The other day I received a long-awaited latest book by Branko Milanovic and remembered that the Ten Books to Read list needed an update. So, here we go. I’m going to stick to some of the already familiar topics along the economic history, economic development, and diaspora lines, as well as some (usually classical) fiction.

My interest in “how it all” impacts small country development is still valid with this selection. As before, the list is a mixed basket of relatively new books and those published much earlier / some that I’ve read or re-read and some that are marked to be read soon. The point is to try minimize parallels with the generic bestseller lists that eventually end up repeating from one medial outlet to the next.

So, here’s the Fall 2023 list:

1. Acemoglu, Daron and Simon Johnson. 2023. Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.
2. Aslanian, Sebouh. 2023. Early Modernity and Mobility:Port Cities and Printers across the Armenian Diaspora, 1512-1800. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
3. Dalrymple, William. 2019. The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. Bloomsbury Publishing
4. Griboyedov, Alexander. 1823. (2020). Woe from Wit. New York: Columbia University Press.
5. Keynes, John Maynard. 1919. The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Available via Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15776
6. Milanovic, Branko. 2023. Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
7. Nakamura, Yasushi. 2017.Monetary Policy in the Soviet Union: Empirical Analyses of Monetary Aspects of Soviet Economic Development. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan by Springer Nature.
8. Nove, Alec. 1961 (2012). The Soviet Economy (Routledge Revivals). Oxford: Routledge.
9. Roos, Jerome. 2019. Why Not Default? The Political Economy of Sovereign Debt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
   1. My review of Why Not Default? For the LSE Review of Books, here.
10. Scheidel, Walter. 2019. Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

There are few pieces that I’ve recently completed (two co-authored) that may also be of interest, all released this year. The first one deals directly with the economic prospects of the post-socialist economies (emphasis on the small) as of now and with a review of the past five years since the Transition Economies publication:

• Gevorkyan, Aleksandr V. 2023. History’s choke-hold: realities and economic development options of the small post-socialist economies. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4380754
• Gevorkyan A. V. 2023. Enhancing Development through Diaspora Engagement in Armenia. International Organization for Migration (IOM), Yerevan. Available online: https://armenia.un.org/en/228246-enhancing-development-through-diaspora-engagement-armenia
• Assa, J. and A.V. Gevorkyan. 2003. Reducing the Cost of Finance for Africa: the Role of Sovereign Credit Ratings. United Nations Development Programme – Regional Bureau for Africa. Available online: https://www.undp.org/africa/publications/lowering-cost-borrowing-africa-role-sovereign-credit-ratings
• Gevorkyan, A.V. and T. Khemraj. 2024. [Forthcoming in Review of Keynesian Economics] Dominant Currency Shocks and Foreign Exchange Pressure in the Periphery. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4235710

Don’t read all at once  happy readings!