Economics — Summer Reads

Martin Wolf’s favorite Economics books for the summer.

For Discussion: What books would you add? Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us about Economics and Life by the late economist Alan Krueger should definitely be in the list. Here is Jason Furman review of the book;

No one else could have written a book with this range. Rockonomics draws on economic theory, standard government surveys, proprietary administrative data, a unique survey fielded by the author, and interviews with a range of people in the music industry. It covers just about every aspect of the music industry. The book focuses on the economics of the music industry, including a number of familiar themes like how streaming revenue is rising but recorded music primarily drives touring revenue, how live ticket prices are set, how merchandise is marketed, how streaming is changing the makeup of songs, and more. Relatively little of this was revelatory, as someone who only casually follows these issues I knew most of it, but all of it was definitive and authoritative. A secondary purpose of the book (and it is secondary, notwithstanding the subtitle) is to use the music industry to illustrate a number of economic concepts, like superstars and inequality, the behavioral economics that leads stars to underprice their tickets for fear of sending the wrong signal, the economics of incomplete contracts, the endogenaity of preferences, and even simple demand curves — but in advertising revenue.