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Economics enthusiast? Read these books
TOP BOOKS TO READ IF YOU WANT TO STUDY ECONOMICS AT UNIVERSITY
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The sheer breadth of the subject can be daunting for a prospective student of economics.
Yet reading will provide you with fantastic insight ahead of your application.
With so much literature to choose from, which reading should a prospective student prioritise?
Immerse Education is here to help.
We spoke with our mentor team who are currently studying Economics at top universities to ask them which books they think a young economist should read before applying.
Economics: A Very Short
Introduction
by PARTHA DASGUPTA
Not every prospective Economics student will have a good grounding in the subject, therefore, it makes sense to start at the beginning with a book from the Oxford series of very short introductions.
Dasgupta provides an intelligent and accessible introduction to key economic factors and concepts such as individual choices, national policies, efficiency, equity, development, sustainability, dynamic equilibrium, property rights, markets, and public goods.
Economics can offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life, and offer solutions to them too. With examples from daily life, Dasgupta brings economics right to our doorsteps. This little book packs a punch and has much to recommend itself, even to the most informed student.
What Money Can’t Buy:
The Moral Limits
of Markets
by MICHAEL SANDEL
Market economies are no longer an option but rather a force all political communities must reckon with.
In his book ‘What Money Can’t Buy’, Sandel resists the “end of history” mentality and argues that we must see market economies as a tool under the control of democratic institutions, and that market logic must not be confused for justice or morality.
Sandel asks the reader questions such as: Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life - medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Sandel causes the reader to ask themselves if there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale.
Prospective economics candidates would benefit from this book since it makes a forceful case for thinking about politics, and its relationship to the economy, in moral terms. This is a useful approach to studying the rise of neoliberal ideology and questioning justice as determined by the market.
The Undercover Economist
by TIM HARFORD
What Economics is about who gets what and why.
Looking at familiar situations in unfamiliar ways, ‘The Undercover Economist’ is a fresh explanation of the fundamental principles of the modern economy, which should be exciting for a budding economist. “The economy isn’t a bunch of rather dull statistics with names like GDP (gross domestic product),” notes Tim Harford, “economics is about who gets what and why.”
This book gets to the heart of economics by moving beyond those statistics to answering questions about today’s world. From why the coffee in your cup costs so much, to why efficiency is not necessarily the answer to ensuring a fair society.
Tim Harford is an astute and entertaining columnist from the Financial Times who demystifies for the reader the ways in which money works in the world. It is not only an informative read but a fun one too!
23 Things They Don’t Tell
You About Capitalism
by HA-JOON CHANG
Prospective economics students prepare to be amazed.
In this book, Ha-Joon Chang destroys the biggest myths of our times and shows an alternative view of the world and makes rather shocking statements that will encourage a potential economist to develop his/her thoughts and think differently about what they think they know.
From “there’s no such thing as a ‘free’ market” to “we don’t live in a digital world - the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet”, Ha-Joon Chang asks us not to accept things as they are any longer. This style of critical thinking and challenging one’s own beliefs about the world around them is central to an economics degree at university level.
Free Lunch: Easily
Digestible Economics
by DAVID SMITH
The fantastic thing about David Smith’s ‘Free Lunch’ is that it brings newspapers to life and helps the reader address their concerns. He makes the many and varying claims made by politicians intelligible. This book will guide even the novice economist through the mysteries of the economy.
The economy has never been so relevant to so many people as it is now, and it’s vital that we understand how it affects our lives. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” is the one phrase everyone has heard from economics. But why not? What does economics tell us about the price of lunch - and everything else?
This is a clever and witty introduction to economics and can be considered an essential read in these times of economic uncertainty.
The End of Alchemy:
Money, Banking and the
Future of the
Global Economy
by MERVYN KING
The past twenty years saw unprecedented growth and stability followed by the worst financial crisis the industrialised world has ever witnessed. In the space of little more than a year what had been seen as the age of wisdom was viewed as the age of foolishness. Most accounts of the recent crisis focus on the symptoms and not the underlying causes of what went wrong.
‘The End of Alchemy’ explains why, ultimately, this was and remains a crisis not of banking - even if we need to reform the banking system - nor of policymaking - even if mistakes were made - but of ideas.
Written by the former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King, the reader explores the question: are money and banking a form of Alchemy or are they the Achilles heel of a modern capitalist economy?
Other People’s Money
by JOHN KAY
Kay is one of the country’s most readable, wise and prescient economic journalists, and his book is a sensible contribution to understanding what on earth has been going on these past 10 years.
The world depends on the finance sector: to store our money, manage our payments, finance housing stock, restore infrastructure, fund retirement and support new business. But these roles comprise only a tiny sliver of the sector’s activity: the vast majority of lending is within the finance sector. So what is it all for? What is the purpose of this activity? And why is it so profitable?
John Kay is a distinguished economist with wide experience of the financial sector. He explores that although we need finance, today we have far too much of a good thing. For a prospective economics student this look into the dark side of the financial sector is certainly worth a read.
Game Theory: A Very
Short Introduction
by KEN BINMORE
The opportunity to learn more about a key topic.
Another very short introduction recommendation. As with ‘Economics: A Very Short Introduction’, this book gives a prospective economists student the opportunity to learn more about a key topic.
Game theory is about how to play the games that surround us in a rational way. Even when the players have not thought everything out in advance, game theory often works for the same reason that mindless animals sometimes end up behaving very cleverly: evolutionary forces eliminate irrational play because it is unfit. This ‘Very Short Introduction’ introduces the reader to the fascinating world of game theory, showing how it can be understood without mathematical equations, and revealing that everything from how to play poker optimally to the sex ratio among bees can be understood by anyone willing to think seriously about the problem.
The Tiger that Isn’t:
Seeing through a World
of Numbers
by MICHAEL BLASTLAND AND ANDREW DILNOT
Even for the hardiest of mathematicians, mathematics can be both scary and depressing. It doesn’t help, therefore, that politicians, journalists and everyone in power use numbers confuse us. Ironically, most maths is really simple - as easy as 2+2 in fact. Better still it can be understood without any jargon, any formulas - and in fact not even many numbers. Most of it is common sense, and by using a few really simple principles one can quickly see when maths, statistics and numbers are being abused to play tricks - or create policies - which can waste millions of pounds.
‘The Tiger That Isn’t’ is a wonderfully simple book that will empower a prospective economics student to think differently about the world of numbers that exists around them.
The Rough Guide
to Economics
by ANDREW MELL AND OLIVER WALKER
The Rough Guide to Economics’ takes you through the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 and its resulting global problems and explores economics right from its foundations to the present day. It does exactly what is says on the tin and offers a prospective university applicant a “rough guide”. It is particularly useful for those students who have not yet studied economics at school and it will help them gain a clear understanding of how economics are central to the world.
This book explains everything you need to know about monetary policy, inflation, international trade and all the major topics within economics. It is a fantastic no-nonsense guide, with no knowledge of mathematics required.
