Books like Stocks for the Long Run

As everyone knows at this point, anything Michael Lewis writes will be enormous fun to read, while being about something really important—something he’ll make you care about even if you didn’t when you started the book.

In this case, the subject is people who bet on the direction of mortgages (and thus, house prices), and how those who bet on a huge plunge were right. This book has an amazing cast of characters, all richly drawn: some are smart, some are not so smart; some are excellent schmoozers, some can barely tolerate human interaction; some care a lot about money, some care more about being right, especially if everyone else is wrong.

Each book I've recommended cries out to be made into a movie. This one actually was.

Apart from revealing and sometimes dismaying insights into the workings of the White House, this legendary chairman of the US Federal Reserve presents a tour d’horizon of the economic thought that underpins the creation of wealth. As such, it should be obligatory reading for anybody interested in how nations prosper (or don’t), how governments routinely make disastrous interventions even if they aim to act for the right reasons, why Adam Smith continues to influence our lives (even though we don’t know it), and why capitalism is so foolishly demonised by banner-waving grandstanders.

Money is not the root of all evil, as this book makes clear in a highly entertaining romp through the major events in the history of coin and their derivatives. The author, who made his name with Empire, covers everything that really matters including the rise of the loan sharks, historic bubbles, the development of currencies, the egregious behaviour of a few very greedy and/or crooked people, supposedly fool-proof money-making schemes that backfired, and much else. If you want to understand how money works, you can hardly do better.

The book does an outstanding job in describing the people and events that produced the October 1929 stock market crash in a highly entertaining style. Galbraith wrote more like a witty and insightful journalist than the award-winning economist that he was. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about American financial history. The book is a model for writers who want to educate non-experts about public policy issues.

This monthly approach uses three-month momentum to select two funds from a pool of four stock funds and two bond funds. The stock indexes are the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, Russell 2000, and Nasdaq, i.e. US large caps, mid caps, small caps, and tech. It’s not a revolutionary idea but provides a good introduction to major asset class switching, which runs circles around pundit guessing games. If you do nothing but swear off gut-guessing in favor of price reaction, you’ll beat almost everybody—including the supposed pros.

I’ve bumped into Richard “Rick” Ferri at a few financial conferences. He’s easy to recognize as the guy getting hate stares from across the room. Ferri thinks most financial professionals charge too much – way too much – and he isn’t shy about saying so. One of the reasons he loves passive (index) investing, as I do, is that it can be done at very little cost. If you think you want to be an index investor, but you aren’t sure where to start, I highly recommend this book. It will serve as an excellent pair of training wheels, explaining the whys and the hows of proper index investing. I’d also love to see many financial professionals read it, for they’d become better money managers if they did. Yeah, I’m talking about those guys I see in the back of the room giving Ferri the evil eye!

Since my PhD was based on Schumpeter's work, I can confidently state that it is well worth exploring the fascinating world of Economics through one of history's greatest economists.

This masterpiece takes the reader on a journey through every corner of the subject, paying particular attention to even the smallest details. A unique and thought-provoking view of Economics is offered by Schumpeter in his over 1000 pages of brilliant insights.

This book distinguishes itself from others through its deep and unconventional interpretation of Economics. It is a must-read for anyone seeking a thorough understanding of Economics as Schumpeter provides fresh insights on various topics.

However, it would be much better if it covered more recent developments. Enjoy this tour of Economics with Schumpeter and you will never get bored!

I believe Landsburg, whom I have met, may be one of the most creative and interesting thinkers in America today.

I love this book because it is his personality on every page: quirky, creative, and entertaining. It asks and answers questions others have never even considered or incorrectly assumed are so obvious as to not be worth the time to explore. I use questions from this book, which is 30+ years old, to stump and pique the curiosity of my students every semester.

I strongly recommend this book because it is clearly written, explains the methods of estimation, and provides an excellent overview of the extensive worldwide research on the returns to education based on earnings.

It certainly influenced me. It had a massive impact on World Bank lending policies in support of economic development in developing countries. It replaced the kinds of Bank physical capital investment policies such as those supporting dam construction, projects that included educating only for a few people on how to operate dams, with education sector-wide loans that support primary and junior secondary education of the labor force.

Some of these dams later washed out, and forests were destroyed in support of development. The book shows how the returns to investment in primary and secondary education are higher in developing countries where the labor force is often nearly illiterate than they are to investing in other higher levels… show more.

Even a professional economist is likely to find something surprising in this book. 

Editor John Siegfried has collected a dozen essays written by notable and award-winning economists explaining how economic research has improved our lives over the past two generations. Several of these essays do not focus on obvious examples but rather on those that are a step or two removed from what many laypersons would consider the domain of economics.

For example, Alvin Roth’s chapter on “deferred-acceptance theory” describes how economics improved the efficiency of educating doctors by better matching prospective medical residents with training hospitals. 

Other chapters explore how economic research helped eliminate the military draft and replace it with an all-volunteer armed service, how economists shaped the welfare-to-work reforms of the 1990s, and the impact of economic research on the allocation of the radio spectrum which was necessary to establish our modern cell phone networks.