Fifty Essential Topics on Economics
Economic is an essential topic for life. If you are working, understanding economics will help you understanding how are the products and services of your company relate to the markets and consumers. Why some products can mark the price so high and still there are demands on purchase? How services and products decrease its value? All of those questions can be answered by basic economics knowledge.
Arnold Kling has done a set of note pages for economics. Those 50 pages provide an overview on the best economics that you should learn about. If you don’t have time to read all of them right now, I recommend to select some sections from microeconomics and learn about it:
Growth Theory
- Growth Across Time
- Growth in Different Countries
- An Economic Calculation: Should You Buy a Vacation Timeshare?
- Capital and Rental Cost
- Opportunity Cost, Profit, and Comparative Advantage
- Scale and Substitution
- The Production Function and Aggregation
- Accounting for Growth
- Success and Failure of Social Systems
- Mathematical Growth Models
- The Rich and the Poor
- Practice Questions on Capital, Comparative Advantage, Scale, and Substitution
- Practice Questions on the Production Function, Growth Facts, and Growth Accounting
- Practice Questions on Growth and Social Systems, Mathematical Growth Models, and Wealth and Poverty
Saving, Finance, and Social Security
- The Real Interest Rate and Annuities
- Pensions and Social Security
- The Economics of Social Security
- Basic Financial Calculations
- Efficient Markets and the Portfolio Theorem
- Futures and Options
- Personal Finance
- Corporate Finance
Markets (Microeconomics)
- Introduction to Markets
- Consumers and Utility
- Relative Prices, Demand Elasticity, and Leisure
- Borrowing, Lending, and Human Capital
- Producers and Profit Maximization
- Efficiency, Supply and Demand, and Market Clearing
- The Gains from Trade
- Tariffs and Quotas
- The Problem of Monopoly
- Public Goods
- Some Classic Policy Issues
- Money Vs. Barter
Macroeconomics
- Introduction to Macroeconomics
- A Basic Macroeconomic Equation System
- Fiscal Policy
- Investment as an Endogenous Variable
- The Trade Balance as an Endogenous Variable
- The Real Exchange Rate as an Endogenous Variable
- The Real Interest Rate as an Endogenous Variable
- Inflation as an Endogenous Variable
- Employment and Unemployment
- Macroeconomic Policy Challenges
- Theoretical Controversies
Information Economics
- Moore’s Law
- Moore’s Law and Economic Growth
- Asymptotically Free Goods
- Network Effects
- Asymmetric Information
The Best of Economics – [Arnold Kling]



Comments
Mews says on November 7th, 2005 at 8:04 am
go capitalism! hurrah for intstrumental rationality! everyone look out for themselves and somehow it’ll all work out! screw you, developing world! who needs you, sockeye salmon! you’re just externalities!
“How many hours should Josh have his employees work? We look at profit, which is revenue minus cost, to try to find a maximum. The maximum profit is at 14 hours of work, mowing 13 lawns, with revenue of $234, cost of $154, and profit of $80.”
Absolutely! Because what is right is what is profitable! If those schmoes don’t want to work 14 hrs a day, they should just go and buy the labour of someone even worse off than they are!
If you want to learn economics in any sort of useful way – which everyone should – at least balance it out a little. Economics has progressed quite a bit since the days of Keynes.
For starters:Participatory Economics (ParEcon),
and info on how a globalised economy is actually impacting people’s lives.
hydrocodone says on December 12th, 2006 at 10:13 am
hello. can you please help me?
T.Pettinger says on February 20th, 2008 at 9:25 am
There is a free Economics revision guide here
sudheer says on October 30th, 2008 at 1:47 am
economics ever dynamic,like gas continuity abstract(aerocrat)like physiocrat,never ending never optimum,may be you find new definition try …..
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