Enhance Your Economics Knowledge With These Starter Books in 2019

Economics can be a difficult topic to get started with, and it can be a real turn off for many. Whether you’re a student about to enrol on an economics course, a business owner, or head of finances in your family, these books will be invaluable to read.

And read you will, because we’ve picked the easily digestible books written by authors who understand the difficulty of economics. Check them out below!

#1 Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

An indispensable book on economics for beginners is Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Basic Economics is a must-read because it presents complex economic concepts in a way that is easy to understand. Written for the layman, real-life examples are presented throughout. No prior knowledge of economics is needed to understand and enjoy this book.

Thomas Sowell earned his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and has served as an economics professor for Cornell University and UCLA. He has also worked for two think tanks, the Urban Institute and the Hoover Institution.

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#2 Hidden Order by David Friedman

This book is recommended to all amateur economists, or students just starting out in this immersive field. This is a must-have guide for anyone who needs to understand the rational living, and the best strategies to make the right decisions at each turn.

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#3 Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt

This book is an eye-opener for individuals that seek to understand and explore the tenets of microeconomics simply and without much jargon.

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#4 Middle Schoolers, Meet Media Literacy by Jim Wasserman

Part of a three-part series of books for teachers to both learn and instruct elementary, middle, and high school students about basic economics, behavioral economics, and media literacy (how media nudges what we think of as our independent economic decision-making).

The authors are experienced at breaking down complex economic theory into digestible portions so that anyone can understand them and come away with a solid foundation of economic principles. Each theoretical concept is reinforced by an exercise that demonstrates how that concept works in the real world, so you will not only learn economics, but you’ll come away with tools to help you navigate the pitfalls and traps that marketers use to get you to make decisions against your self-interest.

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#5 Small is Beautiful by Fritz Schumacher

Fritz Schumacher was an influential economist in the UK, becoming well known in the 1960s after becoming an advisor to British National Coal Board. In this book his ideas for decentralizing capital projects and using what he called intermediate technologies captured the imagination of readers and introduced another new way of thinking about economics.

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#6 Naked economics by Charles Wheelan

As revealing as the tile, this book offers a fantastic introduction to economics and helps beginners navigate the complex nature of this profession with ease.

Charles Wheelan strikes a good balance in seeking the truth about how modern economies work, and more importantly, what makes them work better

I was pleasantly surprised as I didn’t expect a book on the broad spectrum of economics to be such an entertaining read. Charles Wheelan has a gift for taking a topic with the potential to operate as a sedative and turn it into an educational thriller.

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#7 Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

Economics is often served up as a stuffy subject, full of abstractions, complicated graphs and poker-faced men in suits at conferences. In Economics in one lesson, former New York Times editorialist and economist Henry Hazlitt brings the subject to life.

By illustrating economic problems through stories instead of half-page sentences, he manages to convey complex, counter-intuitive ideas simply. The book is no thousand-page tome, and it doesn’t have to be. The core ideas of incentive systems, second and third-order consequences and the price mechanism are laid out in easy to understand form in just a few pages. Probably the easiest introduction to economics I’ve read.

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#8 The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

Despite its age, this book is a must-read for any novices to the world of economics and how the world really works.

The author does a fantastic job explaining vital economic concept, gratefully, without the confusing charts, graphs and formulas that usually adorn an economics course. Offerins some fascinating anecdotes about how economics plays out in everyday life.

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#9 Narconomics by Tom Wainwright

Narconomics blends economic theory with drug cartels which are fun. It’s not a traditional Economic book, but that’s its appeal. An educational but very informal book = a great way to dip your toe into Economics.

A great insight into the criminal world with very clear comparisons to legitimate businesses.

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#10 Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

What sets Thomas Sowell apart from many economists and other authors is his ability to present complex ideas with both clarity and simplicity. Very important, as this can be a dry subject to learn.

It can show you just how wrong we can be about how the economy functions and what Capitalism truly is.

I really liked that the book covered a variety of bad policies that usually suggested by politicians to address issues and end up making the original problems more severe.

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#11 Incremental Improvements by Mike Brodsky

This book is written by financial advisor, Mike Brodsky, who shares ideas and strategies for making improvements in many aspects of one’s life. While the book covers various topics, many of the principles are based on Behavioral Economics.

Also, the chapter on personal finance provides a very thorough overview of this subject, with lots of information and professional wisdom that can help the reader to gain a better understanding of this discipline. The book includes lots of helpful ideas regarding personal finance, behavioral economics, as well as personal development, in an easy to read format.

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#12 The Economics Book by Niall Kishtainy

The Economics Book clearly and simply explains more than a hundred groundbreaking ideas in economics, from the earliest occurrences of trade to global economic crises. Using easy-to-follow artworks, graphics, short quotations, and fully accessible text, The Economics Book makes abstract concepts of trade and money concrete.

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#13 Talking to My Daughter About the Economy by Yanis Varoufakis

I love this book because it explains the very basics of the economy in a simple, straightforward manner. The book explains the power dynamics between the Western countries and the rest of the world, and the roles of state and church in the economy. It is a profound insight into the matters of capitalism and the capitalist economy.

Talking to My Daughter About the Economy provides an understanding of the backdrop, necessary before learning more about specific facets of the economy and economics. I highly recommend it, both to teenagers and adults.

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#14 Average Is Over by Tyler Cowen

George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen is a full professor of economics. But Cowen’s writing style makes this book fairly easy to digest since it’s not filled with typical economics ‘jargon.’ Basically, the book is a critique of where our economy might be headed.

Cowen paints a rather bleak picture for many young folks just entering the labor force by stating that modern economies are splitting into two camps: very stagnant sectors vs. very dynamic sectors, with the difference between them based on imbalances in technological growth. And he believes that this will divide workers into two categories as well: those whose abilities complement the skill requirements of the computer world vs. those who are (essentially) competing against the computer. More and more members of the labor force are falling on one side of the divide or the other, and that is why being average is over.

The tech-savvy group that’s adept at getting the most out of technology will generally do well economically over the course of their working careers, but the others will struggle just to get by. Cowen then discusses the societal implications of these trends — which business leaders need to understand so that they can get ahead of the curve.

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#15 Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

The lessons presented in Economics in One Lesson are clear and concise. The book does a great job outlining the economic consequences of policy change in not only the short term but long term view as well. The book is very accessible to all audiences and can be described as easy to understand. This is a highly recommended read for anyone with an interest in learning more about the world of economics.

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