Economic Theory

Hoodie Economics draws on alternative intelligence sources to look at the patterns of money, ownership and reductive thinking that we have inherited, and how we have the potential to create a new (old) foundation of equality – relational economies instead of transactional ones, and networks that are truly social. Just as Jack Manning Bancroft sets out to reimagine economics, Hoodie Economics rethinks the economics book, inviting all listeners to find their own way through its narratives and to feel energised by its ideas.

File your taxes on a postcard? Impossible! Guess again, says Steve Forbes, in his important new audiobook Flat Tax Revolution. In fact, countries around the world have freed their taxpayers to do just that - and we can, too, with a simple flat tax that will slash tax rates, spur economic growth, and put the IRS out of business

In order to illuminate the fallacies of economism, James Kwak first offers a primer on supply and demand, market equilibrium, and social welfare: the underpinnings of most popular economic arguments. Then he provides a historical account of how economism became a prevalent mode of thought in the United States - focusing on the people who packaged Econ 101 into sound bites that were then repeated until they took on the aura of truth.

Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini was nicknamed 'Dr Doom,' until his prediction of the 2008 housing crisis and Great Recession came true—when it was too late. Now he is back with a much scarier prediction, one that we ignore at our peril. There are no fewer than ten overlapping, interconnected threats that are so serious, he calls them Megathreats.

Economics can explain everything, from why people behave the way they do to how governments and businesses organize themselves. As the blockbuster best-seller Freakonomics demonstrated, economics can explain everything - from why people behave the way they do to how governments and businesses organize themselves. But are the basic assumptions and conclusions in Freakonomics true? Does the free market usually lead to unintended and negative consequences?

Caruso-Cabrera presents a modern and smart approach to correcting the economic woes of the nation. Denouncing the hypocrites, she calls out the radicals on both sides of the spectrum who have frustrated voters and left fiscally conservative but socially liberal Americans feeling like a people without a party. Caruso-Cabrera maintains that by focusing on socially invasive policies, our country has lost its course.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a master of game theory, which is a fancy label for a simple idea: People compete, and they always do what they think is in their own best interest. Bueno de Mesquita uses game theory and its insights into human behavior to predict and even engineer political, financial, and personal events. His forecasts, which have been employed by everyone from the CIA to major business firms, have an amazing 90 percent accuracy rate.

The Skyscraper Curse is Dr. Mark Thornton's definitive work on booms and busts, and it explains why only Austrian economists really understand them. It makes business cycle theory accessible to a whole new 21st-century audience. And they need it, especially those under 40. Many of the brilliant quants working on Wall Street and at the Fed barely remember the Crash of 2008, much less understand it. But Mark Thornton does, and his book is a warning about overheated equity markets, overinflated housing prices, and clueless central bankers.

What if everything we thought we knew about history was wrong? From the global best-selling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, this is a whole new way of looking at the world. Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks-leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati?

Edmund Phelps is among the most important economists of his generation. He developed a new understanding of unemployment and inflation and went on to rethink the roots of innovation.

The Left has seized on our economic troubles as an excuse to “blame the rich guy” and paint a picture of capitalism and the free market as selfish, greedy, and cruel. Exactly the opposite is true, says Father Robert Sirico in his thought-provoking book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy. Father Sirico argues that a free economy actually promotes charity, selflessness, and kindness. In Defending the Free Market, he shows why free-market capitalism is not only the best way to ensure individual success and national prosperity but also the surest route to a moral and socially just society.

Thirty years ago, “greed is good” and “maximizing shareholder value” became the new mantras woven into the fabric of our business culture, economy, and politics. Although, around the world, free-market capitalism has lifted more than a billion people from poverty, in the US, most of the benefits of economic growth have been captured by the richest 10 percent, along with providing justification for squeezing workers, cheating customers, avoiding taxes, and leaving communities in the lurch. As a result, Americans are losing faith that a free-market economy is the best system.

This classic statement of economic liberalism or the policy of laissez-faire was first published in 1776. It is an engrossing analysis of the economic facts of life. Several fundamental principles, many of which are now referred to as axioms, were introduced in this work, the division of labor, supply-and-demand, and free market capitalism being among the most obvious.

This audiobook was created based on Michael Porter's landmark book Competitive Strategy. This was Mr. Porter's synopsis of his book for the Harvard Business Review.

In the graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land. The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism--the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe.

Robert Conquest has been called by Paul Johnson "our greatest living modern historian". As a new century begins, Conquest offers an illuminating examination of our past failures and a guide to where we should go next. Graced with one of the most acute gifts for political prescience since Orwell, Conquest assigns responsibility for our century’s cataclysms not to impersonal economic or social forces but to the distorted ideologies of revolutionary Marxism and National Socialism.

Buchanan believed deeply that each individual is morally equal to every other individual. Because no person is superior, ethically speaking, to any other person, no person’s opinions or preferences should be given special advantage over those of other persons. He believed that this conclusion holds fast despite the undeniable fact that some individuals are smarter, better educated, wealthier, or higher-born than others.

This scathing critique of US political culture is a brilliant analysis of the Iran-Contra scandal. Chomsky offers a message of hope, reminding us resistance is possible.

Any group of people expected to work synergistically needs a system that structures their interactions. That system is “governance.” The Pragmatist’s Guide to Governance takes a first principles approach to exploring the ways governance structures affect the humans living under them (and vice versa), with a special focus on how human psychology interacts with the structures that facilitate our interaction with other people.

A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California's most powerful industry and accomplished the unthinkable: dignity and contracts for farm workers. Four decades later, Cesar Chavez's likeness graces postage stamps, and dozens of schools and streets have been renamed in his honor. But the real story of Chavez's farm workers' movement - both its historic triumphs and its tragic disintegration - has remained buried beneath the hagiography.