Reading list for an International Baccalaureate student

Miscellaneous Newbies
1

Let’s begin with a short story.

I am student of an International Baccalaureate curriculum and one of my subjects is Economics Higher Level. For a one year (this is two years programme) I was learning six hours a week (in theory, in practice I often played truant :P) about those neat-o demand/supply diagrams, market failures and why government should intervene. Till the April I was unaware of the crap that is being pumped into my head but then I had my epiphany – I read Friedman’s “Free to choose” and I became more and more interested about non-mainstream economics and I finally came across the Austrian School. In the eyes of my classmates and my teacher I am an iconoclast as I openly criticize bullshit like ‘salutary’ multiplier effect and Phillips curve. However, I’ve read only a few books and I lack expertise in the field of Austrian economics. Could you recommend me some books (and don’t be shy, I have holiday and I am quite a speed reader and speed learner – I am about to imbibe around 200 pages of knowledge-abound books like Economics in one lesson) to help me ridicule knowledge in my curriculum*?* I think around 40 books on all topics about Austrian school will be O.K. :stuck_out_tongue:

If you want to check my curriculum look here pages 11-27.

Moreover I am preparing myself to ‘Economics Knowledge Olympiad’ and some kind of ‘Economics in near future Olympiad’. However, I see my chances languishing as this contest is concerned about this mainstream crap. Proofs? (I hope that google translate kit will translate it properly :P)

Literature and preparation materials

Question samples

I stopped after reading first question:

“Show the social and economical reasons to redistribute the peoples’ income.” – WHAT THE F*CK? It’s just like those USSR school essay questions: “Who is your role model? And why Stalin?”

However I want to try. I even borrowed Stiglitz’s book “Globalisation and its discontents” but I stopped reading after seeing that its loaded with mainstream myths.

Could you recommend some books that describe some recent events from the Austrian perspective?

I hope that you will help me in my strife to develop my knowledge and strengthen our Austrian society.

Regards,

Kacper Daraszkiewicz

2

I think this should be all you need:

Reading lists

For specifics on booms and busts, see here. The comments at that link include other recommendations.

For the most recent crash, see:

Meltdown by Thomas Woods
Crash Proof 2.0 by Peter Schiff
Financial Fiasco by Johan Norberg (also see the documentary based on this one, here)

For any other recommendations for specific topics, feel free to ask.

3

A while back, I considered doing the National Economics Challenge for my school (an economics type olympiad) and now that I think of it, a lot of the questions were quite ridiculous. Basically, every question was which of the following is a way to increase aggregate demand/consumer spending or something about Keynesianism.

At my school, we have the AP program (which is like the IB program, but a lot less rigorous and some of the historical perspectives differ, but I don’t know how) which is generally mainstream in terms of history and economics from my experience. So far, I’ve taken the AP World History course and there is still the usual stuff such as World War II saved many countries from the depression and the Marshall Plan worked etc. But next year, I’m taking the comparative governments course, which has a heavier focus on economics, and so I guess its gonna get worse.