A "Mere Economics" Companion Reading List
Back before Art and I ever set pen to paper for Mere Economics—the book—I'd started referring to the core of what economics teaches as "mere economics."
What are the enduring principles that economists, through the generations, have believed and taught? A working knowledge of economics—the science of tradeoffs—should include a grasp of choice, cost, specialization, exchange, property, prices, and profit & loss.
If someone had a spare half hour (or less) for thirty-one days—a month—and wants to read some classics, here’s what I’d suggest:
- Hazlitt: “The Lesson”
- Greaves: “What is Economics?”
- Heyne: “Economics as a Way of Thinking”
- Shapiro: “How Can People Get By?”
- Bastiat: “Abundance and Scarcity”
- Shapiro: “Scarcity—The Fundamental Economic Problem” (pp. 9-17)
- Bastiat: “The Broken Window”
- Read: “I, Pencil”
- Landsburg: “The Iowa Car Crop”
- Smith: “Of the Division of Labour”
- Smith: “That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market”
- Alchian: “Property Rights”
- Harper: “Why Pay for Things?”
- Hazlitt: “How the Price System Works”
- Sennholz: “The Formation and Function of Prices”
- Taylor: “The Market and Market Prices”
- Mises: “The Social Function of Profit and Loss”
- Say: “Of the Demand for Product or Market for Products”
- Menger: “On the Origin of Money I” (pp. 239-245)
- Menger: “On the Origin of Money II” (pp. 246-255)
- Radford: “The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp”
- Shenoy: “The Sources of Monopoly”
- Hazlitt: “The Curse of Machinery”
- Bastiat: “A Petition”
- Yandle: “Bootleggers and Baptists”
- Rosling: “200 Years, 200 Countries, 4 Minutes”
- Raico: “The European Miracle”
- Bauer: “From Subsistence to Exchange”
- Shleifer: “The Age of Milton Friedman”
- Simon: “More People, Greater Wealth”3
- Heilbroner: “Socialism”
Of course, Art and I would like it very much if you read these in conjunction with another book we know about.
I adapted this post from my personal blog, A Fuller's Soap.