How to Think Like an Economist

An entertaining collection of biographical portraits of history's most influential and inspiring economists - from Aristotle to Keynes, and Karl Marx to Friedrich Hayek - and what they can teach us about the world today. We all live in the economy, whether we know it or not. The current cost-of-living crisis is an economic problem. Brexit might be a political project, but it has already changed how much money we have to spend and which products we can buy. Climate change may seem to be an ecological, or a social, or a technological problem, but it is also an economic problem, because its solution will transform the structure of the global economy. This book provides a readable and entertaining guide to the great thinkers who help us understand how economics works. It looks at how Aristotle invented the household budget, why Adam Smith wanted to abolish rent, and how modern Nobel prize winners shape the world around us. From the Greeks and Romans to the thinkers behind Enron and the financial crash of 2008, this is the ultimate guide to the greatest economists of the human age, and what their extraordinary thinking can teach us about how to see the world. Mochrie explores how the largely Western, White and male dominated field of economics is beginning to diversify, and shows how the great ideas of complex economics can be applied to our day-to-day existence.

Robbie Mochrie

Foreword 1. Aristotle - The Philosopher 2. Thomas Aquinas - The Angelic Doctor 3. Adam Smith - The Founder 4. Robert Malthus and David Ricardo - The Realist and the Theorist 5. John Stuart Mill - The Classical Liberal 6. Karl Marx - The Communist Visionary 7. William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger and Léon Walras - Three Quiet Revolutionaries 8. Alfred Marshall - The Frail Master Craftsman 9. Joseph Schumpeter - Creator and Destroyer 10. John Maynard Keynes - The Last Amateur 11. Friedrich Hayek - A Very Different Type of Liberal 12. John von Neumann - The Most Brilliant Mathematician 13. Ronald Coase - The Placid Observer 14. Milton Friedman - The Monetarist 15. Paul Samuelson - The American Keynes? 16. Herbert Simon - The Social Scientific Realist 17. Thomas Schelling - The Storyteller 18. Robert Solow - Craftsman and Builder 19. Gary Becker - The Unwavering Imperialist 20. Elinor Ostrom - The Political Scientist 21. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky - Two Psychologists 22. Robert Lucas - The Idealist 23. George Akerlof - The Borrower 24. Esther Duflo - The Experimenter Afterword Index