1 Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk | Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky | 1979 | Behavioral economics | People hate losses way more than they like equivalent gains, and we judge outcomes relative to a reference point, not in absolute levels. | Explains why I’ll chase a bad bet to get “back to zero” but won’t try a new pizza place if there’s a 10% chance it’s mid. |
|---|
2 A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice | Herbert A. Simon | 1955 | Decision theory / behavioral | Instead of optimizing everything, real humans “satisfice”—we grab something good enough under time and brain-power limits. | Whenever a model assumes perfectly rational agents, I mentally yell BOUNDED RATIONALITY and think of this paper. |
|---|
3 Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries | Robert J. Barro | 1991 | Macroeconomics / growth empirics | Poorer countries with more human capital tend to grow faster—convergence, but only if institutions and policies aren’t a disaster. | Feels like the OG regression buffet for growth nerds. Lots of caveats, but great for learning how messy cross-country data really is. |
|---|
4 A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth | N. Gregory Mankiw, David Romer, David N. Weil | 1992 | Macroeconomics / growth theory | A beefed-up Solow model with human capital actually fits international income differences surprisingly well. | The paper that made me stop trash-talking Solow. Also a masterclass in “take a simple model, hammer it with data” vibes. |
|---|
5 Job Market Signaling | Michael Spence | 1973 | Microeconomics / labor | Education can function less as skill-building and more as a costly signal that separates high- and low-productivity workers. | Every time I’m grinding a gen-ed that teaches nothing new, I just whisper “it’s a signal, it’s a signal” and keep going. |
|---|
6 The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation | Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James A. Robinson | 2001 | Development / economic history | Colonial-era institutions—shaped partly by settler mortality—left long-run footprints on today’s income levels. | The identification is spicy, the debates are spicier, but as a story linking history to GDP today it’s absolute catnip. |
|---|
7 The Economic Lives of the Poor | Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo | 2007 | Development economics | Using detailed surveys, it shows how people living under $1–2 a day juggle work, food, savings, and risk in super constrained settings. | Destroys the stereotype of “the poor” as some abstract block. After this, every policy hot take feels under-informed. |
|---|
8 Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence | Richard A. Easterlin | 1974 | Happiness economics | Within a country at a point in time, richer people are happier, but over long stretches, rising average income doesn’t always boost average happiness. | The OG Easterlin paradox. Makes GDP graphs look a lot less like a scoreboard and more like just one stat on the box score. |
|---|
9 Growth in a Time of Debt | Carmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth S. Rogoff | 2010 | Macroeconomics / public debt | Shows a strong correlation between very high public debt-to-GDP and lower growth, sparking huge debates on causality and measurement. | Perfect example of how one short paper plus an Excel issue can set off a whole policy war. Great for learning to read stats with side-eye. |
|---|
TheLysts
