concept of private property so vitally important to human flourishing? What made the leap from a Malthusian subsistence society to an industrial society possible? How did we devolve from aristocracy to monarchy to social democratic welfare states? And how did modern central governments become the all-powerful rulers over nearly every aspect of our lives? Dr. Hoppe examines and answers all of these often thorny questions without resorting to platitudes or bowdlerized history. This is Hoppe at his best: calmly and methodically skewering sacred cows.

The Company of Strangers
The Company of Strangers

Author: Paul Seabright

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9780691118215

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This is a wonderful book, very well written and accessible to a wide audience.

Modern Political Economics
Modern Political Economics

Author: Yanis Varoufakis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-03-29

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 1136814744

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Once in a while the world astonishes itself. Anxious incredulity replaces intellectual torpor and a puzzled public strains its antennae in every possible direction, desperately seeking explanations for the causes and nature of what just hit it. 2008 was such a moment. Not only did the financial system collapse, and send the real economy into a tailspin, but it also revealed the great gulf separating economics from a very real capitalism. Modern Political Economics has a single aim: To help readers make sense of how 2008 came about and what the post-2008 world has in store. The book is divided into two parts. The first part delves into every major economic theory, from Aristotle to the present, with a determination to discover clues of what went wrong in 2008. The main finding is that all economic theory is inherently flawed. Any system of ideas whose purpose is to describe capitalism in mathematical or engineering terms leads to inevitable logical inconsistency; an inherent error that stands between us and a decent grasp of capitalist reality. The only scientific truth about capitalism is its radical indeterminacy, a condition which makes it impossible to use science's tools (e.g. calculus and statistics) to second-guess it. The second part casts an attentive eye on the post-war era; on the breeding ground of the Crash of 2008. It distinguishes between two major post-war phases: The Global Plan (1947-1971) and the Global Minotaur (1971-2008). This dynamic new book delves into every major economic theory and maps out meticulously the trajectory that global capitalism followed from post-war almost centrally planned stability, to designed disintegration in the 1970s, to an intentional magnification of unsustainable imbalances in the 1980s and, finally, to the most spectacular privatisation of money in the 1990s and beyond. Modern Political Economics is essential reading for Economics students and anyone seeking a better understanding of the 2008 economic crash.

The Roman Market Economy
The Roman Market Economy

Author: Peter Temin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 069114768X

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The quality of life for ordinary Roman citizens at the height of the Roman Empire probably was better than that of any other large group of people living before the Industrial Revolution. The Roman Market Economy uses the tools of modern economics to show how trade, markets, and the Pax Romana were critical to ancient Rome's prosperity.Peter Temin, one of the world's foremost economic historians, argues that markets dominated the Roman economy. He traces how the Pax Romana encouraged trade around the Mediterranean, and how Roman law promoted commerce and banking. Temin shows that a reasonably vibrant market for wheat extended throughout the empire, and suggests that the Antonine Plague may have been responsible for turning the stable prices of the early empire into the persistent inflation of the late. He vividly describes how various markets operated in Roman times, from commodities and slaves to the buying and selling of land. Applying modern methods for evaluating economic growth to data culled from historical sources, Temin argues that Roman Italy in the second century was as prosperous as the Dutch Republic in its golden age of the seventeenth century.The Roman Market Economy reveals how economics can help us understand how the Roman Empire could have ruled seventy million people and endured for centuries.

Islamic Economics
Islamic Economics

Author: Ahmed El-Ashker

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2006-10-01

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 9047409620

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This comprehensive survey of Islamic economic thought covers the development of ideas from the early Muslim jurists to the period of the Umayyads and Abbasids. The economic concerns of the Ottomans, Safawids and Moghuls are examined, as is the profusion of more recent writing.