Often, students ask me for additional economics material to read. So here is a list of books and scholarship, in no particular order, that I found enlightening. This list is a work in progress and I have categorized these works into undergraduate and graduate.

Undergraduate

  • Landsburg, Steven E. The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life. Revised and updated ed., Free Press, 2012.
  • Wheelan, Charles. The Naked Economist: Undressing the Dismal Science. Fully revised and updated ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
  • Olson, Mancur. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. Yale University Press, 1982
  • Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. 40th anniversary ed., University of Chicago Press, 2002.
  • Sowell, Thomas. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. 5th ed., Basic Books, 2014.
  • Calomiris, Charles W., and Stephen H. Haber. Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit. Princeton University Press, 2014.
  • Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. Penguin Press, 2008.
  • Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge University Press, 2002.(Originally published 1759)
  • Harford, Tim. The Undercover Economist. Oxford University Press, 2006.
  • White, Lawrence H. The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Koning, J. P. Resistance Money. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018.

Graduate

  • Sumner, Scott. The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy. Princeton University Press, 2021.
  • Snowdon, Brian, and Howard R. Vane. Modern Macroeconomics: Its Origins, Development and Current State. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005.
  • Hayek, Friedrich A. The Constitution of Liberty. University of Chicago Press, 1960.
  • Angrist, Joshua D., and Jörn-Steffen Pischke. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion. Princeton University Press, 2009.
  • Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown Business, 2012.