Wednesday, August 05, 2009

International economics book bleg

I teach a survey of international economics class to a group of international studies masters students who are not required to have any economics background. Mostly we read and discuss a lot of popular books, like Mallaby on the World Bank and Blustein on the IMF and the Argentine Crisis. I am looking for newer or better books like that, and also books on trade, the international financial system, and maybe even one on "globalization".

They need to be paperbacks, understandable to the target audience (not textbooks), well written, and contain a high ratio of stuff worth knowing or discussing to crap.

TIA for your suggestions.

8 comments:

Gabriel said...

Krugman-of-the-'90s?

Heck, even the pk archive has a bunch of awesome articles on trade, unemployment, etc.

Gabriel said...

P.S. The waste of your time and skills on such a class is an outrage. It had to be said.

Frank said...

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

Unit said...

Don Boudreaux - Globalization

Anonymous said...

Against the Dead Hand, The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism. Brink Lindsey

Tim Worstall said...

Recent stuff I've liked.

Power and Plenty.

Greg Clark's Farewell to Alms,

Baumol on innovation (the collection of essays about, not the main book).

Or PJ O'R: Eat the Rich.

James Buchans' bio of Adam Smith

Justin M Ross said...

Philippe Legrain's Open World: The Truth About Globalization is a very good defense of globalization by a financial journalist.

It is data and fact heavy, but it also gives a strong treatment to the human side of the story by providing pictures of "sweatshops" in Vietnam and other places.

http://www.philippelegrain.com/

Bill said...

Russ Roberts, THE CHOICE