New books for a new year

I spent the holidays in the U.S. so I had time to update my bookshelves with some volumes I wanted to get for a while...

 

POLITICAL ECONOMY

 

The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford Handbooks of Political Science) By: Barry R. Weingast and Donald Wittman (eds.).

Principled Agents?: The Political Economy of Good Government (Lindahl Lectures on Monetary and Fiscal Policy) By: Timothy Besley
Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy By: Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson

 

I will be using the Oxford Handbook as one of the main sources for my political economy class this spring term--taking the place of Mueller's previous compilation: its several chapters provide an up to date survey on what has become a quite large literature.  Besley and Acemoglu/Robinson will only be suggested readings--these two volumes comprise something like the most current theoretical framework for political/institutional economics.

 

ECONOMETRICS

 

Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications By: A. Colin Cameron, Pravin K. Trivedi

 

Quoting from the authors' website:
"Distinguishing features include emphasis on nonlinear models and robust inference, as well as chapter-length treatments of GMM estimation, nonparametric regression, simulation-based estimation, bootstrap methods, Bayesian methods, stratified and clustered samples, treatment evaluation, measurement error, and missing data."

 

This volume has very nice supplement materials available on the web:

http://cameron.econ.ucdavis.edu/mmabook/mma.html

 

GENERAL INTEREST

 

Knowledge and the Wealth Of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery By: David Warsh

Stumbling on Happiness By: Daniel Gilbert

 

ECONOMIC THOUGHT

 

The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) by Knud Haakonssen

Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek by Bruce Caldwell