Books by Tyler Cowen
Found 21 books
This is risk-based business cycle theory , people, much of it derived originally from Fischer Black. I wish us luck people!
I plead fully guilty to not having been a Cassandra. Oddly, I published an entire book in the late 1990s — Risk and Business Cycles (cheaper on Kindle ) — on how excess risk and correlated errors could cause an economy to explode; I’ll tell you more about that soon. But if anything when it came to running commentary (on this blog, most of all) I was an anti-Cassandra. First, I was too influenced by the relatively mild housing bubble collapse of the late 1980s. Second, I did not understand ...
Eventually I wrote a whole book on the economy and polity of Oapan, and on the lives of the amate painters. It was published with the University of Michigan Press under the title Markets and Cultural Voices: Liberty vs. Power in the Lives of the Mexican Amate Painters . It has sold the least well of any of my books, by far, but it is one of my favorites and it is quite unlike all the others.
He was an indigenous, Nahuatl-speaking Mexican painter in the “Naive” tradition, working on board, amate paper, and ceramics. Some of you will know that I was his biographer , along with his two brothers Marcial Camilo and Juan Camilo, both painters as well. I spent many hours interviewing Felix Camilo (and his friends and relatives) about the events of his life, so it is especially sad for me to see such a tragic final episode, namely death by Covid in his mid-sixties. He simply was not able...
Obviously the law can deter potential illegal migrants from entering the U.S. But so can the high cost of living. Even though there are much higher wages in the U.S. than in its neighbors to the South, a lot of those higher wages are eaten up by much higher rents — especially if the immigrant moves to a major city, as is often the case. I once wrote a book based on fieldwork in rural Mexico, and I found that, for those who had migrated temporarily to the U.S., high rent was typically their bigge...
Richard Caves collects Picasso, Bill Landes collects Charles Burchfield, and William Baumol did a good deal of wood sculpture, but I do not know that any of them have served as patrons of living artists. Assar Lindbeck also works as a painter , as does Robert Mundell. Spencer MacCallum (not an economist but he has written on economic issues) has been an important patron and promoter of Mexican pottery , and my own patronage efforts in Mexico are discussed in my book on the economics of Mexican...
That is a forthcoming Jonathan Amith documentary on Nahua culture in the Rio Balsas region of Mexico. The trailer video is here ; it is set in San Agustin Oapan, where I did the field work for my book Markets and Cultural Voices . Recently I saw the film at National Geographic and loved it, admittedly it is not for all tastes. I’ll let you all know when a DVD becomes available.
A while ago I wrote a review essay on biography and economics . Here's a challenge: if economics is so powerful, and MI is so persuasive, try writing a biography of a person, using economic tools, and see how much of that person's life you can explain. It is a humbling and instructive experience and you can read my attempt here .
I do not treat this book as foundational because of personal experience. I’ve spent much time in one rural Mexican village, San Agustin Oapan , and spent much time chatting with the people there. They are extremely smart, have an excellent sense of humor, and are never boring. And that’s in their second language, Spanish.
Of course not all of those predictions have come true, but many have or others are on the verge of realization. The subtitle of the book is Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation .
Similar claims are very much a theme in my last book, Average is Over , so I am happy to see them verified in a more definitive manner.
That is the Italian edition of Average is Over , the subtitle is “ Ipermeritocrazie e futuro del lavoro ,” and you can find a copy here .
For the pointer I thank Mary Ray. (p.s.: the paperback edition of Average is Over is out today).
On this note, the paperback of Average is Over is coming out August 26th, you can order your copy here .
The paperback edition of Average is Over is out soon on August 26, you can order it here .
This argument is also a theme in my much earlier In Praise of Commercial Culture .
Here goes , I had a blast chatting with Cardiff, most of all we revisited my 1998 book In Praise of Commercial Culture and discussed some of the major issues facing commerce, the arts, and progress. In some ways that book is the initial root of “Progress Studies,” at least from my side of the equation. And my study of 15th to 18th century patronage, as was necessary to write that book, gave rise to later plans for Emergent Ventures and Fast Grants, in conjunction with others of course. Recomm...
Overall I view bad pieces in the humanities as a potential profit opportunity, rather than something to just whine about. You don’t like those troll-published pieces? Get to work !
I am reminded of some of my monetary theory writings with Kroszner in the late 1980s. He and I wrote one essay, later published in our book , on how indirect convertibility may not be entirely stabilizing. Let’s say you peg an asset at the value of one dollar, but redeem that asset in terms of gold bars rather than dollars. You offer the redeemer enough gold bars to be equal in value to a dollar.
Yet another scenario, as Kroszner and I had outlined a long time ago , is for currency to evolve out of existence, as it is slowly displaced by assets of higher return and greater convenience, such as electronic payment media. This does not involve transition problems, but it takes a long time. In recent times currency if anything has been a growing part of the U.S. money supply.
My very first (co-authored) book was on the NME , circa 1994. The NME is most interesting when monetary institutions are in an abnormal state, but now “abnormal” is “the new normal.” The NME is less interesting in explaining, say, the macroeconomics of 1963.
And also on my Stubborn Attachments , here is part of his discussion :
Applied Divinity Studies has written an excellent and thought-provoking 34-pp. review of my book Stubborn Attachments . Excerpt:
Most major questions in ethics are unsettled, though of course I have my own views , as do many other people. I take that unsettledness as a fairly fundamental truth, I have been studying these matters for decades, and I even have several published articles in the top-ranked journal Ethics .
I’d like to do something a little different in this talk from what is usually done. Typically, someone comes and they present their book. My book here, Stubborn Attachments . But rather than present it or argue for it, I’d like to try to give you all of the arguments against my thesis. I want to invite you into my internal monologue of how I think about what are the problems. It’s an unusual talk. I mean, I think talks are quite inefficient. Most of them I go to, I’m bored. Why are you all here?...
6. I will cite again the philosophical framework of my book Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals .
Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals .
That is from the latest issue of American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , “ Discounting Disentangled ” by Drupp, Freeman, Groom, and Nesje. You will of course find a lengthy discussion of these issues in my own Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals .
I thank all of you buyers and reviewers for making the opening week of Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals such a success.
This was two and a half hours (!), and it is a special bonus episode in Conversations in Tyler, here is the text and audio . The starting base of the discussion was my new, just today published book Stubborn Attachments: A Vision of a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals , but of course we ranged far and wide. Here are a few excerpts:
Tomorrow is publication date for the book, you can order here , and here is some background on Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals .
First, I don’t think “liberals” is exactly the right word here, but I’m not going to relitigate that one now. Second, as I’ve argued in my The Age of the Infovore (and in some forthcoming writings you haven’t seen yet), I don’t think “mental health condition” is appropriate in this context. Furthermore, what are called “mental health conditions” often are sources of insight and can be positively correlated with talent.
Consider people who love to consume information, or, as I have labeled them, infovores . They can stay at home every night and read Wikipedia, scan Twitter, click on links, browse through Amazon reviews and search YouTube — all for free. Thirty years ago there was nothing comparable.
This also suggests that schools themselves will never make an intellectually convincing case for tenure, since they can't come out and admit that "in the longer run, most of us don't really matter, we only pretended our productivity was worth something in the first place." Education as theatre, and all that; see my The Age of the Infovore .
You can pre-order the book — The Age of the Infovore in the paperback edition – on Amazon here (Kindle too ), Barnes&Noble here , and Borders.com here .
Here is my previous post on the book . You can pre-order it on Amazon here (Kindle too ), Barnes&Noble here , and Borders.com here .
Here is much more and I thank Eric John Barker for the pointer. You will find similar themes in my The Age of the Infovore , the new title for the paperback version of Create Your Own Economy .
Remember when Bob Dylan was DJ for those XM satellite radio shows , spinning a melange of blues, folk songs, vaudeville, gospel, and general bizarreness, with generally American themes, in the process proving himself one of the world's great musical infovres ? Some of those shows are collected on CD, in Germany, vol. I, II, and III, four discs a box, twelve discs in total. The Amazon.de listings are here (they will ship to the US), or in German stores for about six dollars a disc, thank you Gr...
For extensions of my argument, see my book Create Your Own Economy , soon to be released in paperback with the new and superior title The Age of the Infovore .
There is much more at the link, hearkening back to my earlier book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures .
I would suggest an alternative channel of influence: urban areas with high inequality have both better food (see An Economist Gets Lunch , but basically imagine the wealthier people generating demand and the poorer people supplying cheap labor) and more building restrictions. The wealthier people decide to do something to keep the poorer people out of their neighborhoods.
In general regional demand effects are strong, as I argue in An Economist Gets Lunch. People outside of southern Ohio don’t understand good Cincinnati chili and so they don’t get it. The ingredients can in fact be transferred to North Carolina but they aren’t, least of all with the proper applications. A lot of good Sichuan dishes can be reproduced reasonably well in the United States, but you don’t get them until the properly demanding clientele is in place (by the way Gourmet Kingdom in Carr...
Some readers (or journalists) ask me if I have further principles for finding good food which are not outlined in my ethnic dining guide or in An Economist Gets Lunch . Of course I do, though many of them are not easily articulated in the medium of print (some involve scent, for instance, others are about the intangible feel of a place).
The subtitle is Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good . This is an excellent book (recipes too) which comes to grips with the notion that virtuous eating also has to be fun and privately beneficial and involve a minimum of self-constraint or for that matter calculation costs. As I’ve argued in my own An Economist Gets Lunch , eating less meat is the most socially beneficial change in your dietary habits you can make. Here’s one very good way to do it.
You can order the paperback version — out tomorrow — here . Barnes and Noble link is here .
That is from Katy Waldman in the NYT . You will find similar themes discussed in my earlier book In Praise of Commercial Culture . In her article I also enjoyed this part:
3. Many of his intemperate statements about the history of art are wrong or doubtful or exaggerated and have been answered or at least contested, including in the five books I have written on the economics of the arts, including In Praise of Commercial Culture .
The best start is our blogroll and then try Mankiw’s Principles book if you need the background and don’t mind the length. More generally, here is Greg’s recommended reading list , though I don’t like Heilbroner’s book. I also recommend Arnold Kling’s on-line text , my own In Praise of Commercial Culture , but best of all is having an office next door to Alex, Bryan, and Robin. For mathematical approaches, see the Ph.d. textbook by Hal Varian , Eric Rasmusen’s Games and Signalling , Milton Fr...
My favorite books on Indian textiles are cited in my discussion of that topic in Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures . But it’s more a question of reading a bunch of them, rather than picking out a select few. Simple, direct searches will get you to where you need to go.
You will find related ideas in my book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures . And here are by the way are my previous posts on horse nationalism .
My view by the way is different, and can be found in my book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures .
2. Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures , by me.
Some of you may recall the third and fourth sentences in my book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures (now on Kindle by the way):
Michael did not request anything in return, but I am sending him a copy of my book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures .
You can buy the book from Barnes&Noble here , Amazon here , signed edition here , Apple here . Amazon reviews are welcome too!
“Matchers gain, strivers lose,” he [Cowen] writes in a new book, “ The Complacent Class .”
The review very well captures the spirit and content of the book. Here is Barnes&Noble , here is Amazon . Here are signed first editions , here is Apple .
Here is the full review . And just one point: I know many of you claim I have not predicted much of current goings-on. It is true I did not expect Trump to win, but you will find many other predictions in this book, most of which are looking pretty good as of today. Typically if I am writing material into a book I do not blog it, so that the material will be fresh to all of my readers. If you order The Complacent Class , you will find very little of it already has shown up on MR , the chapte...
Here is the link , and my previous extra book offer still stands (for now!).
Thank you all for making the first day of The Complacent Class such a success; pre-orders were strong and according to one standard metric it was the #1 best-selling book for Monday .
Here is part of the answer, consistent with what I argued in my book What Price Fame? :
It is also notable how few of you picked entertainers or sports figures, as such individuals have figured prominently on such lists in the past (see my What Price Fame? ). In 1971 a lot of people would have said “John Lennon,” and in his day Ted Williams placed high in such surveys. These days, for better or worse, the tech world and politics seem to exercise a stronger hold on our imaginations, all the more among MR readers I suspect.
The piece is fascinating throughout, and you will note that Seth is a Google data scientist with a Ph.d. in economics from Harvard. His other writings are here . Some of you may wish to see my book What Price Fame ?
The expected creative powers of female musical artists are continuing to increase, especially when it comes to composition. Taylor Swift therefore will produce another album of good songs, though the burden of extreme fame , and the accompanying difficulty of replenishing her creative wells, will hold her back from five more such albums. Bergoglio will pass and be forgotten, as he has not built the necessary coalition within the Vatican and also I do not predict the triumph of liberal religion...
That's from Hume's Of The Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences . I discuss related points in my What Price Fame? The proximate pointer is from Dan Klein.
Not everyone assumes that Jim Cramer is smart but in fact Jim Cramer is smart (though his advice is no smarter than that of a monkey's). Watch the early Jim Cramer and you will see (can anyone find a good YouTube link?). But take the smartest person you know and put him or her on TV for hours a week, for years, and see what happens. (See my book What Price Fame? .) Usually only very smart people get to experience such fates. Lots of screaming is an added bonus.
That is from my 2000 book What Price Fame?
Why not ask me ?
7. Gordon still fails to credit the originators of the growth slowdown idea, as applied to contemporary times, namely Michael Mandel and Peter Thiel. The first sentence of his paper reads: “A controversy about the future of U.S. economic growth was ignited by my paper released in late summer 2012.” I would add, perhaps with a bit of peevishness, that a lot of the actual debate was kicked off by my own The Great Stagnation , published in January of 2011 and which was covered and commented on ex...
Such views make for a convenient target, but that is not close to what I wrote in The Great Stagnation . For instance on p.83 you will find me proclaiming, after several pages of details, “For these reasons, I am optimistic about getting some future low-hanging fruit.” Those are not Straussian passages hidden like the extra Nirvana audio track at the end of Nevermind . The very subtitle of the book announces “How America…(Eventually) Will Feel Better Again.”
I am speaking on The Great Stagnation, in recognition of the publication of the physical version of the book . You are welcome to come.
And tomorrow the physical version of the book is available from Amazon , Barnes&Noble.com , and in book stores.
As I have stressed in Average is Over , improved measurement of worker value is very likely to increase income inequality. When contributions are relatively vague, the natural tendency is to have weak egalitarian norms and relatively egalitarian pay structures. When relative contributions are more clear, pay structures will follow, in the longer run dragging norms along with them.
I feel that with increasing inequality, using your youth well is all the more important, something I bet Tyler Cowen would agree with .
It is here in excerpts , mostly about Average is Over , but with some twists, here is one part:
There is an entire chapter in Average is Over suggesting that trade effects on U.S. wages, in the negative direction, are stronger than many economists think, through factor price arbitrage, and that the topic deserves further investigation. But it turns out my discussion did not go far enough in the direction of attributing observed wage changes to trade, and because of this paper, and because of Autor, Dorn, and Hanson, I hereby revise my views accordingly.
As I argue in Average is Over , marketing — in the broad sense of that term — is a growth sector for the future. You might recall that three years ago he was charging only $15 per pencil .
You can buy the book on Amazon here . On Barnes and Noble here . On Indiebound.org here . And from Penguin here . The Diane Coyle review is here .
Here are some of Cardiff Garcia’s thoughts on my own new book, Average is Over :
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here . On Barnes and Noble here . On Indiebound.org here . And from Penguin here . It is due out this Thursday.
You can pre-order my book on Amazon here . On Barnes and Noble here . On Indiebound.org here . And from Penguin here .
You can order my book on Amazon here . On Barnes and Noble here . On Indiebound.org here . And from Penguin here .
This part reminds me of some ideas in my own Risk and Business Cycles :
I also would reject any hard notion of “capacity” and view the matter as a sliding scale, depending on expectations and how much risk and fragility investors and suppliers of labor are willing to accept; see my Risk and Business Cycles for more on this point.
Krugman defines “potential GDP is a measure of how much the economy can produce” but keep in mind that this quite possibly won’t be a unique number. With what risk premium? With what enthusiasm of supply? See my Risk and Business Cycles for an extended discussion and also numerous citations.
Here is another blog post discussing the book . Here is the Amazon listing . At the time this book was published, it was unpopular to suggest that everyone simply might take too much risk at once, leading to an eventual overextension and collapse. Yet theories of that nature have held up relatively well, in light of the financial crisis.
Here is a short excerpt from the review , and the gate is there for subscribers. You can order the book here .
You can buy An Economist Gets Lunch here .
Here is my essay from Washingtonian magazine , adapted from An Economist Gets Lunch , about what it is like to shop at a Chinese supermarket for a month. Here is one bit about search theory:
About An Economist Gets Lunch , you will find it here .
You can order the book on Amazon here . For Barnes & Noble here . For Indiebound.org here .
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here . For Barnes & Noble here . For Indiebound.org here .
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here . For Barnes & Noble here . For Indiebound.org here .
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here . For Barnes & Noble here . For Indiebound.org here . It is due out tomorrow.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here . For Barnes & Noble here . For Indiebound.org here . It is due out April 12.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here . For Barnes & Noble here . For Indiebound.org here .
Addendum : Here is my book on government support for the arts , and the proper roles of the aesthetic and political in liberal thought.
Even since I wrote Create Your Own Economy , which was not so long ago, I've come around closer to Alex's position on on-line instruction. Today I read :
There are MP3s at the link (enjoy!) and I discuss related themes — how it matters if we make philosophic aesthetics more empirical — in one chapter in Create Your Own Economy . Hat tip goes to Christian Bok .
6. Education as placebo effect ; from Create Your Own Economy .
It's been great (#1 Business book on Amazon yesterday) and I'm working to " fill the orders " as fast as I can. If I'm not sending you your chapter *now*, it is because a) I am blogging, b) I am sending someone else the chapter, or c) I am getting on a flight. I will get to it, it's also very good to hear from you all, and keep the orders coming .
No, it's not a bonus chapter from Create Your Own Economy .
You can buy the book here .
I was asked six questions (mostly about Create Your Own Economy , but not all), here is one of them:
Many bloggers are citing a recent Scientific American piece , one part of which covers how autistics come closer to satisfying some canons of economic rationality. Since I discuss the underlying research in Create Your Own Economy , I should point out that the SA article doesn't quite get it right. They serve up:
It is an adaptation of one part of Create Your Own economy ; excerpt:
Here is the table of contents for the book . You can pre-order the book here .
I pose a similar question in my book Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding . After the adjustment process, I believe that matters would settle in an orderly fashion, although whether we pick the art from 30 or 50 years ago would make a big difference in terms of the required rejiggling of our aesthetic sensibilities. We would pick out bestsellers from 30 or 50 years ago and some of them would be in demand, if only because people wish to share common cultural experienc...
When blogging I try to keep book rehash to a minimum. But tonight I cannot resist making a point from Good and Plenty :