Economics Resources

The_Minister · 15-11-2006 2:06am #1

It seems fitting that any thread on resources for economic discussion start with a section on Adam Smith.

His Wikipedia Article
His best known book The Wealth of Nations
His other well-known work The theory of Moral Sentiments
His obituary

All taken from Wikipedia.
No registration is required to view any of these, they are the full works, not links to amazon.com.

Time Magazine · 15-11-2006 5:31pm

Here are a few good places to go for economics-related stuff. Feel free to add your own.

Data Sources
Penn World Table(s) 6.2 – Fantastic source of info for 24 variables (GDP, Population, Exchange Rate, etc.) on 188 countries over 54 years. Completely free.
Central Bank – Statistics from Dame St.
Central Statistics Office – (Choose a theme from the dropdown) – Probably the best site for Irish statistical information on just about everything.
ESRI Databank – Authorised users only – Same old.
EuroStat – European Union statisics agency; very comprehensive, even includes information of social cohesion etc.

Generally Useful Links
World Bank
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Department of Finance website
European Central Bank (ECB)
EH.net – Economic History
JSTOR – Academic journal source. Click here to browse the economics journals.
UN Development Programme – 2006 Report available here.
[url=http://www.ntma.ie/home.html[/url]National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA)[/url]

Newspapers, etc.
The Economist
Financial Times
RGE Monitor – Top economic issues of the day.
Business & Finance magazine
Student Economic Review – Ireland's only student economic journal.

Irish Universities
Trinity College, Dublin
University College, Dublin
National University of Ireland, Maynooth
National University of Ireland, Galway
University College Cork
University of Limerick
Dublin City University

Useful/Recommended Reading
Freakonomics – Dr. Steven Levitt – Extremely popular book on applications of economics
The Undercover Economist – Tim Harford – Similar vein to Freakonomics
The End of Poverty – Prof. Jeffrey Sachs – How to stop 2.8bn living on less than $2 a day.
Globalization and Its Discontents – Prof. Joseph Stiglitz – Read the problems that do exist with the prospering globalisation process.
Making Globalization Work – Prof. Joseph Stiglitz – The follow-up to Globalization and its Discontents.
The Pope's Children – David MacWilliams – Well-written, accessible socio-economic analysis of Celtic Tiger Ireland.
No Logo – Naomi Klein – For thinking outside the box.
The Great Unravelling – Dr. Paul Krugman – Superb collection of critiques of the Bush administration.
[Microeconomics] Intermediate Microeconomics – Dr. Hal Varian – Text for microeconomics
[Macroeconomics] Macroeconomics – Prof. Olivier Blanchard – Text for macroeconomics
[Econometrics] Introductory Econometrics – Dr. Jeffrey Wooldridge – Text for econometrics
[The Irish Economy] Economy of Ireland – Prof. J O'Hagan & Dr. Carol Newman (eds.) – Far and away the best introductory text to the Irish economy available

The_Minister · 15-11-2006 6:54pm

The following are links to various sites that provide useful information (found, in general, on wikipedia:

http://www.economyprofessor.com/ - A very useful website, that gives concise summaries of the various theories of economics, and their main theorists.

http://www.introecon.com/ - a free book, that is basically a free (under the creative commons) online textbook, to download in pdf format. I downloaded it myself. it has all the basics, and explains them quite well

http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Economics/ - Economics at the open directory project, a useful link page to many writings (professional and unprofessional) on economics.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Economics - a link to the wiki-books on economics (note: not acceptable content for college essays)

http://www.historicalstatistics.org/ - Ever wanted to know Sweden's GDP in 1800? This site is for you. The data is patchy (records are unclear the further back you go), but is very interesting.

http://www.qub.ac.uk/cdda/iredb/dbhme.htm - as above, only relating to Ireland.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-06 - History of Economics.

Rock Climber · 15-11-2006 8:46pm

Yes the popes children is a very well written humourous take on how we are at where we are.

http://www.ucd.ie/economic/rsai/staff/bwalsh/two_islands.html

I like stuff like Prof Brendan Walsh's readings too.

Troglodyte · 16-11-2006 1:52am

Rock Climber wrote:

Yes the popes children is a very well written humourous take on how we are at where we are.

Enjoyable enough, but I found it to be a little simplistic and wearisome. Discussing HiCos and Decklanders is all well and good, but after a couple of hundred pages it wore on a little. The topic (modern day Ireland) is fresh and interesting, but I just wish that he dealt with it in a more serious and detailed fashion.

Tricity Bendix · 18-11-2006 4:41pm

Accessible me arse! By the time I got to chapter three I was so terribly bored of HiCos, decklanders, white van democrats, and all the other sh1te names he invented (probably in the hopes they'd catch on ala 'Celtic Tiger') I was confused, bored and irritated that I had to put it down. His bits on inequality and hedonism in the first chapter are good, but I can't stomach the rest of the trash that consumes the rest of his book.

The most enjoyable take on modern Ireland I've read thus far is Garrett Fitzgerald's 'Reflections on the Irish State'.

'New Ideas From Dead Economists' should be read by all first year economics students.

europerson · 17-05-2007 2:17pm

http://www.whystudyeconomics.ac.uk/ is a good web-site, which does exactly what it says in the address.

Ekancone · 18-09-2007 10:45pm

Great thread.

I would include:

Reinventing the Bazaar by John McMillan - After you read 'The Undercover Economist' you can graduate to study this text.

nesf · 18-09-2007 11:16pm

daithifleming wrote:

Great thread.

I would include:

Reinventing the Bazaar by John McMillan - After you read 'The Undercover Economist' you can graduate to study this text.

+1

It's an excellent book.

Also: The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki is worth reading.

and:

Behavioral Game Theory Experiments in Strategic Interaction - CF Camerer has some interesting stuff in it about game theory, experiment design and the how people behave in them if people are interested.

Économiste Monétaire · 02-04-2008 8:10pm

The White Man's Burden by William Easterly is a good book looking at the problems of Third World aid and critisises Jeffrey Sachs' book.

The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier is somewhere in between Jeffrey Sachs' and Easterly's books.

Also, Jeffrey Sachs had a new book out last month, 'Common Wealth'. Haven't read it yet though.

Tim Harford, the author of the Undercover Economist, has a new book out called 'The Logic of Life'. Great read and quite amusing topics.

Ekancone · 02-04-2008 8:55pm

I have heard great things about The Soulful Science by Diane Coyle.

Économiste Monétaire · 02-08-2008 8:21pm

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Quite an amusing read, a book about a man's experience as a high profile economic consultant.

For those interested in the credit crunch there are two small books
The Credit Crunch by Graham Turner
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles Morris

Al_Fernz · 05-08-2008 5:02pm

http://www.rgemonitor.com/index.php

Roubini's site with all the latest Macro news and views. Excellent blog.

http://gearybehaviourcenter.blogspot.com/

The blog of the Centre for Behaviour and Health at the Geary Institute, UCD. Very regularly updated.

http://economistjobs.co.uk/

Weekly updates of all UK econ jobs. Unfortunately, there is no Irish equivalent AFAIK. Non-UK jobs do feature however.

http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/index.html

For Easterly fans (I see that there are a few!)

Économiste Monétaire · 06-08-2008 12:36pm

Prof. Karl Whelan's podcast on Ireland & the Global Economy.

More podcasts from the College of Human Sciences (UCD) here.

Flamed Diving · 09-08-2008 4:38pm

The Krugmeister has a good blog here

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

silverharp · 09-08-2008 6:52pm

http://www.globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

A great blog by Mike Shedlock , well ahead of the curve on documenting the housing crash in the US and credit crunch

Flamed Diving · 20-08-2008 7:00pm

Antithetic wrote: »

Making Globalization Work – Prof. Joseph Stiglitz – The follow-up to Globalization and its Discontents.

Just finished this, a great book. If you are stuck for research questions to tackle, this book is choc-a-block with them.

Économiste Monétaire · 20-08-2008 7:24pm

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Just finished this, a great book. If you are stuck for research questions to tackle, this book is choc-a-block with them.

Stig's next book is "Fair trade for all".

"Power and Plenty" by Findlay and O'Rourke (Trinity Lecturer) is quite good if a bit boring at times - they tend to drag out the political aspects too much for my liking (do I care who ruled, what is now Iraq, in the 9th century? No).

babytooth · 09-12-2008 11:41pm

i ahve a shed load of finance papers if anyone wants some of them....

they are a bit high end in understanding but are some of the most famous papers on the street....

add ur email to this thread and i will do a batch emailing....bear in mind it will be a big big email....

here a link with most of them....

http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer/finengineer/?C=M;O=A

europerson · 10-12-2008 8:06pm

There's a new blog here on 'The Irish Economy'. Contributions from some of Ireland's top economists.

Économiste Monétaire · 13-12-2008 4:33pm

I meant to post this awhile ago; some of the forum lurkers/non-econ-nerds might enjoy watching these. The European Central Bank created some videos on how it operates and the history of the institution. You can find them here:
http://www.ecb.int/ecb/educational/movies/intro/html/index.en.html

You can browse through the videos on the left part of the page.

Économiste Monétaire · 18-01-2009 1:33pm

Some comic relief. Watch this video, then look at where we are right now. Some of the advice, and opinions of those laughing at Schiff, seems incredibly deluded with hindsight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

Art Laffer... seriously...

(Caveat: I'm not holding Schiff up as being infallible; Dollar prediction...

)

Flamed Diving · 26-01-2009 11:57pm

Great website for postgraduate material.

http://www.econphd.net/notes.htm

silverharp · 28-01-2009 8:26am

http://stlouisfed.org/timeline/timeline.cfm

A timeline of events of the credit crises from the St. Louis Fed.

silverharp · 28-01-2009 8:51am

Économiste Monétaire wrote: »

(Caveat: I'm not holding Schiff up as being infallible; Dollar prediction... )

Mish laid into Schiff here
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/01/peter-schiff-was-wrong.html

nesf · 31-01-2009 12:38am

Some books on advanced Econometrics (PhD level for the most part):

Time Series Analysis - Hamilton

Econometric Analysis - Greene

Econometric Theory and Methods - Davidson & MacKinnon

If you're seriously considering Econometric modelling as a profession, these will give you a broad and deep knowledge of the discipline. For self-study, you'd want to be fairly comfortable with mathematics, specifically linear, vector and matrix algebra and some statistics. From what I've been told the first two books would probably do you but I like reading about Econometrics so I now own all three, plus a few other ones...

superhooper · 04-02-2009 1:04pm

Anyone know where I can get the latest adjusted exchequer budget/ projections for 2009??

Économiste Monétaire · 07-02-2009 7:25pm

Other common sites people might be interested in:

For those interested in the recently quoted external debt figure:
Joint External Debt Hub

Up to date information on U.S. Treasury auctions:
Treasury Direct

Bank for International Settlements. Their sponsored International Journal of Central Banking.

Econoday on the Bloomberg site.
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/ecalendar/index.html

Fed selected interest rates (updated daily):
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/update/

ECB inflation Dashboard

This has been posted on the site a few time, but it's not listed here.
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED).

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis:
http://www.bea.gov/

Bureau of Labor [sic] Statistics:
http://www.bls.gov/

UK Office for National Statistics

Fed Banks: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Francisco, St. Louis

People's Bank of China

ECB Statistical Data Warehouse

Banque de France, Deutsche Bundesbank, Banca D'Italia.

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Macro Blog

Dept. of the Environment Housing Statistics

The Fama/French Blog

William Easterly's new blog:
Aid Watch

Financial Times blogs

The DataNinja blog/site. "This website is dedicated to providing information on software and techniques for data analysis and research."

People sometimes ask, "what introductory economics book do you recommend?" The answer is:
Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics

"What is the difference between the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices and the Consumer Price Index?"
At the end of any CSO CPI release you will find this:

The following items, constituting approximately 9.5% of the Irish CPI expenditure weighting, are excluded from the HICP:

mortgage interest; motor car insurance (non-service); building materials; dwelling insurance (non-service); concrete blocks; motor car tax; union subscriptions; motor cycle tax.

The weightings used in CPI calculations as of December '08:

Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages: 11.742
Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco: 6.048
Clothing and Footwear: 5.416
Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels: 16.509
Furnishings, Household Equipment and Routine Household Maintenance: 4.422
Health: 3.154
Transport: 13.293
Communications: 3.418
Recreation and Culture: 10.104
Education: 2.043
Restaurants and Hotels: 15.425
Miscellaneous Goods and Services: 8.426

You will find this in any detailed CPI sub-index release. Also, check the RAMON Server for information on COICOP/HICP (Classification of Individual COnsumption by Purpose adapted to the needs of the HICP).

silverharp · 27-02-2009 8:42am

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200902/r344067_1569005.asx

Belfast · 25-03-2009 1:30am

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is the research and educational center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory, and the Austrian School of economics.
http://mises.org/about.aspx

Classics of Political Economy for Free
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/reference/subject/economics/index.htm

THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT WEBSITE
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/

John Maynard Keynes
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/reference/subject/economics/keynes/index.htm

John Kenneth Galbraith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith

Philippe Legrain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Legrain

financial talk radio and web pages
http://www.financialsense.com/

Belfast · 01-04-2009 1:51pm

Fred Harrison is Research Director of the London-based Land Research Trust. He is a graduate of University College, Oxford, where he read Politics, Philosophy & Economics. He also studied for the MSc at Birkbeck College, London (1973-74).

His first book, published in 1983, The Power in the Land, introduced his concept of the eighteen year business cycle based on land value fluctuations.
http://www.fredharrison.org/

Economics Resources

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