Like I posted on my blog, I found a poll on the most influential book through Greg Mankiw’s own blog. It was the Bible, Quran, some other options and his own Principles of Economics. I, of course, opted for his. But, testing the system, I decided to make my own poll on the most influential economics book: here.
They haven’t worked out the double voting, so out of good faith just vote once! Obviously, the fields were limited so not every major book could be included.
I cheated and voted “Free to Choose” even though it was actually “Capitalism and Freedom.”
It was hard for me to define “most influential” though. My favorites are Human Action, The Road to Serfdom, and The Collected Works of Frederic Bastiat (I think that was the title). The thing is I never would have discovered any of those books were it not for Friedman so even though I’m no longer big on him he gets top billing. I was a lefty in my first year of college planning to major in economics (which I did) and picked up Capitalism and Freedom off the school library shelf one day when I was bored. That book shook my faith in my precious worldview pretty good. Once I finished that I went straight back to the library and looked for similar works, ending up with The Road to Serfdom. That was pretty much the end of my leftist days right there.
I voted for Wealth of Nations but I was objectively most influenced by Bastiat though of all the options, Adam Smith was the best choice. Was Bastiat on the list?