Economics Books
"i'm absolutely a newcomer in economics and i wish to understand how things work around finance. This is a pretty loaded question. To understand finance, you need the basics of economics. In almost every economics school in the country, you first study microeconomics and then economics. So, we'll start with micro. One of, if not the, most popular books is ""Principles of Microeconomics"" by Mankiw. This book covers the fundamentals of micro econ (opportunity, supply, demand, consumer choice, production, costs, basic game theory, and allocation of resources) in a clear and effective manner. It's designed for the novice and very easy to read.   Like Mankiw's other book, ""Principles of Macroeconomics"" is also top notch. There is some overlap in key areas (i.e. opportunity cost, supply, demand, indifference curves, elasticity, taxation) because they are fundamental to economics and the overlap will always be there, but from there the book goes into key macro concepts like GDP, CPI, Employment, Monetary and Fiscal policy, and Inflation. An excellent intro primer indeed.   Now that you have the fundamentals down, it's time to learn about finance. The best resource, in my opinion, is ""Financial Markets"" by Robert Shiller on Open Yale Courses. I've personally taken Prof. Shiller's class last semester, and the man is brilliant. The lectures cover every single aspect of finance and can turn the complete novice into a fairly experienced finance student. The first lecture also covers all the math required so you don't get lost at any point. Be warned, however, that the course is very deep. We used Fabozzi's textbook ""Foundations of Financial Markets and Institutions,"" which is over 600 pages deep and we were required to know essentially all of it. Watch the videos and follow the readings and you'll be a finance whiz soon! Financial Markets on Open Yale  And that's your roadmap to what you want. There are other economics books and it's true that the first few chapters of both Mankiw books are largely the same, but that's because any economics course always covers the basics first. If you want to look at other books, Krugman has written some good books as well. Be sure to read reviews because some books are meant for 2nd/3rd year econ students, so you don't want to get a too advanced book. At the novice level, we're interested in understanding the basic concepts so we can master Fabozzi. As for finance books - Fabozzi teaches you all the fundamentals of financial markets so you've got a powerful foundation. From there you can expand to more niche books such as books on investing or on monetary policy or whatever you want. Best of luck!" Economics without math is a tall order, since it seems that one of the things economists love to do is try and reduce everything down to mathematical formulas.  OTOH you are asking about a lot of topics besides economics. A few books I might suggest would be those three should do a good job of introductory info and helping you understand the basics and vocabulary. If you want more, one of the better 'recommended reading lists' for things financial that I've ever found is here I followed Economics by Michael Parkin for my college level course. It does not involve very complicated mathematics (beyond simple arithmetic and interpreting plots/charts). I found it very enjoyable.  Stocks, bonds, and other money market instruments are not covered under this subject usually. They are covered under finance. I normally recommend Hull to people but because you are not interested in mathematics I would recommend Stuart R Veale. The free Yale Course taught by Bob Shiller called Financial Markets is really good. Find it on youtube, iTunes U, academic earth, or yale's site.
Oh, I see where the confusion is from. Amazon controls 41% of new book sales, and 41% of all book sales (including used books) are from online retailers. Those two being so similar was throwing me off.  I was meaning to reference all *new* book sales, since the dispute between hachette and Amazon has very little to do with used books as far as I'm aware. Both I and the article I referenced could have made that distinction more clear.  Again, regardless, Amazon is a big enough of a player in the market that they should not be messing with the price, availability, and visibility of a publisher's print books as negotiating tactic in ebook prices. The financial impact on Hachette doesn't seem to be as big as I initially thought, but any lost revenue in Hachette's print book sales as a result of Amazon's actions to convince them to accept their ebook terms seems unethical. I used to think the physical books were great but I'm definitely over that.  You end up with shelves of books you'll probably never open again.  It just contributes to the clutter.  Oddly I feel the opposite about text books from the parent commentor.  I feel like text books are still handier and more functional in paper form.  A digital copy would be useful for doing searches maybe but provided the book has a good index that should be covered. Sure.  Even Milton Friedman called Hayek's economic work unreadable.  Much of the Austrian economic foundation rests without as solid of a  philosophical or mathematical foundation as most other schools of thought.  I suppose the easiest way to understand this is to look at three foundational works.  I recommend reading each of these anyways, but skimming, and paying attention to references, should give you a good idea of the varying levels of rigor introduced into each school of thought.  [Leaf through Das Kapital](http://books.google.com/books?id=6TfTS9ITW7UC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=inauthor:%22Karl+Marx%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=NdrYT4yNCdLH6AHThdSoAw&amp;ved=0CE8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;q=inauthor%3A%22Karl%20Marx%22&amp;f=false) This is Marx's primary treatise.  It is far older than the following two that I will present.  Nevertheless, it, perhaps more than any other book, played a pivotal role in the 20th century.   [Leaf through A General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money](http://books.google.com/books?id=xpw-96rynOcC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=inauthor:%22John+Maynard+Keynes%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=LtrYT43YIamJ6QGuoL2cAw&amp;ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=inauthor%3A%22John%20Maynard%20Keynes%22&amp;f=false) This is the foundational work of the Keynesians.  There is much more here than simply the advice to increase government spending to stabilize demand during economic downswings.  And it has been probably the most widely accepted work by the greatest number of economists over the 20th century.     [Leaf through the Theory of Money and Credit] (http://books.google.com/books?id=hHnIHlCm_CcC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=von+mises&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=59rYT4HbDKqG6QG2te2PAw&amp;ved=0CEsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;q=von%20mises&amp;f=false) This is the Austrian Treatise from Ludwig Von Mises.  It is the newest of the three.  It is also likely the least rigorous.  But please, judge for yourself.  Von Mises did do some more rigorous work in other areas.    But all schools of economics ultimately rest on their theory of capital.  So, before you pick which church to belong to, it's worth reading their respective bibles. how do these margins vary over time Depends on a lot of factors. The bank's financial health, bank's ongoing business activities, profits generated from it's other businesses. If it is new to mortgages, it mightn't take a bigger margin to grow its business. If it is in the business for long, it might not be ready to tweak it down. If the housing market is down, they might lower their margin's to make lending attractive. If their competitors are lowering their margins, the bank in question might also. Do they rise when the base rate rises, or fall, or are they uncorrelated? When rates rise(money is being sucked out to curb spending), large amount of spending decreases. So you can imagine margins will need to decrease to keep the mortgage lending at previous levels. Would economic growth drive them up or down? Economic growth might make them go up. Like in case 1, base rates are low -> people are spending(chances are inflation will be high) -> margins will be higher(but real value of money will be dependent on inflation)  Is there any kind of empirical or theoretical basis to guess at their movement? Get a basic text book on macroeconomics, the rates and inflation portion will be there. How the rates influence the money supply and all. It will much more sense. But the answer will encompass a mixture of all conditions and not a single one in isolation. So there isn't a definitive answer.  This might give you an idea of how it works. It is for variable mortgage but should be more or less near to what you desire. To play devil’s advocate to much of what has been written before, it's also worth noting that this is quite an important quote for a sort of reverse reason to what has been discussed before us, that of that fact that virtually every economic situation is different. As it's such a reflexive problem, each and every set of exact circumstances is always different from before. Technology radically changes, monetary policy and economic thinking shift, social needs and market expectations change and thus change the very fabric of markets as they do. It's only in its most basic miss projections of growth that economics repeats, and much like warfare, has constant shifts that radically change the core assumptions about it and do create completely new circumstances that we have to struggle to deal with predicting. People betting on the endless large scale mechanised warfare between western powers continuing post nuclear weapons would have been very, very wrong for example. That time it actually was different, and this actually happens with surprisingly often in finance in ways people quickly bury in the memories and adopt to the new norm. Remember when public ownership of stock wasn't a thing? When bonds didn't exist? No mortgages? Pre insurance? These are all inventions and changes that did change the world forever and were genuinely different and have been ever since, creating huge structural changes in economies, growth rates and societies interactions.  As the endless aim of the game is predicting growth well, we often see people/groups over extend on one new thing, and/or under extend on another as they struggle to model these shifts and step changes.  Talking as if the fact that people do this consistently as if it is some kind of obvious thing we can easily learn from (or easily take advantage of) in the context of such a vague and complex problem could be argued to be highly naïve and largely useless. This time it is different. Last time it was too. Chaos theory is two essays combined as a book. It's short.  You could probably read the whole thing in under 2 hours.  Also [here is a print version](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_29.html) of David Friedman's theory.  I do have a longer, more detailed explanation, but it's in video form (about an hour). "#####&amp;#009;  ######&amp;#009;  ####&amp;#009;  [**Parable of the broken window**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable%20of%20the%20broken%20window): [](#sfw)   ---  &gt;The __parable of the broken window__ was introduced by [Frédéric Bastiat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat) in his 1850 essay *Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas* (*[That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen](https://en.wikipedia.org//en.wikisource.org/wiki/That_Which_Is_Seen,_and_That_Which_Is_Not_Seen)*) to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society. The [parable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable), also known as the __broken window fallacy__ or __glazier's fallacy__, seeks to show how [opportunity costs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_costs), as well as the [law of unintended consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences), affect economic activity in ways that are ""unseen"" or ignored.  &gt;  ---  ^Interesting: [^Frédéric ^Bastiat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat) ^| [^Opportunity ^cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost) ^| [^Broken ^windows ^theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)   ^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&amp;subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&amp;message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+cjzyvts) ^or[](#or) [^delete](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&amp;subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&amp;message=%2Bdelete+cjzyvts)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| [^(FAQs)](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/wiki/index) ^| [^Mods](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1x013o/for_moderators_switches_commands_and_css/) ^| [^Magic ^Words](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1ux484/ask_wikibot/)" "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/a-new-way-to-learn-economics) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; A group of economists from both sides of the Atlantic, part of a project called CORE Econ, has put together a new introductory economics curriculum, one that is modern, comprehensive, and freely available online.  &gt; In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems.  &gt; In his highly popular &amp;quot;Principles of Economics,&amp;quot; Harvard&amp;#039;s N. Gregory Mankiw begins by listing a set of ten basic principles, which include &amp;quot;Rational people think at the margin,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Trade can make everybody better off,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity.""   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6zkgmk/a_new_way_to_learn_economics/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~208302 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **economic**^#1 **students**^#2 **CORE**^#3 **more**^#4 **curriculum**^#5"