When a giant invades the peaceful kingdom of the Tatrajanni and takes the different-looking girl prisoner, it takes the combined efforts of the wise woman of the mountain, the Prince, and the girl herself to rid the kingdom of the intruder.

Autobiographical accounts by Nobel laureates reflect the richness and diversity of contemporary economic thought and offer insights into the creative process. Lives of the Laureates offers readers an informal history of modern economic thought as told through autobiographical essays by twenty-three Nobel Prize laureates in Economics. The essays not only provide unique insights into major economic ideas of our time but also shed light on the processes of intellectual discovery and creativity. The accounts are accessible and engaging, achieving clarity without sacrificing inherently difficult content. This sixth edition adds four recent Nobelists to its pages: Eric Maskin, who illustrates his explanation of mechanism design with an example involving a mother, a cake, and two children; Joseph Stiglitz, who recounts his field's ideological wars linked to policy disputes; Paul Krugman, who describes the insights he gained from studying the model of the Capitol Hill Babysitting Coop (and the recession it suffered when more people wanted to accumulate babysitting coupons than redeem them); and Peter Diamond, who maps his development from student to teacher to policy analyst. Lives of the Laureates grows out of a continuing lecture series at Trinity University in San Antonio, which invites Nobelists from American universities to describe their evolution as economists in personal as well as technical terms. These lectures demonstrate the richness and diversity of contemporary economic thought. The reader will find that paths cross in unexpected ways—that disparate thinkers were often influenced by the same teachers—and that luck as well as hard work plays a role in the process of scientific discovery. The Laureates Lawrence R. Klein • Kenneth J. Arrow • Paul A. Samuelson • Milton Friedman • George J. Stigler • James Tobin • Franco Modigliani • James M. Buchanan • Robert M. Solow • William F. Sharpe • Douglass C. North • Myron S. Scholes • Gary S. Becker • Robert E. Lucas, Jr. • James J. Heckman • Vernon L. Smith • Edward C. Prescott • Thomas C. Schelling • Edmund S. Phelps • Eric S. Maskin • Joseph E. Stiglitz • Paul Krugman • Peter A. Diamond

Economic theory may be speculative, but its impact is powerful and real. Since the 1970s, it has been closely associated with a sweeping change around the world--the "market turn." This is what Avner Offer and Gabriel Soderberg call the rise of market liberalism, a movement that, seeking to replace social democracy, holds up buying and selling as the norm for human relations and society. Our confidence in markets comes from economics, and our confidence in economics is underpinned by the Nobel Prize in Economics, which was first awarded in 1969. Was it a coincidence that the market turn and the prize began at the same time? The Nobel Factor, the first book to describe the origins and power of the most important prize in economics, explores this and related questions by examining the history of the prize, the history of economics since the prize began, and the simultaneous struggle between market liberals and social democrats in Sweden, Europe, and the United States. The Nobel Factor tells how the prize, created by the Swedish central bank, emerged from a conflict between central bank orthodoxy and social democracy. The aim was to use the halo of the Nobel brand to enhance central bank authority and the prestige of market-friendly economics, in order to influence the future of Sweden and the rest of the developed world. And this strategy has worked, with sometimes disastrous results for societies striving to cope with the requirements of economic theory and deregulated markets

**Also an Academy Award–winning film starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly—directed by Ron Howard** The powerful, dramatic biography of math genius John Nash, who overcame serious mental illness and schizophrenia to win the Nobel Prize. “How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?” the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. “Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did,” came the answer. “So I took them seriously.” Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who—thanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community—emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize for triggering the game theory revolution. The inspiration for an Academy Award–winning movie, Sylvia Nasar’s now-classic biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over adversity, and the healing power of love.

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics upend the most common assumptions about how economics works in this gripping and disruptive portrait of how poor people actually live. Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two award-winning MIT professors, answer these questions based on years of field research from around the world. Called "marvelous, rewarding" by the Wall Street Journal, the book offers a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty and an intimate view of life on 99 cents a day. Poor Economics shows that creating a world without poverty begins with understanding the daily decisions facing the poor.

“Magisterial. . . . The direct and indirect influence of the Monetary History would be difficult to overstate.”—Ben S. Bernanke, Nobel Prize–winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve From Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman and his celebrated colleague Anna Jacobson Schwartz, one of the most important economics books of the twentieth century—the landmark work that rewrote the story of the Great Depression and the understanding of monetary policy Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 is one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century. A landmark achievement, it marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to argue that monetary policy—steady control of the money supply—matters profoundly in the management of the nation’s economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. One of the book’s most important chapters, “The Great Contraction, 1929–33” addressed the central economic event of the twentieth century, the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz argued that the Federal Reserve could have stemmed the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and countering banking panics. The book served as a clarion call to the monetarist school of thought by emphasizing the importance of the money supply in the functioning of the economy—an idea that has come to shape the actions of central banks worldwide.

. . . this book will continue to share shelf-space next to my current textbooks. As a librarian, such utility makes this a desirable addition to any educator s collection. As a history of economic thought book, Vane and Mulhearn have brought together a breadth of information that can be found through disparate sources but at a cost of effort and, especially for students, qualitative decisions regarding sources. . . The convenience of their starting methodology, breadth over depth coverage, and clear intention of writing to an audience of students makes this a useful text. Kirk Douglas Johnson, Journal of the History of Economic Thought The essays summarizing the main achievements of the prize winners are well written and to the point. They are short enough that they never cause the reader to lose interest, but substantive enough to let you know what the winners accomplishments amount to. These compact, factually accurate essays mark the real value of the book as a reference work. . . there is little for which to fault the authors. Vane and Mulhearn have done a very nice job with the book, and it is an added bonus that it includes a formal portrait photograph of each prize winner. Bradley W. Bateman, History Political Economy . . . Vane and Mulhearn have produced a useful reference work. John Quiggin, Economic Analysis and Policy This collection has the capacity to surprise the reader. You learn all sorts of new and sometimes admirable things about these economists and about the richness of the profession that is often obscured from students of the subject. John Lodewijks, History of Economics Review This volume provides a non-technical description of the main published works of every Nobel Memorial (Economics) winner from the first annual award in 1969 to 2004 . . . This is a reference book par excellence . . . it will interest not only those having some involvement with economics, past or present, but it should also attract more general readers wanting to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding economics and economists. Economic Outlook and Business Review Vane and Mulhearn have produced an introduction to the careers and major publications of the 55 economists awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel between 1969 and 2004. The short essays on each economist are readable and accurate; they provide a discussion of the subjects, major contributions and an introduction to the secondary literature, often with the outstanding reports on the laureates work provided to the Economic Prize Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The collection is introduced with a review of the prize and the common characteristics of the winners thus far, all neatly summarized in a table with each laureate s year and country of birth, university, year of first and higher degrees, affiliation at the time of the award, field of study, and a summary citation. This volume provides a very useful introduction to the development of economic ideas in the last three-quarters of the 20th century. Highly recommended. D.E. Moggridge, Choice Every serious research economist will want to have a look at this comprehensive work. Edwin Burmeister, Research Professor of Economics, Duke University, US The award of the Nobel Prize has, for more than thirty years, been economists way of informing the public at large about what work most of them think is important, and about who has done it. Anyone seeking to understand the development of recent economic ideas and the profession that has created them must deal with the Prize s history, and Vane and Mulhearn have provided an indispensable guide to it brief, readable and accurate. David Laidler, Professor Emeritus and Bank of Montreal Professor, University of Western Ontario, Canada This is a splendid account of the personal stories of the Nobel Laureates in Economics, the diversity of practice of recent economists, and, perhaps above all, the nature o