Economics Questions

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

z1235 — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 02:39:28 GMT

I suggest you start with a couple of books and see where they take you from there. Everyone's journey is different.

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

fegeldolfy — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 02:33:38 GMT

Anyone?

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

fegeldolfy — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:59:06 GMT

Yes.

Is that good? Or should some books be moved around?

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

Neodoxy — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:17:03 GMT

So you plan on reading everything in this order?

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

fegeldolfy — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:05:46 GMT

ok, so here's my current reading list. right now i've got positive theory of capital before human action. is that good? should some books be moved up? moved down?

The Anti Capitalistic Mentality

What has Government Done to Our Money?

The Myth of the Robber Barons

The PIG to the Great Depression

Economics for Real People

America's Great Depression

The Panic of 1819

A History of Money and Banking in the US

Where Keynes Went Wrong

Requiem for Marx

Marxism Unmasked

Karl Marx and the Close of His System

The Tragedy of the Euro

Deep Freeze:Iceland's Economic Collapse

Antitrust:The Case for Repeal

The Conquest of Poverty

Man vs the Welfare State

New Deal in Old Rome

Transformation of the American Economy

The Bastiat Collection

Principles of Economics

The Theory of Money and Credit

Man,Economy and State w/Power and Market

The Ethics of Money Production

The Privatization of Roads and Highways

The Case for Discrimination

Making Economic Sense

The Mystery of Banking

Nation,State,and Economy

The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle

The Pure Time Preference Theory of Interest

The Positive Theory of Capital

Economic Science and the Austrian Method

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science

Theory and History

Human Action

Capitalism and Freedom

Bureaucracy

The Failure of the New Economics

Socialism

A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism

The Socialist Tradition

Epistemological Problems of Economics

A Critique of Interventionism

Capital and Interest

Recent Literature on Interest

An Austrian Perspective

Money,Bank Credit,and Economic Cycles

Prices and Production

Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

z1235 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 18:05:17 GMT

Tex, thanks. That was very helpful.

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

Tex2002ans — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:18:57 GMT

z1235:
Tex, would these work for the Kindle app on an iPhone/iPad?

The MOBI should definitely work fine, but I believe the "Kindle App" can't support KF8 yet. KF8 is sort of Amazon's version of EPUB, so it will be able to have a lot of the nicer formatting when compared to the MOBI format. The Kindle formats are pretty crappy though.

If you are reading it on a fancy device, why not just read the EPUB version?

I believe the iOS devices by default have iBooks to read EPUB, but I would recommend using a program which follows the EPUB standards more closely like Bluefire Reader.

https://mises.org/document/996/Karl-Marx-and-the-Close-of-His-System

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

z1235 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 15:17:52 GMT

Tex, would these work for the Kindle app on an iPhone/iPad?

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

Raoul — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:32:32 GMT

Thanks for your help, Tex2002ans.

I have an old kindle. Up to now, when I want to read a PDF, I sent an e-mail to my "kindle address" with the words "to convert" as the "subject" of my e-mail, and Amazon worked it out for me. The result was good enough (except that often the diagrams were deleted--annoying with MES...), but it didn't work for scanned PDF. But with “calibre”, the result is clearly better… It’s a pity I never heard of it before! Thanks!

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

Tex2002ans — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 23:37:14 GMT

Raoul:
I never read Karl Marx and the Close of His System because the Mises Institute PDF is not easy to read on a kindle and I'm not very confident about the integrity of the PDF published by marxist.org. But I really would like reading this book.

Why not convert the EPUB version to MOBI/KF8 (depending on what Kindle you have)? I have taken the EPUB hosted on Mises, and converted it using KindleGen (Amazon's official Kindle program).

KF8 version (Kindle Fire and beyond, or Kindle 3 with newer firmware): http://www.mediafire.com/?78d77dqjr8f3v1h

MOBI version (older Kindles): http://www.mediafire.com/?yux2qacrpo09qu5

Also, I do not know if you are aware, but there is this program, Calibre, which many people use to organize their book collections, and also convert books from one format to the other.

http://calibre-ebook.com/download

As a side note, DO NOT use it to convert from PDF to whatever, the output document will be horrendous. If you want PDF to something else, let me know. I volunteer with converting lots of EPUBs for Mises. :)

Raoul:
Why am I in a yellow frame? It wasn't intended, but it's very nice.

In the upper right of every post is a "Suggest an answer" button, it is usually used if you believe the post answered the questions very well. The forum software will then outline the post in yellow to make it stand out from the rest. And yes, you can "suggest" your own answers (I believe this might be a bug).

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

Raoul — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:57:22 GMT

Why am I in a yellow frame? It wasn't intended, but it's very nice.

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

Raoul — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:56:13 GMT

Mises said any genuine economist should have read The Positive Theory of Capital. Now, he probably wrote that before Rothbard his treatise (and, of course, also before The Pure Time Preference Theory of Interest was edited--which, of course, is not a perfect substitute).

Personnally, I really enjoyed reading The Positive Theory of Capital, even if the chapter about the "law of cost" is somewhat puzzling at the beginning. (I was also amazed to find that Böhm-Bawerk didn't strictly accept Menger's views on the aprioristic nature of economic reasoning.)

I'm less enthusiastic regarding Capital and Interest, because this book is a bit too long, but it's interesting all the the same.

I never read Karl Marx and the Close of His System because the Mises Institute PDF is not easy to read on a kindle and I'm not very confident about the integrity of the PDF published by marxist.org. But I really would like reading this book.

I suppose the best is to begin with Human Action, then to read it a second time, then a third one, and, after that, to read The Positive Theory.

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

Jonathan M. F. Catalán — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 17:43:41 GMT

One of the benefits of reading Böhm-Bawerk is that I'm not sure anybody since him has explained the minutiae of Austrian price theory.

Re: Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

abskebabs — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:59:37 GMT

Mises probably expected his readers to have been familiar with Bohm Bawerk the way Human Action is written. Most people would probably say read Rothbard because he's easiest to read for beginners and also corrects (along with Hayek) many of Bohm Bawerk's errors.

Having said that I would say reading the "Value and Price" part of Positive Theory of Capital and then tackling Human Action would also make a goood study plan. Just be weary of the fact Bohm Bawerk is a little bit of a cardinal utility theorist. Mises exposes the errors of such thinking in HA.

I haven't read his work on Marx, so I can't comment there. Also, I think reading all 3 volumes of Capital and Interest would be quite the task! I commend you if you can do it and are still new to this material.

Bohm-Bawerk's work on capital and interest

fegeldolfy — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 05:23:06 GMT

So I know I started the book suggestion thread but that sort of went off topic into its own thing.

How important are Bohm Bawerk's three works on capital and interest-Capital and Interest, The Positive Theory of Capital,and Recent Literature on Interest?

Do they need to be read in that order? Should they be read before Mises (HA)? Before Rothbard(MES)?

What about his criticism of Marx, Karl Marx and the Close of His System?