Collecting Economics Books

The most important economics books offer the devoted collector rare insight into the time and place in which they were written. Surely no economic text influenced society more than Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and collecting the first edition of such an important work is of course worthwhile. What I'd like to focus on here, however, is collecting the first editions of some more contemporary economists. John Maynard Keynes, Friederich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises, heirs to Smith's insight, wide-ranging intelligence, and literary eloquence, shaped 20th-century economic and social policy.



Austrian-born Friedrich Hayek is the most durable economist of his era, and collecting his works can prove very rewarding. Hayek is a forefather of the information age; he championed the idea that free markets organize and coordinate scattered information. Prices let consumers know which goods cost the least to produce, and tell manufacturers which means of production are least costly. Hayek had the foresight to refer to the information-transmitting abilities of capitalism as a "telecommunications system."



A good place to start in buying Hayek's works would be with his classic The Road to Serfdom, an indictment of socialism that argues the struggle between liberty and authority with rigor reminiscent of John Stuart Mill's in his On Liberty. Though The Road to Serfdom is now viewed as a "major event in the intellectual history of the United States" (Gottfried), when it was first published in London in 1944 it rankled many in the European establishment. Many policy-makers considered it an outdated attack on the contemporary welfare states wartime countries were engendering. It took a long time for Hayek's ideas to gain credibility, and though they are commonplace today, even when Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1974, they had not yet been totally accepted.



Hayek's opponent, and yet good friend, in the great economic policy debate was John Maynard Keynes, the eloquent British economist who argued that government must control the trade cycle. Though Hayek also staunchly promoted capitalism, Keynes can be viewed as having saved it from ruin. Unlike Adam Smith, Keynes acknowledged and addressed capitalism's flaws, and unlike Marx he was committed to sustaining its advantages. Keynes's ideas are widely regarded as having stemmed the depression of 1929. Yet, while Keynes persuaded that lack of demand might cause unemployment, Hayek argued that the wrong kind of demand would facilitate unemployment: that is, demand for consumer and not investment goods. Moreover, Hayek felt that government discouragement of consumer spending and investment in public works would have done even more to decrease unemployment.



The Depression prompted Keynes to write his General Theory of Employment, which ranks with The Wealth of Nations as an historic intellectual work. It is Keynes' last major work, but the one on which his fame rests, and would prove a gem in any economics collection. "Keynes exerted an influence on economic theory and policy unequalled since Smith" (Roll). For those interested, the thinking behind Keynes' General Theory can be seen 13 years before its 1936 publication in his breakthrough work A Tract on Monetary Reform. Though Keynes had earlier been recognized, before he turned 30, as a unique literary talent in the world of economics, it was the Tract that clinched his reputation as a profoundly original thinker. Franklin D. Roosevelt based his New Deal plans on Keynesian socio-economic theory, and Richard Nixon once remarked that "we are all Keynesians today." Keynes' theory is still used by central banks and governments, though his advocating of big government does not coincide with current economic trends. Nevertheless, Keynes' work can be appreciated for its role in founding modern economics.



The theories of Ludwig von Mises, Hayek's mentor and prominent member of the "Austrian school of economics," almost independently directed the ideological tide away from socialism and totalitarianism and towards capitalism. The serious collector should not overlook Mises' Human Action, which made "the most uncompromising and most rigorously reasoned statement of the case for capitalism that has yet appeared" (Hazlitt) when it was first published in 1949. Action is Mises' single most important book, and is quite rare in first edition.



Of course the father of all of these thinkers is Adam Smith, without whose work any compilation of economics would be incomplete. A professor at the University of Glasgow and philosopher by heart, Smith wrote the first manifesto expressing the individual's right to free enterprise. The scope of The Wealth of Nations, which took Smith 12 years to prepare, reaches beyond the sphere of economics; many consider it not only the most important book in economics, but the most important book ever written, for its ideological influence.



Although some of the theories of these economists, such as Keynes' theories in favor of big government, are now somewhat out of date, their apparent obsolescence makes them no less valuable to the discerning collector. While, in the case of Hayek, his ideas about the spread of information were particularly prescient, and are very pertinent to today's society, in the history of collecting, many books are collected precisely for their perception as relics. Whether you are collecting for historical value or contemporary relevance, you will be able to satisfy your passion within the realm of economics books.



The collectibility of Keynes, Hayek, and von Mises lies not only in their lasting social influence, but also in the fact that they were such wonderful writers. These thinkers possessed a love not only of philosophy, but also of art and literature. Compiling their works offers the rewards of collecting classic fiction, with the added returns of collecting texts that have truly changed society.