Macroeconomics

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1. gizmoJun 2023
   Read the micro 101 and macro 101 textbooks used by good universities. Principles of Economics by Taylor is one of the common textbooks. Macroeconomics by Mankiw is another one. Intro courses on any subject tend to be very accessible to laypeople.

   Sowell is unserious because he misrepresents the other side. He basically argues that when you leave everything for the market to figure out it will automatically turn out alright, and if it doesn’t then clearly it means you need to deregulate more. You can look up what the arguments against complete free market solutions in healthcare, housing, education, and manufacturing are and you’ll see that the “obvious common sense market based” solutions don’t produce good outcomes for society.

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2. RivieraKidMar 2023
   Slightly off-topic question: which information sources do you recommend for someone who wants to have a good conceptual understanding of economics, finance and investing? Here's what I liked so far:

   People (their blogs or Twitter): Paul Krugman, Cullen Roche, Lyn Alden, Joseph Wang, Aswath Damodaran, Matthew C. Klein.

   Books: Macroeconomics by Mankiw, Pragmatic Capitalism, Central Banking 101.

   Podcast, news websites: I don't follow any.

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3. TradingPlacesMay 2022
   Greg Mankew’s textbook is the best for intro imo. Not cheap.

   https://www.amazon.com/Macroeconomics-N-Gregory-Mankiw-ebook...

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4. nabla9Mar 2020
   For learning I strongly recommend against almost all books mentioned in this thread. They don't really teach how financial systems work in the society or the underlying principles. They give you just a viewpoint. Some of them are good read after you know the basics.

   You need to pick up real college textbook (or online course) and read the parts that interest you and skim other parts. Example: Introduction to Finance: Markets, Investments, and Financial Management by Melicher and Norton

   You can also pick up introductory undergraduate college textbook in economics and read the parts that interest you. Greg Mankiw's books are good but the price is off the charts, so maybe don't buy them. (Macroeconomics & Financial Systems could be cheap if bought used)

   After that some light reading for general audience with interesting viewpoints and lessons:

   - A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Malkiel

   - Common Sense on Mutual Funds by John Bogle

   - The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros (Sorosls theory of reflexivity in finance, nontechnical take on nonlinear dynamics in the markets)

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5. nabla9Mar 2020
   I think Mankiw covers pretty well how banking system works in real life. Open market operations etc.

   I'm referring to the book: 'N. Gregory Mankiw, Laurence Ball - Macroeconomics and the Financial System-Worth Publishers (2010)

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6. dorfussSep 2016
   I'm not sure what you mean by "practical way", but for starters I'd recommend Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw's "Principles of Microeconomics" which is a standard university textbook translated to many languages (I am not associated with the book in any way). It's very accessable, colourful, well explained. He's also authored "Macroeconomics" if you're interested.

   Back to learning the "practical way" - I would recommend reading the Mankiw book fast and then just start looking around your world and asking questions as if you were an economist.

   I'll tell you how I did it.

   My practical training in economics happened when I worked in a bottling plant at a conveyor belt. Dull phisical work, but leaves you with plenty of time to think. We were able to fill about 10000 bottles a day. Whenever a bottle broke on the belt or someone was late for work we had to stop the machinery. Every minute when we did not work calculated to specific loss expressed in concrete money. We were paid by hours, if we had to stay longer at work the company made less money (because they had to pay us more).

   The bottles were bought in Italy and travelled about 2000 kilometers to our plant. The product was made in North America and was imported by bulk to the plant in huge 1-ton plastic containers. While the final product costs about 5-7 euros in Germany or Austria, the cost of the liquid itself was just a tiny fraction of the final price. Even the bottles (including transport) were more expensive than the product itself.

   Now start asking questions:

   - Why it pays off to have a world wide operation from a country with very high labour cost, import the materials coming from thousands of kilometers away and then sell it with profit to countries such as South Africa and Argentina? If you were to invest in a new machine that would make my job at a conveyor belt redundant, how much it would have to cost to make the investment profitable? Would it enable the company to lower the final cost (more efficiency, less interruptions, more reliable than a human)? Would the quality increase? Would your investment enable you to invest even more in expanding to new markets? And if you kept me at the company, what other useful work could I perform?

   If you were to build your own bottling plant like this one, how much would you have to invest? Who would buy your product? What would be your price? What would be the additional cost for you if you wanted to increase the production by 10% (i.e. what are your margin costs). What can you do with your staff and machines when you are using only a fraction of your production potential, i.e. what else could you produce and sell with profit based on your fixed costs?

   Who buys a luxury product like that, how is it affected buy the seasons (holidays? vacations?)? In time of economic crisis would people still buy your luxury product or would they wait for better times? How to optimise you supply chain? Should you invest in storehouses so that your product is not waiting at the plant but rather closer to the clients (supermarket chains)?

   Questions like this, when you have to make choices and predict the output are the essence of "applied" microeconomics. These questions go on and on and I believe that answering them is what you mean by "learning economics the practical way". Look around you and keep wondering.

   ===

   p.s. in search for good questions to ask and training your economic thinking have a look at the famous S. Levitt's "Freakonomics".

   ===

   p.s.2: I am not sure how to learn economics as an academical discipline the practical way. You would have to learn the modern models and assumptions from books and test them against the specific detailed data (tax office data would be nice or a supermarket sales stats), but those are very difficult to obtain if you are an outsider. Adam Smith was a very good observer, but nevertheless he was a moral philosopher rather than a big data analyst. But you can still test certain assertions asking yourself questions like: I pay 2 euros for a loaf of bread and I go to the same supermarket every day. How much would have the price of the bread to increase so that you would stop buying bread or change the store?

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