My history of economic thought reading list | Hacker News Reader

My history of economic thought reading list

marginalrevolution.com

21 pointsipnon21 comments

On books about economics history, this is the best i have read.

A History of Money: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Glyn Davies 3rd edition 2002

https://archive.org/stream/A_History_of_Money-From_Ancient_T...

This is not at all a serious syllabus on this topic. I cannot understand the inclusion of ChatGPT.

If you want a nice, single-volume history try Roger backhouse’s “the ordinary business of life”, soon to come in a second edition.

There is a much older book by schumpeter but it’s extremely dated as well as overly long.

But you can understand the inclusion of Phind and PerplexityAI(whatever that is)?

Perplexity is actually pretty good. The main one was probably first to access internet in the responses. Even better, the labs site gives access to models with uncensored versions of models with zero guardrails. Has some pretty good quality models to select from, too, including Mixtral 8x7B. You ever wonder how to make crack? Just ask Perplexity Labs.

Not at all!

Or just read Samuelson's or Mankiw's Intro Econ textbook. There's a reason those 2 are used everywhere from AP Econ all the way to intro Econ classes at MIT and Harvard.

Sure those are great textbooks. If you want the history of economic thought though you might be more interested in the people and times which led to the ideas in the book. You won’t get enough of that in mankiw.

As to why the mankiw book is used at Harvard… maybe we should have a talk about monopolies… ;)

That’s just a joke it’s a good textbook but its status as the standard at Harvard is only partially related to its quality.

So three books and then ChatGPT.

Not that you can't learn anything in the world though ChapGPT, but if you don't know what questions to ask then it won't get you as far.

> So three books and then ChatGPT.

I’m guessing if you only read three books and ChatGPT, you won’t do well in this class.

My understanding is that the three books are a starting point, and the student takes it from there based on their interests.

The Collected Essays of Keynes make surprisingly interesting reading even for a common reader.

> GPT-4, paid version, mandatory, $20 a month.

Profs should be required to justify each reading list item, with an expected learning outcome, and the student should be free to seek that outcome however he sees fit. This would also create real world skills in ingenuity, etc.

I suspect he meant it as a pairing to his GOAT book, which he proudly claims is the first book simultaneously released through GPT-4. He encourages readers to engage with the book through ChatGPT 4 where you can give it prompts such as "list three amusing anecdotes about Keynes that I can share at a cocktail party"

Find “Graeber” On this page: (no matches)

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LOL ok

I mean, Graeber and Marx aren't really taught in Econ degrees either. Nor is Adam Smith for that matter.

They're all basically dealing with the philosophy of economics, but economics has transitioned away from being a qualitative field to a quantitative one.

Now Econ majors are expected to read Baby Rudin by their first year in top undergrad programs.

Source: attempted to become an Econ major in first year. Realized I don't have it in me to do analysis, so became a CS and PoliSci double instead, still got the Econ minor though.

Also take a look at EJMR (Econ and Finance's version of HN) - https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/why-baby-rudin-is

Has EJMR changed and started moderating?

I stopped going to EJMR because it was far too much trolling, shit posting, racism, and other bad takes.

Nope. Still a shithole, but at least the trolls there are upfront unlike on HN where they try to hide behind psudeo-rationalism.

Also, it's the only safe space for academics to vent. Plenty of professors who were sexual predators were initially outed on EJMR, so that has value.

In addition, the debates about economics or econometrics related topics is much less brain dead than here.

needing to move economics’ goalposts to the extent Marx is now considered irrelevant to the field of economics only goes to show how influential he’s been. The current practitioners disagree with him? Sure, fine, but to say he’s irrelevant is absurd. He’s easily one of the most influential thinkers in the space.

He's as irrelevant as Adam Smith is in 2023. The world is much more complex in the 21st century than it was during that time.

Also, Marx and Adam Smith are as relevant to Econ in 2023 as Ada Lovelace is in CS in 2023.

He links to his book "GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time, and Why Does it Matter?" which is freely available online, it contains several mentions of Marx. An example:

"My first standard is how an economist analyzes a more or less new problem shown to him, and thus how well that economist can think. That sounds simple, but as we’ll see it rules out many folks right off the bat, most notably Karl Marx."

Sounds like it might not be the most appropriate course for Marx fans.

Spoiler alert: he doesn't come out and say that Milton Friedman is the GOAT, but he pretty much says that Milton Friedman is the GOAT.

Why in the world would either of those ever be assigned in an economics class?

Especially on the history of economic thought! Marx has had about 0 influence on modern economics.

Sure he’s an influential figure in world history and should be taught there but in a class on the history of economics??? No way.

Graeber is an even less plausible choice.

“Why in the world” indeed

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