economist

This good book is mostly about the life of Kondratiev. He was arrested in university days because of this participation in the Social Revolutionary (SR) movement. But he was an opponent of Bolshevism and collective agriculture. He visited the US and UK in 1024-1925; met many distinguished economists including probably J.M. Keynes.

Kondratiev was arrested 1930 and interrogated by Agranov who was one of the most feared Sadists in the Lubyanka. Stalin took a keen personal interest in Kondratiev's trial. As a distinguished economist with an international reputation Kondratiev was considered a threat to the regime. Kondratiev was forced to confess to imaginary crimes and convicted as a "kulak-professor" and banished to Suzdal in 1932. In 1938 he was issued a new sentence - ten years without the right to correspond with the outside world; this phrase was code for a death sentence and Kondratiev was executed on the same day is was issued. (1998 page 197)

This has all been hushed up in the West because of the pro Soviet sympathy or our academic and press establishment. Now with the collapse of communism the truth is coming out but you have to search for it.

The world lost a very special person on February 8th, 1998. I remember hearing of his death the day after it happened and it was the first time I felt truly sad at the passing of someone I had never met. Julian Simon was an economist who studied a broad range of issues but he will most certainly be remembered for his breakthrough work in population economics, showing that population growth correlates with increases in human well being, not decreases. Simon turned doomsayers like Thomas Malthus on their heads and was dubbed the "doomslayer" in a Wired Magazine interview about a year before his death.

Although Simon died well before publication, his wife, Rita, was able to put together this book, working from about 900 (!) pages of manuscript that Julian wrote before his death. Unfortunately, the book seems to suffer a bit from poor editing and typographical mistakes, but that's a minor nit. I'm not a fan of biographies in general, so much of the childhood years bored me, but the chapters on his career and research are fascinating and, alas, way too short. I couldn't help but get the feeling that there were mounds of interesting anecdotes on his career and research that were left out for space reasons. It's too bad; most people who would read it would be most interested in that part. Fortunately, unlike some other autobiographies written by economists, Simon does discuss how he evolved in his thinking over the years

The book covers all the areas that Simon is well known for, including population studies, immigration, treatment of depression, advertising and the mail order business and, of course, Simon's brilliant idea for solving the problem of overbooked planes. This last item was a stroke of genius and Simon deserves a place of honor for that alone. The solution came to him in the mid-sixties, but it wasn't until 1978, when an economist was appointed head of the Civil Aeronautics Board that it was put into use. Simon was baffled as to why it took so long, but an obvious explanation never occurs to him: the airline industry was a heavily regulated, government-enforced cartel, so there was less of an incentive to innovate.

I did not purchase this book, I borrowed it in my university library. I recommend that all students intrested in becoming a Economics Graduate to read this book first. From my discussions with graduate students in my school, the experiences cited in this book is very accurate (to a large degree). The book was published in 1990 so it is a bit dated, however, the issues discussed seems to still be relevent today. This is a MUST for all undergraduates of Economics who wish to understand the workload and mentality of the graduate/phd level.

Sarah Babb presents a very interesting study of the economic profession in Mexico and the economists who have held the top government positions. It is a must read -of course- for every student in economics, political science and related fields in Mexico. Needless to say, the few who are pursuing graduate studies in economics must look at it carefully.
The book is very well researched and it's well written. The sociological stuff will be tough to read for non-specialists, nevertheless it is worth it. I suspect that the majority of non-sociologists (i.e. economists) reading the book will disagree with Babb's reasons for the growing importance of economists in the mexican government. Read it and get your own conclusions.
Even the plain historical facts are appealing. How UNAM and ITAM competed for the profession in 1950s-1970s and finally ITAM stayed alone at the top. How that school was (and is) a bastion of free-market economics in Mexico and mentor of generations of leaders in their field. And most importantly, why is that not going to change in a while.
Finally, any who aspires to understand recent mexican history and its institutions, will learn a lot from the context of the creation of several of them in the twentieth century.

This UCLA professor's compilation of his radio essays is a welcome relief from higher education's usually pro-socialist dogma.

His applications of reason and economic logic to real-world issues will probably irritate most 'modern' anti-capitalists, amuse and entertain strong minded capitalists, and invoke some serious consideration and premise checking in those who straddle the fence.

For those who have read some but not all of von Mises' work, do not to miss his widow, Margit's touching biography, 'My life with Ludwig von Mises'. A touching testimonial by a loving wife for her late husband, Margit's recollections illuminate the amazing life of this titan of 20th century 'traditional liberal' economics. From his professional beginnings as a finance minister in pre-Nazi Austria, to his later years in American academia, this volume gives timbre to the voice we find in his books. Among many anecdotes Margit provides, the most memorable for me was the insight that Ludwig never actually considered himself an 'economist' - he was a praxiologist, meaning he studied the practical satisfaction of expressed needs.

No exploration of the ideas of von Mises can be complete without reading this 'last word' by his wife.

I have read cover-to-cover a previous edition of this book (when it was published by Wiley in 1998) and recently had an opportunity to carefully peruse this current edition (5th ed. by Bloomberg Press???). What I found is that this is a strange case of how a great book (the 1998 edition) turned into merely a good book (this 5th edition). Because of this regression toward the average, I deducted one star from my review (but still feel that it is good enough for 4 stars).

As you may have noticed, I really loved the older edition of The Economist Numbers Guide that I thankfully own. It is a great overview and introduction of mathematics as it relates to business. There are a lot of great things about that edition of this book. One of the things I admired about it was the range of topics covered, from interest rates and basic probability/statistics all the way up to Markov Chains, linear programming, and marginal analysis. It is hard to find the breadth of topics covered in that book elsewhere - whether all in one book or in any combination of books.

So I found it perplexing that this 5th edition dedacted some materials and topics covered in older editions. Gone are the interesting discussion of descriptive statistics for sets of data that do not easily conform to any of the standard probability distributions (e.g., where median is the best measure of the 'average' and substitutes must be used for the more common parameters such as standard deviation). I have a hard time finding anything coherent much less accessible on those topics elsewhere so it is a shame that they were left off of the 5th edition.

The only new material (not previously present) is a short blurb on public-key cryptography. While that topic is interesting to me and the limited discussion was illuminating and mathematically sound, it seemed a rather quixotic choice to put in when some interesting materials in previous editions were left off and new material that would have been more useful to the targeted audience have yet to be added.

What I mean by useful material that have yet to be added is that both the 1998 edition and this edition don't have some materials that I would think naturally ought to be added. E.g., the section on finance & investment mathematics is mostly devoted to various discussions on interest rate/time value of money & basic probability. I think adding material on CAPM (although CAPM Beta is defined in the book's very helpful glossary section), option/derivative pricing, financial portfolio optimization, and other topics in financial mathematics/engineering would make a great and natural addition to this book.

Some problems common to both the prior and current edition of this book are the occassional (relatively rare) typos. They are usually minor (although they are most annoyingly frequent in the section on time value of money / interest rates).

Another flaw in both the older and newer editions is that there are gaps in the expository material that don't make much sense. To be fair, this book is designed to be a brief intro/overview into a wide swathe of topics so it wouldn't be reasonable to expect that the author go into great detail on every topic. However, there are instances - e.g., the example on mixed strategies in game theory - where one or two additional sentences would help novices to understand (e.g., how did you get the the mixed strategy probabilities? author should have added a couple of more lines about how the system of equations are interrelated with one another when determining mixed strategies).

Having said all of that, let me reiterate that BOTH the old and the new edition of The Economist Numbers Guide is a wonderful resource for people interested in business mathematics. The sections on decision-making and forecasting are especially of value since they are so wonderfully explained here and a comparable set of explanations are hard to find elsewhere.

In future editions, I just hope that the author heeds my advice about bringing back some topics in older editions, correcting a few errors & lapses, and adding some material that would fit in with what has otherwise been an excellent series of books.

Most celebrities have to wait until the end of their careers to publish their autobiographies. In this book edited by Michael Szenberg, twenty economists in mid-career bring together personal accounts of their work and lives. The result is a rich set of biographies, addressing issues such as the effects of politics on work and vice versa, family life, creativity in and inspired by the workplace, the study of law and economics, and the conducting of research, and the role of women in this male-dominated field. I think Passion and Craft presents a delightful glance into the minds and lives of some of the most interesting economists of our time. I believe it will be exciting reading for economists as well as all other social scientists, and students considering a career in economics.

This is a good book if you are someone like myself who listens to economic news and often doesn't fully understand the terms being used. The author uses very plain language to explain complex economic ideas, and his definitions always refer you to other terms or ideas relating to the subject. This is not something you would want to sit down and read, it is a dictionary of terms.

I happen to come across this book by pure chance. All I could say that it was a sobering and depressing experience. When one wishes to pursue a Ph.D. in any field, it is usually with the notion to "seek the truth" or to use "intellectualism" for the betterment of society. As this book points out, "Not so." It appears that modern Economists are more interested in expanding their kingdoms via the publication process and through their graduate students than seriously studying problems of the real world. Such strategies require setting up artifical barriers to entry and even to the extreme of intellectual property theft. This book presents the case that publishing in the top 5 journals is more about having cited the editors and referees of the journal(s) than the merit of the paper itself. When mathematicians decide to enter the market to challenge the legitmacy of the Economist's use of mathematics, they are quickly quelled via the publication process. So much for nobility in academia. It is a very good book. Two of the best excerpts is one by Professor Graciela Chichilnisky (pg. 56) and "An Editor's Apology" by Professor Robert W. Clower (pg. 100). It is a must read for every Economics undergrauduate, graduate or any aspiring Economist. However, they should not stop here. To get further insight into the field of Economics, it would be in their interest to read the books below. They go to great lengths to deconstruct the herofication and mythification of Economics. Thus, one can conclude that the field of Economics is interested in learning more and more about less and less. I did not give the book, 5 stars, because George B. Shepherd laid the accolades a bit too thick which were totally unnecessary, they just add to the herofication and mythification of Economics. Here are some other books that are must read:

"The Ph.D. Factory: Training and Employment of Science and Engineering Doctorates in the United States."
by Charles A. Goldman and William F. Massy

"Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences"
by Steve Keen

"More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics"
by Philip Mirowski