Name: Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations
ISBN: 9780393329889

What Hacker News says

ucaetanoMar 2019

Indeed, economics end up being the study of resource allocations by human beings, both at the individual and collective levels, and the resulting system.

But macroeconomics is indeed based on a lot of things, and you seem to be very misinformed. Macroeconomics relies very heavily on mathematical tools such as calculus and topology to model the collective behavior of humans.

If you are really interested in learning more, I recommend "Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery".

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mindcrimeDec 2013

Non-fiction:

On Intelligence - Jeff Hawkins

How To Create A Mind - Ray Kurzweil

The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker

The Origin of Wealth - Eric Beinhocker

The Signal and the Noise - Nate Silver

The Money Culture - Michael Lewis

Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations - David Warsh

Smart Machines: IBM's Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing - John E. Kelly III and Steve Hamm

The Idea Factory - Jon Gertner

Winning The Knowledge Transfer Race - Michael J. English and William H. Baker

Wellsprings of Knowledge - Dorothy Leonard-Barton

If Only We Knew What We Know - Carla O'dell and C. Jackson Grayson

Started, but haven't finished yet:

The Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema

Marketing Warfare - Jack Trout and Al Ries

Naked Statistics - Charles Wheelan

Wiki Management - Rod Collins

Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal - Ayn Rand

Fiction:

NOS4A2 - Joe Hill

The first four books in the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman

Innocence - Dean Koontz

Deeply Odd - Dean Koontz

Doctor Sleep - Stephen King

The Black List - Brad Thor

Most of The New Lovecraft Circle - an anthology of Lovecraft mythos stories by contemporary writers

And started re-reading Asimov's Foundation last night. I've read the original trilogy before, but this time I intend to read all seven books. But I'm starting with Foundation and going to the end, before going back to the prequels.

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TrevorBurnhamJan 2010

"Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations" by David Warsh (2007). It's really two books: It shows how the academic field of Economics works today, and covers much of the field's history; and it also examines Paul Romer's theory of economic growth, which (succinctly) states that technological advancement is the key factor. Talk to any economist about growth these days, and they'll talk about Romer.

It's a very readable book, and I highly recommend it to a wide audience.

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brianfrankOct 2007

I agree that the terms are silly and abused, but unfortunately we seem to be getting stuck with them. I'd love to have better ones (know any?), but for now, you have to admit that people at least know what they refer to: things that'd otherwise be too ambiguous. These over-simple terms aren't bypassing consensus, they are a means to consensus-building.

As to the earlier comment, the whole point of the essay is that we need to look at fads as if they are bubbles, users as if they're investors. See Davenport and Becks 'Attention Economy' as well as Mark Anielski's 'Economics of Happiness'. And to see the where I'm eventually trying to lead, see David Warsh's 'Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations' and the 2005 World Bank paper called "Where is the Wealth of Nations."

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PakG1Apr 2012

The most influential university course I ever took was numbered BUEC 495. It was titled "Economic Analysis of the Law". In particular, it was a fascinating treatise on the Coase Theorem; perhaps half of the class was spent on understanding it and its implications.

The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights. In practice, obstacles to bargaining or poorly defined property rights can prevent Coasian bargaining.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

Especially for our industry, which make systems that deal with data, information, transactions, etc, I think we have to be especially appreciative of what the Coase Theorem can imply. At a fundamental level, the technology our industry develops is all about lowering transaction costs, whether we're aware of it or not. And that lowering of transaction costs means that the world does become more efficient at allocating resources, if the Coase Theorem is true.

Our professor read us a passage from Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, part of which is cited here (edit: only a bit more detailed than the text in OP, but I still think it's a cool scene worth mentioning):

http://www.salon.com/2006/11/16/milton_friedman/

That was the night Ronald Coase came to dinner at Aaron Director’s home to defend his views of transaction costs against a skeptical Chicago department. Coase had submitted a paper arguing that simply assigning property rights and then letting market processes take their course was usually a better solution than costly government regulation. The referees were certain that something was wrong with his argument. Hence the occasion of the dinner. George Stigler later recalled, “In the course of two hours of argument the vote went from twenty against and one for Coase to twenty-one for Coase.” Midway, Milton Friedman opened fire, and the bullets hit everyone but Coase. “What an exhilarating event!” wrote Stigler. The guests said good night knowing that intellectual history had been made.

Honestly, Coase was and is a brilliant guy. My mind looks at the world in a totally different way due to his work.

edit: And I should note that although Coase refuses to take credit for developing the Coase Theorem in OP, everyone else gives him the credit. So I think he's just being modest there.

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william-newmanJan 2010

It depends on what point you think you're making. (And perhaps you should make that point explicitly, so that I don't need to guess it before criticizing it, but if I'm guessing wrong, I apologize in advance.) If you are arguing out that an article from 1996 not timely, your argument is "relevant" but not necessarily correct. Note that the thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062031 was on the front page when I first noticed this article. It contained a comment linking to the 1996 article. I don't know why the the 1996 article became a standalone thread instead of just a comment on the 1062031 thread, but it might be that someone who read the 1062031 comment found the 1996 article surprisingly worthwhile.

IMO, the 1996 article (and even more the 1991ish "Fable of the Keys" academic journal article which preceded it) remain timely because both QWERTY-is-superior and QWERTY-demonstrates-market-failure stories are remarkably hardy perennials, presented as established fact without acknowledging the Liebowitz/Margolis counterargument. (E.g., _Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations_ by David Walsh (2006), carries approving blurbs from _The Financial Times_ and _The Economist_ on its cover, and should be easy to find in a library, maybe even a chain bookstore. "Paul David" and QWERTY appear in the index many times, but Liebowitz and Margolis do not.)

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