Ново в Икономическата библиотека (15-19 август 2011)

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Triumph of the City

Edward Glaeser

The Penguin Press, 2011

„Edward Glaeser is one of the world’s most brilliant economists, and Triumph of the City is a masterpiece. Seamlessly combining economics and history, he explains why cities are ‘our species’ greatest invention.’ This beautifully written book makes clear how cities have not only survived but thrived, even as modern technology has seemingly made one’s physical location less important.“ –  Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics; professor of economics at the University of Chicago 

http://library.ime.bg/triumph-of-the-city/

 

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

Philip E. Tetlock

Princeton University Press, 2005

“This book is a landmark in both content and style of argument. It is a major advance in our understanding of expert judgment in the vitally important and almost impossible task of political and strategic forecasting. Tetlock also offers a unique example of even-handed social science. This may be the first book I have seen in which the arguments and objections of opponents are presented with as much care as the author’s own position.Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economic sciences 

http://library.ime.bg/expert-political-judgment/

 

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World

David Deutsch

Allen Lane, 2011

Uncompromisingly rational and optimistic, Deutsch comes to startling new conclusions about the nature of human choice, scientific explanation and the evolution of culture. Deriving his stance not from hopeful axioms but from the facts about how the physical world works, his central conclusion is that ‘explanations’ have a fundamental place in the universe. They are unlimited in their scope and power to cause change. Their sole creators — thinking beings such as humans –  are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things.

http://library.ime.bg/the-beginning-of-infinity/

 

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

Edward Dolnick

HarperCollins Publishers, 2011

 

As presented in this pivotal history, the prime movers of the 17th century scientific revolution were men of their time, yet against it. Newton, Leibniz, Galileo, and Kepler all lived in a Europe wracked by war, plagues, savage religious conflict, and economic upheaval; yet each constructed cosmological theories in which the universe ran with clockwork perfection. As Edward Dolnick (The Forger’s Spell; The Rescue Artist) notes, these seminal deist thinkers believed that God had created flawless mechanisms that they were laboring hard to understand. Dolnick’s The Clockwork Universe places these eccentric, tormented geniuses within the contexts of their radically tumultuous age.

http://library.ime.bg/the-clockwork-universe/

 

Two Sides to the Coin: A History of Gold

Adam Wasserman

Lightning Source UK Ltd., 2011

 

This book is definitely a must read for those who are students of civilization and history. It shows us that all that glitters is not gold. It talks about the power of gold to build civilizations and yet at the same time destroy them. This book lays out how gold has created unimaginable wealth and at the same time has sown the seeds of destruction by encouraging short term thinking and destroying the morals that support any civilization. This book points out that what we are currently seeing with the destruction of many irreplaceable parts of the environment to the detriment of all of our futures, is history repeating itself, as this has happened time again since the times of the earliest civilizations in Egypt. This book is a definite must read for any one that wants to understand how civilizations are created and destroyed.

http://library.ime.bg/two-sides-to-the-coin/

 

Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG’s Corporate Suicide

Roddy Boyd

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2011

There are dozens of books on the financial crisis: I have read many of them and the Kindle samples for just about all of them. There are only two I would recommend: those are Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera’s excellent All the Devils are Here and the much more specifically detailed Fatal Risk from Roddy Boyd. Roddy’s book is solely concerned with the failure of AIG.

But for me (and because I was familiar with the broad details of the crisis anyway) the best book of the crisis is Roddy Boyd’s Fatal Risk. It is not a good first financial book to read and I had to think quite hard as to the details that Roddy glossed over – but that was because Roddy had to make a choice – was he writing for someone who vaguely knew what a credit default swap was or was he writing for someone who had actually read a “credit support annexe (a CSA)”. – John Hempton, Fatal Risk: The Must-Read Story Of AIG’s Downfall, Bronte Capital, April 2011

http://library.ime.bg/fatal-risk/

 

Guaranteed to Fail:

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance

Viral V. Acharya, Matthew Richardson, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, and Lawrence J. White

Princeton University Press, 2011

Guaranteed to Fail explains how poorly designed government guarantees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led to the debacle of mortgage finance in the United States, weighs different reform proposals, and provides sensible, practical recommendations. Despite repeated calls for tougher action, Washington has expanded the scope of its guarantees to Fannie and Freddie, fueling more and more housing and mortgages all across the economy–and putting all of us at risk. This book unravels the dizzyingly immense, highly interconnected businesses of Fannie and Freddie. It proposes a unique model of reform that emphasizes public-private partnership, one that can serve as a blueprint for better organizing and managing government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In doing so, Guaranteed to Fail strikes a cautionary note about excessive government intervention in markets.

http://library.ime.bg/guaranteed-to-fail/

 

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

John Maynard Keynes

BN Publishing, 2008

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was written by the English economist John Maynard Keynes. The book, generally considered to be his magnum opus, is largely credited with creating the terminology and shape of modern macroeconomics. Published in February 1936 it sought to bring about a revolution, commonly referred to as the „Keynesian Revolution“, in the way economists thought – especially in relation to the proposition that a market economy tends naturally to restore itself to full employment after temporary shocks. Regarded widely as the cornerstone of Keynesian thought, the book challenged the established classical economics and introduced important concepts such as the consumption function, the multiplier, the marginal efficiency of capital, the principle of effective demand and liquidity preference.

http://library.ime.bg/the-general-theory-of-employment-interest-and-money-1/


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