Greg Mankiw Recommends Reading These Economics Books

If you’d like to read more about economics issues try these 18 books recommended by Greg Mankiw, author of Principles of Economics.

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics

Basic economic principles, with humor.

Spin-Free Economics

A straightforward guide to major economic policy debates.

Lives of the Laureates

Twenty-three winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics offer autobiographical essays about their life and work.

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics

An economist asks why elected leaders often fail to follow the policies that economists recommend.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

A former research director at the World Bank offers his insights into how to help the world’s poor.

Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life

This introduction to game theory discusses how all people—from corporate executives to criminals under arrest—should and do make strategic decisions.

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics

A former World Bank economist examines that many attempts to help the world’s poorest nations and why these attempts have so often failed.

Capitalism and Freedom

In this classic book, one of the most important economists of the 20th century argues that society should rely less on the government and more on the free market.

The Worldly Philosophers

A classic introduction to the lives, times, and ideas of the great economic thinkers, including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Maynard Keynes.

Peddling Prosperity

A survey of the evolution of economic ideas and policy, with an emphasis on macroeconomics and international trade.

The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life

Why does popcorn cost so much at the movie theaters? Steven Landsburg discusses this and other puzzles of economic life.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economics Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Economic principles and clever data analysis applied to a wide range of offbeat topics, including drug dealing, online dating, and sumo wrestling.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

How a few savvy investors managed to make money during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

This introduction to stocks, bonds, and financial economics is not a “get rich quick” book, but it might help you get rich slowly.

Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets

A deep and nuanced, yet still very readable, analysis of how society can make the best use of market mechanisms.

Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics

A humorist asks why some nations prosper while others don’t. He answers with a world tour that takes the reader from Albania to the New York Stock Exchange.

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness