I read Dubner and Levitt's Freakonomics in 2005. It's lame to say that a pop-science book changed my life, but since then I've thought about economics every day.
I would recommend some pop-econ to become familiar with a stylized version of how economists think. I'd recommend Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist Strikes Back and The Logic of Life and Robert Frank's The Economic Naturalist. (Dubner's and Levitt's books are entertaining, but I wouldn't try to learn much about economics from them)
The world of professional economists has been fascinating to watch over the last 10 years, as academic economist blogs are very active and very high quality. Watching debates and commentary about the global financial crises unfold on the blogs in real time was really something. Economist bloggers have a real influence on policy now, and whole schools of thought have coalesced out of blogs (e.g. market monetarism).
There are some excellent economics podcasts out there now. EconTalk (with Russ Roberts) has been going since 2006. I'd recommend listening to some of his interviews with academic economists. Macro Musings (with David Beckworth) just started this year, and the policy discussions have been quite informative.
The Marginal Revolution University website has an fantastic series of videos on economics topics. The "Development Economics" course I would recommend strongly - I wish I'd been taught the Solow Model in school.
Economics is a very interesting discipline to study from the outside. Learning a bit about it puts policy debates in a new light - I've become much more liberal on some topics and much less confident on a lot of topics. I find that reporting about economics issues is generally pretty terrible, so beware that if you get into economics you'll want to stop reading a lot of news analysis.
I second EconTalk. High quality, accessible, and interesting.
I didn't think Freakonomics was great, but some people love it, and as long as it gets people to enjoy economics, I'm happy.
My first foray into an economic way of thinking was just reading The Economist every week — it's news, but seen through the lens of economics and business. Now I'm a doctoral student in economics at MIT.
>I read Dubner and Levitt's Freakonomics in 2005. It's lame to say that a pop-science book changed my life, but since then I've thought about economics every day.
Don't believe everything you read in Freakonomics. Unfortunately it's written to be entertaining (which it is) but isn't always the most rigorous representation of the truth (which is disappointing)
See Mark Thoma's "Economist's View" for a broad sampling.
I personally enjoy Marginal Revolution (Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen), Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal (Miles Kimball), and The Money Illusion (Scott Sumner).
I would recommend some pop-econ to become familiar with a stylized version of how economists think. I'd recommend Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist Strikes Back and The Logic of Life and Robert Frank's The Economic Naturalist. (Dubner's and Levitt's books are entertaining, but I wouldn't try to learn much about economics from them)
The world of professional economists has been fascinating to watch over the last 10 years, as academic economist blogs are very active and very high quality. Watching debates and commentary about the global financial crises unfold on the blogs in real time was really something. Economist bloggers have a real influence on policy now, and whole schools of thought have coalesced out of blogs (e.g. market monetarism).
There are some excellent economics podcasts out there now. EconTalk (with Russ Roberts) has been going since 2006. I'd recommend listening to some of his interviews with academic economists. Macro Musings (with David Beckworth) just started this year, and the policy discussions have been quite informative.
The Marginal Revolution University website has an fantastic series of videos on economics topics. The "Development Economics" course I would recommend strongly - I wish I'd been taught the Solow Model in school.
Economics is a very interesting discipline to study from the outside. Learning a bit about it puts policy debates in a new light - I've become much more liberal on some topics and much less confident on a lot of topics. I find that reporting about economics issues is generally pretty terrible, so beware that if you get into economics you'll want to stop reading a lot of news analysis.