Download or read book Economic Facts and Fallacies written by Thomas Sowell and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Sowell “both surprises and overturns received wisdom” in this indispensable examination of widespread economic fallacies (The Economist) Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the reader. These include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as mistaken ideas about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries. One of the themes of Economic Facts and Fallacies is 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, as well as sometimes humorous. Written in the easy-to-follow style of the author's Basic Economics, this latest book is able to go into greater depth, with real world examples, on specific issues.
Download or read book Economics in One Lesson written by Henry Hazlitt and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2010-08-11 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over a million copies sold, Economics in One Lesson is an essential guide to the basics of economic theory. A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, Hazlitt defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication. Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than 50 years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong — and strongly reasoned — anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.
Download or read book The Failure of the New Economics written by Henry Hazlitt and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 1959 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Economic Fallacies written by Frederic Bastiat and published by Simon Publications. This book was released on 2001-08-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, written by the celebrated nineteenth century French economist propagating free trade, reads as it was written yesterday.
Download or read book Thirteen Persistent Economic Fallacies written by E. Mishan and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: E. J. Mishan, an iconoclastic economist who has taught at such schools as the London School of Economics and the New School for Social Research, is in this volume a provocateur, smashing staunchly held beliefs of the right (free trade and common markets are good for the economy), and the left (local jobs are always lost when factories close down, pay disparity between men and women signifies discrimination). He also pokes holes in the accepted wisdom held by all, arguing for example that economic growth does not necessarily improve lives. Those who believe the fallacies Mishan exposes to the light of reason in this book are, however, neither ignorant nor careless. The fallacies are all plausible, and intelligent people can be forgiven for believing them. Mishan simply wants readers to see these thirteen popular, persistent fallacies for what they are: Humbug. Mishan's scintillating text is apolitical. In arguing that immigration does not benefit a country's economy, for example, he is not arguing in favor of restricting immigration. Rather, his goal is to test the assumptions behind the dearly held positions of both the left and the right or to expose what he calls the breathtaking fatuity that counts as wisdom these days. Mishan wants to interject common sense and logic into today's debates over the economy and, especially, the political arguments that translate into legislation that has a negative impact on people. Mishan's ideas breathe new life into debates gone stale by ideology. As he notes, the fallacies in this volume travel in the highest circles, from debates in Congress to the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Economist. Most are things everybody knows. He hopes, therefore, to expose the concerned citizen to the shock-treatment of discovering that much of what passes for conventional economic wisdom is in fact fallacious. As the Economist pointed out in its glowing review of the first edition of this book, Dr. Mishan has written the perfect book for anyone wishing to start the study of economics.
Download or read book 20 Economics Fallacies written by Tim Worstall and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tim Worstall, always clear thinking, nails the myths that grow up around economics in this useful book. A terrific compendium of fallacies and their refutations." Matt Ridley, author of the Rational Optimist. This book is simply a discussion of those errors which I've had to repeatedly correct in this past decade of my writing about matters economic. It gets rather boring having to point out the same errors again and again: thus putting the explanations into one simple format handy for waving at people rather than having to trot out the same old explanation again. This book is an idiosyncratic look at a number of common economic fallacies and mistakes. It does not pretend to be be exhaustive, a thorough examination of all the mistakes that economics, both folk and formal, can become prey to. Rather, it's about those that I've come across and find that I have to continually point out the folly of. For example, the Labour Theory of Value has been around for a long time and forms the heart of the basic underpinnings of Marxism. Yet it was disproved at around the time that Marx was publishing Das Kapital: and it has remained wrong since then whatever the insistences of the ideologues. So there is a simple explanation of why that particular theory is wrong. On what is perhaps more my side of the fence, free market zealotry (and I confess to being a market zealot) it is also wrong to proclaim that free markets can and will solve every problem. This is not, sadly, so: there are times when interventions must be made, even times when something must be done and government is the only actor able to do that thing.
Download or read book Adam s Fallacy written by Duncan K. Foley and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book could be called "The Intelligent Person's Guide to Economics." The title expresses Duncan Foley's belief that economics at its most abstract and interesting level is a speculative philosophical discourse, not a deductive or inductive science. Adam's fallacy is the attempt to separate the economic sphere of life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is led by the invisible hand of the market to a socially beneficial outcome, from the rest of social life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is morally problematic and has to be weighed against other ends.
Download or read book Seven Deadly Economic Sins written by James R. Otteson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compelling basic principles of economics every citizen should know to enable better personal decision-making and better evaluation of public policy.
Download or read book Fifty Economic Fallacies Exposed written by Geoffrey E. Wood and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1988, Professor Geoffrey Wood of the Sir John Cass Business School, has written a regular column in the IEA's journal, Economic Affairs, in which he exposes popular economic fallacies. Fifty Economic Fallacies Exposed collects fifty of these columns and exposes numerous common fallacies. These lucid and stimulating columns are invaluable to students struggling to master some of the complexities of economic theory and its applications, who often find the most effective way to learn economic analysis is to see such fallacies exposed. It is a text particularly suitable for first year economics students, complementing existing textbooks as it does, and clarifying basic concepts in economics while demonstrating the practical uses of economic theory.
Download or read book How Markets Fail written by Cassidy John and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did we get to where we are? John Cassidy shows that the roots of our most recent financial failure lie not with individuals, but with an idea - the idea that markets are inherently rational. He gives us the big picture behind the financial headlines, tracing the rise and fall of free market ideology from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. Full of wit, sense and, above all, a deeper understanding, How Markets Fail argues for the end of 'utopian' economics, and the beginning of a pragmatic, reality-based way of thinking. A very good history of economic thought Economist How Markets Fail offers a brilliant intellectual framework . . . fine work New York Times An essential, grittily intellectual, yet compelling guide to the financial debacle of 2009 Geordie Greig, Evening Standard A powerful argument . . . Cassidy makes a compelling case that a return to hands-off economics would be a disaster BusinessWeek This book is a well constructed, thoughtful and cogent account of how capitalism evolved to its current form Telegraph Books of the Year recommendation John Cassidy ... describe[s] that mix of insight and madness that brought the world's system to its knees FT, Book of the Year recommendation Anyone who enjoys a good read can safely embark on this tour with Cassidy as their guide . . . Like his colleague Malcolm Gladwell [at the New Yorker], Cassidy is able to lead us with beguiling lucidity through unfamiliar territory New Statesman John Cassidy has covered economics and finance at The New Yorker magazine since 1995, writing on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan to the Iraqi oil industry and English journalism. He is also now a Contributing Editor at Portfolio where he writes the monthly Economics column. Two of his articles have been nominated for National Magazine Awards: an essay on Karl Marx, which appeared in October, 1997, and an account of the death of the British weapons scientist David Kelly, which was published in December, 2003. He has previously written for Sunday Times in as well as the New York Post, where he edited the Business section and then served as the deputy editor. In 2002, Cassidy published his first book, Dot.Con. He lives in New York.
Download or read book Economic Controversies written by Murray N. Rothbard and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 2011 with total page 1017 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Words Objects and Events in Economics written by Peter Róna and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.
Download or read book Economic Theory written by Gary S Becker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Others might have called this book Micro Theory or Price Theory. Becker's choice of Economic Theory as the title for his book reflects his deep belief that there is only one kind of economic theory, not separate theories for micro problems, macro problems, non-market decisions, and so on. Indeed, as he notes, the most promising development in recent years in the literature on large scale economic problems such as unemployment has been the increasing reliance on utility maximization, a concept generally identified with microeconomics. Microeconomics is the subject matter of this volume, but it is emphatically not confined to microeconomics in the literal sense of micro units like firms or households. Becker's main interest is in market behavior of aggregations of firms and households. Although important inferences are drawn about individual firms and households, the author tries to understand aggregate responses to changes in basic economic parameters like tax rates, tariff schedules, technology, or antitrust provisions. His discussion is related to the market sector in industrialized economies, but the principles developed are applied to other sectors and different kinds of choices. Becker argues that economic analysis is essential to understand much of the behavior traditionally studied by sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists. The broad definition of economics in terms of scarce means and competing ends is taken seriously and should be a source of pride to economists since it provides insights into a wide variety of problems. Practically all statements proved mathematically are also provided geometrically or verbally in the body of the text.
Download or read book Economic Sophisms written by Frédéric Bastiat and published by . This book was released on 1873 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Filthy Lucre written by Joseph Heath and published by HarperCollins Canada. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economists have a bad reputation. Not only do they assume that everyone is self-interested and amoral, they are almost always cheerleaders for the free market. As a result, most people who do not already share their beliefs ignore everything that economists have to say. This is a problem. Even among the highly educated, economics is a minefield of fallacies and errors. Among those who know little about the subject—a group that includes the average taxpayer and consumer, as well as most journalists, political activists and politicians—almost every widely held belief is false. The level of economic illiteracy is stunning. Filthy Lucre aims to level the playing field and, in this time of enormous market volatility and unprecedented instability, raise our level of economic literacy. Drawing on everyday examples to skewer the six favourite economic fallacies of the right and then the left, we learn why the right wing so wrongly believes that capitalism is the natural order of things, that any tax cut is a good tax cut, and that personal responsibility can solve any problem. And, contrary to how the left feels, why we must resist the urge to fiddle with prices, why the pursuit of profit is not such a bad thing, and why, despite efforts to improve or even fix wages, some jobs will always suck.
Download or read book The Rhetoric of Economics written by Deirdre N. McCloskey and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1998-05-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic in its field, this pathbreaking book humanized the scientific rhetoric of economics to reveal its literary soul. Economics needs to admit that it, like other sciences, works with metaphors and stories. Its most mathematical and statistical moments are properly dominated by comparison and narration, that is to say, human persuasion. The book was McCloskey's opening move in the development of a "humanomics," and unification of the sciences and the humanities on the field of ordinary business life.
Download or read book The Fallacies of States Rights written by Sotirios A. Barber and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barber shows how arguments for states’ rights from John C. Calhoun to the present offend common sense, logic, and bedrock constitutional principles. The Constitution is a charter of positive benefits, not a contract among separate sovereigns whose function is to protect people from the central government, when there are greater dangers to confront.
