#FreeBookFriday: W.H. Hutt Edition

I've written a bunch of papers on W.H. Hutt that you can find on my SSRN page. I don't know that I would have read much Hutt had the Ludwig von Mises Institute not made a lot of his books available gratis. Here is what they have.

The Theory of Idle Resources. Armen Alchian, I believe, referred to this as one of the three best economics books ever written. Hutt explains that there are different degrees of "idleness" with reasons that might not be apparent to the observer; therefore, trying to fix "idleness" misidentifies the problem.

A Rehabilitation of Say's Law. Hutt's prose can be a bit difficult, and his macroeconomics is a little idiosyncratic. This is his fourth book taking apart Keynesian theory.

The Economics of the Colour Bar. This is my favorite Hutt book for a lot of reasons. Hutt explains why South African Apartheid is an economic disaster and, more importantly, where it comes from.

Politically Impossible? Hutt looks back on a long and productive career and explains that economists should, at one important level, be idealistic. Compromises might be necessary, but first and foremost, we have to figure out the best we can recommend.

The Strike-Threat System and The Theory of Collective Bargaining. Hutt's early and late analyses of labor unions and how they create exclusion.

This doesn't exhaust Hutt's oeuvre. Economists and the Public: A Study of Competition and Opinion might be his most comprehensive work. His non-gratis critiques of Keynesian macroeconomics are Keynesianism--Retrospect and Prospect: A Critical Restatement of Basic Economic Principles and The Keynesian Episode: A Reassessment. His Plan for Reconstruction, which appeared during (and kind of got lost in) World War II is an underappreciated look into his ideas about how to effect institutional change without society unraveling.