Overnight we got the sad news that William Allen had passed away . Not a household name, but a co-author of one of the best series of books ever written on economics.
University Economics was first published in 1964 and co-authored with the late great Armen Alchian. That book went through a number of editions. Then two more books were written Exchange and Production: Theory in Use and Exchange and Production: Competition, Coordination, and Control.
A few years ago University economics was republished by Liberty Fund as Universal Economics. If you are looking to read an accessible, yet not trivial, foundation book in economics, you’d struggle to go past Universal Economics by Alchain and Allen.
OK…I’ll add it to the pile. 🙂
It’s not like private broadcasters or internet companies are less biased. Why the taxpayer needs to fund it though…
Well I never… you mean there were others besides Henry George and Adam Smith. What more was there to understand about economics.
Apart from…..
In the beginning there was a neanderthal man that was able to run faster then the others in the tribe… and the rest is history because he not only supplied the tribe he was in charge of distribution.
From that simple explanation what part of capitalism or communism do you not understand
I have impression that Allen, William.R, is a fan of Irving Fisher.
Irving Fisher: Socialist
Gary North
Irving Fisher was a Yale economist. In 1911, he offered a supposedly scientific defense of the quantity theory of money in his book, The Purchasing Power of Money.
His great rival intellectually was Ludwig von Mises, who replied the following year in The Theory of Money and Credit.
Fisher’s quantity theory is familiar to first-year economics students: MV=PT. This became the intellectual foundation of Milton Friedman’s monetarism.
Alchian & Allen was recommended reading by the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) many years ago. My copy is well worn.