Best Economics Books in 2024: 49 Books To Really Understand Economics

Today, we take a look at the best economics books that will help you grow your wealth, increase your financial acumen or just add to your knowledge base.

If you’re looking for the best economics books, then you’ve come to the right place.

You can use these finance books for growing your business, your wealth, expanding your wisdom, and much more.

We’ve listed these books in no particular order, as we’re assuming most readers are looking first for a general outline of economics. But we’ve also included books on the various economic theories, both macro & micro economics, the history & theory of money, investing your finances, and much more.

So, without further ado, let’s get into the list of the best economics books you can get your hands on.

Best Economics Books

Let’s jump in and look at the best economics books out there.

Economics in One Lesson

“Economics in One Lesson is an introduction to neoclassical economics written by Henry Hazlitt and first published in 1946. It is based on Frédéric Bastiat’s essay Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas (English: “What is Seen and What is Not Seen”).”

The Rise and Fall of American Growth

“In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable.

Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end?

Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated.

Robert Gordon contends that the nation’s productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions.

A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.”

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

“Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt.

For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash.

It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections.

He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.”

The Wealth of Nations

“First published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations is generally regarded as the foundation of contemporary economic thought. Adam Smith, a Scottish professor of moral philosophy, expounded the then-revolutionary doctrine of economic liberalism.

The book’s importance was immediately recognized by Smith’s peers, and later economists have shown an unusual consensus in their admiration for his ideas.

Combining economics, political theory, history, philosophy, and practical programs, Smith assumes that human self-interest is the basic psychological drive behind economics and that a natural order in the universe makes all the individual, self-interested strivings add up to the social good.

His conclusion, that the best program is to leave the economic process alone and that government is useful only as an agent to preserve order and to perform routine functions, is now known as laissez-faire economics or noninterventionism.

In noting for the first time the significance of the division of labor and by stating the hypothesis that a commodity’s value correlates to its labor input, Smith anticipated the writings of Karl Marx.

Like Marx’s Das Capital and Machiavelli’s The Prince, his great book marked the dawning of a new historical epoch.”

 

 

The Myth of the Rational Market

“Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox’s “The Myth of the Rational Market” is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk.

The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today.

It’s a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books, and played major roles on the world stage. It’s also a tale of Wall Street’s evolution, the power of the market to generate wealth and wreak havoc, and free market capitalism’s war with itself.

The efficient market hypothesis – long part of academic folklore but codified in the 1960s at the University of Chicago – has evolved into a powerful myth. It has been the maker and loser of fortunes, the driver of trillions of dollars, the inspiration for index funds and vast new derivatives markets, and the guidepost for thousands of careers.

The theory holds that the market is always right, and that the decisions of millions of rational investors, all acting on information to outsmart one another, always provide the best judge of a stock’s value. That myth is crumbling.

Celebrated journalist and columnist Fox introduces a new wave of economists and scholars who no longer teach that investors are rational or that the markets are always right. Many of them now agree with Yale professor Robert Shiller that the efficient markets theory “represents one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economic thought.”

Today the theory has given way to counterintuitive hypotheses about human behavior, psychological models of decision making, and the irrationality of the markets. Investors overreact, underreact, and make irrational decisions based on imperfect data.

In his landmark treatment of the history of the world’s markets, Fox uncovers the new ideas that may come to drive the market in the century ahead.”

Freakonomics

“Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?

What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?

How much do parents really matter?

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. 

Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.”

The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy

“Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his ten years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society.

In The End of Alchemy he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance.

The Industrial Revolution built the foundation of our modern capitalist age. Yet the flowering of technological innovations during that dynamic period relied on the widespread adoption of two much older ideas: the creation of paper money and the invention of banks that issued credit.

We take these systems for granted today, yet at their core both ideas were revolutionary and almost magical.

Common paper became as precious as gold, and risky long-term loans were transformed into safe short-term bank deposits. As King argues, this is financial alchemy—the creation of extraordinary financial powers that defy reality and common sense.

Faith in these powers has led to huge benefits; the liquidity they create has fuelled economic growth for two centuries now. However, they have also produced an unending string of economic disasters, from hyperinflations to banking collapses to the recent global recession and current stagnation.

How do we reconcile the potent strengths of these ideas with their inherent weaknesses? King draws on his unique experience to present fresh interpretations of these economic forces and to point the way forward for the global economy.

His bold solutions cut through current overstuffed and needlessly complex legislation to provide a clear path to durable prosperity and the end of overreliance on the alchemy of our financial ancestors.”

The Rise and Fall of Nations

“Shaped by his twenty-five years traveling the world, and enlivened by encounters with villagers from Rio to Beijing, tycoons, and presidents, Ruchir Sharma’s The Rise and Fall of Nations rethinks the “dismal science” of economics as a practical art.

Narrowing the thousands of factors that can shape a country’s fortunes to ten clear rules, Sharma explains how to spot political, economic, and social changes in real time. He shows how to read political headlines, black markets, the price of onions, and billionaire rankings as signals of booms, busts, and protests.

Set in a post-crisis age that has turned the world upside down, replacing fast growth with slow growth and political calm with revolt, Sharma’s pioneering book is an entertaining field guide to understanding change in this era or any era.”

 

 

The Euro: And it’s Threat to the Future of Europe

“Can Europe prosper without the euro?

In 2010, the 2008 global financial crisis morphed into the “eurocrisis.” It has not abated. The 19 countries of Europe that share the euro currency―the eurozone―have been rocked by economic stagnation and debt crises.

Some countries have been in depression for years while the governing powers of the eurozone have careened from emergency to emergency, most notably in Greece.

In The Euro, Nobel Prize–winning economist and best-selling author Joseph E. Stiglitz dismantles the prevailing consensus around what ails Europe, demolishing the champions of austerity while offering a series of plans that can rescue the continent―and the world―from further devastation.”

The Everything Economics Book

“The Dismal Science. The Worldly Philosophy. The Science of Scarcity. Most people think economics is one of the most challenging and complex fields of study. But with this book, it doesn’t have to be!

You will learn how the U.S. economy works in unbiased, easy-to-understand language. And you can learn it without the complex equations, arcane graphs, and technical jargon you’ll find in most economic texts.

David A. Mayer and Melanie E. Fox explain:

• Why and how we trade
• How the government intervenes in markets
• Unemployment and inflation
• Supply and demand
• Competitive, financial, and foreign exchange markets
• How the economy is measured

You will also learn about the causes and fallout of the recent recession and how global climate change may transform the way our economy operates.

Most important, with this introduction, you’ll learn how our complex and dynamic economy affects the way we actually live our lives.”

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“The main driver of inequality—returns on capital that exceed the rate of economic growth – is again threatening to generate extreme discontent and undermine democratic values. Thomas Piketty’s findings in this ambitious, original, rigorous work will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.”

The Green and the Black

“Gary Sernovitz leads a double life. A typical New York liberal, he is also an oilman – a fact his left-leaning friends let slide until the word “fracking” entered popular parlance. “How can you frack?” they suddenly demanded, aghast. But for Sernovitz, the real question is, “What happens if we don’t?”

Fracking has become a four-letter word to environmentalists. But most people don’t know what it means. In his fast-paced, funny, and lively book, Sernovitz explains the reality of fracking: what it is, how it can be made safer, and how the oil business works.”

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

“Is Wall Street bad for Main Street America?

In looking at the forces that brought our current administration to power one thing is clear: much of the population believes that our economic system is rigged to enrich the privileged elites at the expense of hard-working Americans.

This is a belief held equally on both sides of political spectrum, and it seems only to be gaining momentum.

A key reason, says Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar, is the fact that Wall Street is no longer supporting Main Street businesses that create the jobs for the middle and working class.

She draws on in-depth reporting and interviews at the highest rungs of business and government to show how the “financialization of America”—the phenomenon by which finance and its way of thinking have come to dominate every corner of business—is threatening the American Dream.”

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

“Get ready to change the way you think about economics.

Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans―predictable, error-prone individuals.

Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth―and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.”

Hall of Mirrors

“The two great financial crises of the past century are the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession, which began in 2008. Both occurred against the backdrop of sharp credit booms, dubious banking practices, and a fragile and unstable global financial system.

When markets went into cardiac arrest in 2008, policymakers invoked the lessons of the Great Depression in attempting to avert the worst.

While their response prevented a financial collapse and catastrophic depression like that of the 1930s, unemployment in the U.S. and Europe still rose to excruciating high levels. Pain and suffering were widespread.”

Economic Facts and Fallacies

“Thomas Sowell’s indispensable examination of the most popular economic fallacies.

In Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics.

These fallacies include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economic fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries.

Sowell shows 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.”

Thinking Strategically

“A major bestseller in Japan, Financial Times Top Ten book of the year, Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller, and required reading at the best business schools, Thinking Strategically is a crash course in outmaneuvering any rival.

This entertaining guide builds on scores of case studies taken from business, sports, the movies, politics, and gambling. It outlines the basics of good strategy making and then shows how you can apply them in any area of your life.”

The Affluent Society

“John Kenneth Galbraith’s classic investigation of private wealth and public poverty in postwar America.

With customary clarity, eloquence, and humor, Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith gets at the heart of what economic security means in The Affluent Society.

Warning against individual and societal complacence about economic inequity, he offers an economic model for investing in public wealth that challenges “conventional wisdom” (a phrase he coined that has since entered our vernacular) about the long-term value of a production-based economy and the true nature of poverty.

Both politically divisive and remarkably prescient, The Affluent Society is as relevant today on the question of wealth in America as it was in 1958.”

Other People’s Money

“In just over three years, real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of investors’ dollars on a single deal.

The New York Times reporter who first broke the story of the sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village takes readers inside the most spectacular failure in real estate history, using this single deal as a lens to see how and why the real estate crisis happened.

How did the smartest people in real estate lose billions in one single deal? How did the Church of England, the California public employees’ pension fund, and the Singapore government lose more than one billion dollars combined investing in a middle-class housing complex in New York City?

How did MetLife make three billion dollars on the deal without any repercussions from a historically racist policy of housing segregation? And how did nine residents of a sleepy enclave in New York City win one of the most unlikely lawsuits in the history of real estate law?

Not only does Other People’s Money answer those questions, it also explains the current recession in stark, clear detail while providing riveting first-person accounts of the titanic failure of the real estate industry to see that a recession was coming.

It’s the definitive book on real estate during the bubble years—and what happened when that enormous bubble exploded.”

Thinking, Fast and Slow

“In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think.

System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.

He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.

Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.”

Principles of Economics

“Now you can master the principles of economics with the help of the most popular, widely-used economics textbook by students worldwide — Mankiw’s PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS, 8E.

With its clear and engaging writing style, this book emphasizes only the material that will help you better understand the world in which you live, will make you a more astute participant in the economy, and will give you a better understanding of both the potential and limits of economic policy.

The latest relevant economic examples bring principles to life. Acclaimed text author N. Gregory Mankiw explains, “I have tried to put myself in the position of someone seeing economics for the first time.

My goal is to emphasize the material that students should and do find interesting about the study of the economy.”

Powerful student-focused digital resources are available in leading MindTap and Aplia digital learning and homework solutions that reinforce the principles presented in this edition.”

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

“We know that our world is undergoing seismic change―but how can we emerge from the crisis a fairer, more equal society?

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone profound changes―economic cycles that veer from boom to bust―from which it has always emerged transformed and strengthened.

Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism argues that we are on the brink of a change so big and so profound that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system within which entire societies function, will mutate into something wholly new.

At the heart of this change is information technology, a revolution that is driven by capitalism but, with its tendency to push the value of much of what we make toward zero, has the potential to destroy an economy based on markets, wages, and private ownership.

Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, swaths of economic life are beginning to move to a different rhythm.

Vast numbers of people are changing how they behave and live, in ways contrary to the current system of state-backed corporate capitalism. And as the terrain changes, new paths open.

In this bold and prophetic book, Mason shows how, from the ashes of the crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable economy. Although the dangers ahead are profound, he argues that there is cause for hope.

This is the first time in human history in which, equipped with an understanding of what is happening around us, we can predict and shape the future.”

Debunking Economics

“Debunking Economics – Revised and Expanded Edition, now including a downloadable supplement for courses, exposes what many non-economists may have suspected and a minority of economists have long known: that economic theory is not only unpalatable, but also plain wrong.

When the original Debunking Economics was published back in 2001, the market economy seemed invincible, and conventional “neoclassical” economic theory basked in the limelight.

Steve Keen argued that economists deserved none of the credit for the economy’s performance, and “The false confidence it has engendered in the stability of the market economy has encouraged policy-makers to dismantle some of the institutions which initially evolved to try to keep its instability within limits.”

That instability exploded with the devastating financial crisis of 2007, and now haunts the global economy with the prospect of another Depression.

In this expanded and updated new edition, Keen builds on his scathing critique of conventional economic theory while explaining what mainstream economists cannot: why the crisis occurred, why it is proving to be intractable, and what needs to be done to end it.

Essential for anyone who has ever doubted the advice or reasoning of economists, Debunking Economics – Revised and Expanded Edition provides a signpost to a better future.”

The Globalization of Inequality

“In The Globalization of Inequality, distinguished economist and policymaker François Bourguignon examines the complex and paradoxical links between a vibrant world economy that has raised the living standard of over half a billion people in emerging nations such as China, India, and Brazil, and the exponentially increasing inequality within countries.

Exploring globalization’s role in the evolution of inequality, Bourguignon takes an original and truly international approach to the decrease in inequality between nations, the increase in inequality within nations, and the policies that might moderate inequality’s negative effects.

Demonstrating that in a globalized world it becomes harder to separate out the factors leading to domestic or international inequality, Bourguignon examines each trend through a variety of sources, and looks at how these inequalities sometimes balance each other out or reinforce one another.

Factoring in the most recent economic crisis, Bourguignon investigates why inequality in some countries has dropped back to levels that have not existed for several decades, and he asks if these should be considered in the context of globalization or if they are in fact specific to individual nations.

Ultimately, Bourguignon argues that it will be up to countries in the developed and developing world to implement better policies, even though globalization limits the scope for some potential redistributive instruments.

An informed and original contribution to the current debates about inequality, this book will be essential reading for anyone who is interested in the future of the world economy.”

Capitalism and Freedom

“How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom?

In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of his immensely influential economic philosophy – one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.

The result is an accessible text that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and shows every sign of becoming more and more influential as time goes on.”

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

“Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?

When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we’re making smart, rational choices. But are we?

In this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways.

From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They’re systematic and predictable – making us predictably irrational.”

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states-home to the poorest one billion people on Earth-pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century.

The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world’s people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards.

A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders-and the corrupt are winning.

Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance.

Standard solutions do not work, he writes; aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions.

Collier has spent a lifetime working to end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great humanitarian crises facing the world today.”

The Upside of Inequality

“The scourge of America’s economy isn’t the success of the 1 percent—quite the opposite. The real problem is the government’s well-meaning but misguided attempt to reduce the payoffs for success.

Four years ago, Edward Conard wrote a controversial bestseller, Unintended Consequences, which set the record straight on the financial crisis of 2008 and explained why U.S. growth was accelerating relative to other high-wage economies. He warned that loose monetary policy would produce neither growth nor inflation, that expansionary fiscal policy would have no lasting benefit on growth in the aftermath of the crisis, and that ill-advised attempts to rein in banking based on misplaced blame would slow an already weak recovery. Unfortunately, he was right.

Now he’s back with another provocative argument: that our current obsession with income inequality is misguided and will only slow growth further.

Using fact-based logic, Conard tracks the implications of an economy now constrained by both its capacity for risk-taking and by a shortage of properly trained talent—rather than by labor or capital, as was the case historically. He uses this fresh perspective to challenge the conclusions of liberal economists like Larry Summers and Joseph Stiglitz and the myths of “crony capitalism” more broadly.”

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

“The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is Keynes’ masterpiece published right after the Great Depression.

It sought to bring about a revolution, commonly referred to as the “Keynesian Revolution”, in the way economists thought – especially challenging the proposition that a market economy tends naturally to restore itself to full employment on its own.

Regarded widely as the cornerstone of Keynesian thought, this book challenged the established classical economics and introduced new concepts. It remains a relevant topic of debate to this day, perhaps more than ever.

Given the economic turmoil of recent years, this debate is more heated than ever, between the Keynesian model of economics of Bush and Obama which favors bailouts and other government intervention to try to stabilize the market, and the Austrian school of economics which sees government intervention as detrimental and favors letting the market sort itself out on its own with minimal government interference. You decide.”

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

“The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.

In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.”

Hidden Order

“David Friedman has never taken an economics class in his life. Sure, he’s taught economics at UCLA. Chicago, Tulane, Cornell, and Santa Clara, but don’t hold that against him. After all, everyone’s an economist.

We all make daily decisions that rely, consciously or not, on an acute understanding of economic theory – from picking the fastest checkout time at the supermarket to voting or not voting, from negotiating the best job offer to finding the right person to marry.

Hidden Order is an essential guide to rational living, revealing all you need to know to get through each day without being eaten alive.

Friedman’s wise and immensely accessible book is perfect for amateur economists, struggling economics students, young parents and professionals – just about anyone who wants a clear-cut approach to why we make the choices we do and a sensible strategy for how to make the right ones.”

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

“In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the “great transformation” of the Industrial Revolution.

His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism.

New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi’s seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.”

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World

“The untold story of the global poor: “Powerful, lucid, and revelatory, The Great Surge…offers indispensable prescriptions about sustaining global economic progress into the future” (George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management).

We live today at a time of great progress for the global poor. Never before have so many people, in so many developing countries, made so much progress, in so short a time in reducing poverty, increasing incomes, improving health, reducing conflict and war, and spreading democracy.”

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control.

In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.

As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.”

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

“In Information Rules, authors Shapiro and Varian reveal that many classic economic concepts can provide the insight and understanding necessary to succeed in the information age.

They argue that if managers seriously want to develop effective strategies for competing in the new economy, they must understand the fundamental economics of information technology.

Whether information takes the form of software code or recorded music, is published in a book or magazine, or even posted on a website, managers must know how to evaluate the consequences of pricing, protecting, and planning new versions of information products, services, and systems.

The first book to distill the economics of information and networks into practical business strategies, Information Rules is a guide to the winning moves that can help business leaders navigate successfully through the tough decisions of the information economy.”

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“The main driver of inequality—returns on capital that exceed the rate of economic growth—is again threatening to generate extreme discontent and undermine democratic values.

Thomas Piketty’s findings in this ambitious, original, rigorous work will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.”

More Money Than God

“Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first- century capitalism. Beating the market was long thought to be impossible, but hedge funds cracked its mysteries and made fortunes in the process.

Drawing on his unprecedented access to the industry, esteemed financial writer Sebastian Mallaby tells the inside story of the hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009.”

Economics For Humans

“At its core, an economy is about providing goods and services for human well-being. But many economists and critics preach that an economy is something far different: a cold and heartless system that operates outside of human control.

In this impassioned and perceptive work, Julie A. Nelson asks a compelling question: given that our economic world is something that we as humans create, aren’t ethics and human relationships—dimensions of a full and rich life—intrinsically part of the picture?”

Das Kapital

“One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, “Capital” is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates.

Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and generate fresh insights.

Arguing that capitalism would create an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production.

“Capital” rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia and Germany, and ultimately throughout the world, to become a work described by Marx’s friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as ‘the Bible of the Working Class’.”

Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13000 Years

“Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe?

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians.

An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel remains a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science.”

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

“For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate.

Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before.

In his bold and bracing exploration into how human culture evolves positively through exchange and specialization, bestselling author Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why.

An astute, refreshing, and revelatory work that covers the entire sweep of human history from the Stone Age to the Internet. The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.”

The Worldly Philosophers

“The bestselling classic that examines the history of economic thought from Adam Smith to Karl Marx—“all the economic lore most general readers conceivably could want to know, served up with a flourish” (The New York Times).

The Worldly Philosophers not only enables us to see more deeply into our history but helps us better understand our own times. In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas—namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never more needed than in this age of confusing economic headlines.

In a bold new concluding chapter entitled “The End of the Worldly Philosophy?” Heilbroner reminds us that the word “end” refers to both the purpose and limits of economics.

This chapter conveys a concern that today’s increasingly “scientific” economics may overlook fundamental social and political issues that are central to economics.

Thus, unlike its predecessors, this new edition provides not just an indispensable illumination of our past but a call to action for our future.”

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science

“Finally! A book about economics that won’t put you to sleep. In fact, you won’t be able to put this bestseller down.

In our challenging economic climate, this perennial favorite of students and general readers is more than a good read, it’s a necessary investment – with a blessedly sure rate of return.

Demystifying buzzwords, laying bare the truths behind oft-quoted numbers, and answering the questions you were always too embarrassed to ask, the breezy Naked Economics gives readers the tools they need to engage with pleasure and confidence in the deeply relevant, not so dismal science.

This revised and updated edition adds commentary on hot topics, including the current economic crisis, globalization, the economics of information, the intersection of economics and politics, and the history – and future – of the Federal Reserve.”

The Power to Compete

“Father and son – entrepreneur and economist – search for Japan’s economic cure.

The Power to Compete tackles the issues central to the prosperity of Japan – and the world – in search of a cure for the “Japan Disease.”

As founder and CEO of Rakuten, one of the world’s largest Internet companies, author Hiroshi Mikitani brings an entrepreneur’s perspective to bear on the country’s economic stagnation.

Through a freewheeling and candid conversation with his economist father, Ryoichi Mikitani, the two examine the issues facing Japan, and explore possible roadmaps to revitalization.

How can Japan overhaul its economy, education system, immigration, public infrastructure, and hold its own with China?

Their ideas include applying business techniques like Key Performance Indicators to fix the economy, using information technology to cut government bureaucracy, and increasing the number of foreign firms with a head office in Japan.

Readers gain rare insight into Japan’s future, from both academic and practical perspectives on the inside.”

The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life

“The extensively revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg’s hugely popular book, The Armchair Economist—“a delightful compendium of quotidian examples illustrating important economic and financial theories” (The Journal of Finance).”

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“In the foreword to Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Mises explains complex market phenomena as “the outcomes of countless conscious, purposive actions, choices, and preferences of individuals, each of whom was trying as best as he or she could under the circumstances to attain various wants and ends and to avoid undesired consequences.”

It is individual choices in response to personal subjective value judgments that ultimately determine market phenomena – supply and demand, prices, the pattern of production, and even profits and losses.

Although governments may presume to set “prices,” it is individuals who, by their actions and choices through competitive bidding for money, products, and services, actually determine “prices”.

Thus, Mises presents economics – not as a study of material goods, services, and products—but as a study of human actions.

He sees the science of human action, praxeology, as a science of reason and logic, which recognizes a regularity in the sequence and interrelationships among market phenomena. Mises defends the methodology of praxeology against the criticisms of Marxists, socialists, positivists, and mathematical statisticians.”

Between Debt and the Devil

“Adair Turner became chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority just as the global financial crisis struck in 2008, and he played a leading role in redesigning global financial regulation.

In this eye-opening book, he sets the record straight about what really caused the crisis. It didn’t happen because banks are too big to fail – our addiction to private debt is to blame.

Between Debt and the Devil challenges the belief that we need credit growth to fuel economic growth, and that rising debt is okay as long as inflation remains low.

In fact, most credit is not needed for economic growth – but it drives real estate booms and busts and leads to financial crisis and depression.

Turner explains why public policy needs to manage the growth and allocation of credit creation, and why debt needs to be taxed as a form of economic pollution.

Banks need far more capital, real estate lending must be restricted, and we need to tackle inequality and mitigate the relentless rise of real estate prices.

Turner also debunks the big myth about fiat money – the erroneous notion that printing money will lead to harmful inflation. To escape the mess created by past policy errors, we sometimes need to monetize government debt and finance fiscal deficits with central-bank money.

Between Debt and the Devil shows why we need to reject the assumptions that private credit is essential to growth and fiat money is inevitably dangerous. Each has its advantages, and each creates risks that public policy must consciously balance.”

The Road to Serfdom

“An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century.

Originally published in 1944 – when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program – The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production.

For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.”

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

“In this definitive third and final edition (1950) of his masterwork, Joseph A. Schumpeter introduced the world to the concept of creative destruction, which forever altered how global economics is approached and perceived.

Now featuring a new introduction by Schumpeter biographer Thomas K. McCraw, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand where the world economy is headed.”

Best Economics Books – In Conclusion

We really hope this list of the best economics books has been useful to you. We’ve given you a range of different books here. As ever, it really depends on what you’re looking to learn and what your goals are.

These books will give you glimpses into worlds that you maybe haven’t considered yet and reading just a few of these will put you ahead of 99% of other people. Because most people aren’t trying to advance their knowledge and wisdom.

So whether you’re a business owner, a creative or anything else, these economic books will help you out.

What did we miss? If we missed out your favorite economics book, let us know in the comments below.