Further Reading

At the end of his superb account of the collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis provides a note on sources. But he warns the reader that when researchers write papers for publication in academic journals, they ‘aren’t trying to engage their readers, much less give them pleasure. They’re trying to survive them.’

In other words, most academic journal papers in fields such as economics don’t try to enter into dialogue with their readers. Instead they attempt to provide a bulletproof argument to bully even the most hostile reader into submission. Here, I offer some suggestions for friendlier entry points into the academic literature. But these books don’t shy away from technical economics or philosophical analysis, where necessary.

1. THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Two very different discussions of the rise and influence of the Mont Pèlerin Society may be found in:

Cockett, R. (1995). Thinking the Unthinkable. London, Fontana.

Mirowski, P. (2013). Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. London, Verso.

More scholarly:

Mirowski, P. and D. Plehwe, eds. (2015). The Road from Mont Pèlerin. Harvard, Harvard University Press.

A good introduction to the impact of economic ideas:

Hirschman, D. and E. Berman (2014). ‘Do Economists Make Policies? On the Political Effects of Economics’. Socio-Economic Review, 12, 779–811.

2. TRUST NO ONE

History of game theory:

Nasar, S. (1998). A Beautiful Mind. London, Faber.

Poundstone, W. (1992). Prisoner’s Dilemma. New York, Anchor Books.

Critical discussion of game theory is hard reading. Two papers I like:

Risse, M. (2000). ‘What is Rational about Nash Equilibria?’ Synthese, 124 (3), 361–84.

Guala, F. (2006). ‘Has Game Theory been Refuted?’ Journal of Philosophy, 103, 239–63.

3. WEALTH BEATS JUSTICE: THE CURIOUS COASE THEOREM

Authoritative, accessible history of ideas:

Medema, S. (2009). The Hesitant Hand. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

A witty take on misunderstandings of Coase, from a Chicago insider:

McCloskey, D. (1998). ‘The So-called Coase Theorem’. Eastern Economic Journal, 24 (3), 367–71.

Posner and the law and economics movement:

Teles, S. (2008). The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

4. THE GOVERNMENT ENEMY

Two superb books. On the shaping of social-choice theory and public choice theory by the politics and culture of the Cold War, and the influence of the Cold War on economics more generally:

Amadae, S. (2003). Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy. Chicago, University Chicago Press.

On the influence of public choice theory on contemporary politics:

Hay, C. (2007). Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge, Polity Press.

5. FREE-RIDING, OR NOT DOING YOUR BIT

Outstanding historical scholarship and philosophical analysis:

Tuck, R. (2008). Free Riding. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

6. THE ECONOMICS OF EVERYTHING

Debating the appropriate scope of markets:

Sandel, M. (2012). What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. London, Allen Lane.

Satz, D. (2010). Why Some Things Should Not be for Sale. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

How market thinking has become embedded in everyday life:

Roscoe, P. (2014). I Spend Therefore I Am. London, Penguin.

7. EVERYONE HAS A PRICE

An economist pushing against the boundaries of the mainstream economics of incentives:

Bowles, S. (2016). The Moral Economy. New Haven, Yale University Press.

A broader, deeper analysis from a philosopher:

Grant, R. (2012). Strings Attached. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

8. TRUST IN NUMBERS

Entertaining and insightful on the ideas behind the global financial crisis:

Lanchester, J. (2010). Whoops! London, Penguin.

Sprawling but unmissable, and influential, on the flaws in bell-curve thinking:

Taleb, N. (2010). The Black Swan. London, Penguin.

9. YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU GET

On the rise of the Laffer curve and, more generally, the political/cultural shift towards markets in the US:

Rodgers, D. (2011). Age of Fracture. Harvard, Harvard University Press.

There are several excellent books on inequality, but few combine accessibility, insight and encyclopaedic knowledge as well as:

Atkinson, A. (2015). Inequality. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

On why we accept inequality:

Frank, R. (2016). Success and Luck. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

10. A TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP: MODERN ECONOMICS AND US

Contrasting perspectives on what is wrong with modern economics, and what to do about it:

De Martino, G. (2011), The Economist’s Oath. New York, Oxford University Press.

Earle, J., et al. (2017). The Econocracy. London, Penguin.

Fourcade, M., et al. (2015). ‘The Superiority of Economists’. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29 (1), 89–114.

Rodrik, D. (2016). Economics Rules. New York, Norton.