Economic Ideas You Should Forget

1. Capitalism
Daron Acemoglu

2. Sola Protestantism in Economics
Rüdiger Bachmann

3. Economics Has Nothing to Do with Religion
Sascha O. Becker

4. More Choice Is Always Better
Christine Benesch

5. People Are Outcome Oriented
Matthias Benz

6. Deriving People’s Trade Policy Preferences from Macroeconomic Trade Theory
Thomas Bernauer

7. Size (of Government) Doesn’t Matter
Tim Besley

8. Bayesianism
Ken Binmore

9. The Return on Equity
Urs Birchler

10. Peak Oil Theory
Charles B. Blankart

11. More Choice Is Always Better
Alan S. Blinder

12. (Un)Productive Labor
Monika Bütler

13. Volatility Is Risk
Peter Cauwels

14. Robots Will Take All Our Jobs
Reto Cueni

15. Economic Growth Increases People’s Well-Being
Richard A. Easterlin

16. Big Data Predictions Devoid of Theory
Thomas Ehrmann

17. Government Debts Are a Burden on Future Generations
Reiner Eichenberger

18. Public Spending Reduces Unemployment
Lars P. Feld

19. The Capital Asset Pricing Model
Pablo Fernandez

20. Innovation Programs Lead to Innovation
Gerd Folkers

21. Factors of Production Are Homogenous Within Categories
Nicolai J. Foss

22. Individual Utility Depends Only on Absolute Consumption
Robert Frank

23. The Relative Price Effect Explains Behavior
Bruno S. Frey

24. The Precedence of Exchange over Production
Jetta Frost

25. Inequality Reduces Growth
Clemens Fuest

26. Contingent Valuation, Willingness to Pay, and Willingness to Accept
Victor Ginsburgh

27. Governments Must Reduce Budget Deficits
Michael Graff

28. Reach for Your Dream
Allan Guggenbühl

29. The EU’s Competiveness Authority
Beat Gygi

30. Say’s Law
Jochen Hartwig

31. Boundedness of Rationality
Jürg Helbling

32. Rational Expectations
David F. Hendry

33. Letting Insolvent Banks Fail
Gerard Hertig

34. Pleasantville Politics: Selecting Politicians According to Ability
Bruno Heyndels

35. The Axioms of Revealed Preference
John Kay

36. There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: The Myth of Expansionary Consolidations
Gebhard Kirchgässner

37. Government Hurts the Economy More Than It Helps
Margaret Levi

38. The Motivated Armchair Approach to Preferences
Siegwart Lindenberg

39. Economics Is Based on Scientific Methods
Michael McAleer

40. The Death of Distance
Peter Nijkamp

41. Dump the Concept of Rationality Into the Deep Ocean
Karl-Dieter Opp

42. Pay for Performance Raises Performance
Margit Osterloh

43. Home Ownership Is Good
Andrew J. Oswald

44. Coase Theorem
Eric A. Posner

45. Poverty Is Good for Development
Martin Ravallion

46. Markets Are Efficient
Jean-Charles Rochet

47. CEOs Are Paid for Talent
Katja Rost

48. The Efficiency-Equity Tradeoff
Jeffrey D. Sachs

49. Deterministic Trend of Inequality
Christoph A. Schaltegger

50. Quantitative Easing
Kurt Schiltknecht

51. Hosting the Olympic Games
Sascha L. Schmidt

52. Abolishing Cash as Solution Against the Evil
Friedrich Schneider

53. Receiving Money and Not Having to Work Raises Happiness
Ronnie Schöb

54. Saints in Public Office
Gerhard Schwarz

55. Helicopter Money
Hans-Werner Sinn

56. Decisions Are Deterministic
Didier Sornette

57. Politicians Systematically Converge to the Median Voter
David Stadelmann

58. Artists Are Poor and thus Unhappy
Lasse Steiner

59. Returns on Educational Investments Are Highest for Early Childhood Interventions
Elsbeth Stern

60. EU Centralization
Armin Steuernagel

61. The Alleged Asymmetry in Maintaining a Fixed Exchange Rate
Jan-Egbert Sturm

62. Governments Should Maximize the Happiness of the Population
Alois Stutzer

63. Okun’s Equality-Efficiency Trade-Off
Mark Thoma

64. “A Rising Tide Raises All Boats”
David Throsby

65. Social Cost Analysis
Robert D. Tollison

66. Natural Resources Make Rich
Rick Ploeg

67. The Natural Rate of Interest Is Positive
Carl Christian Weizsäcker

68. Europe’s “Skill Shortage”
Joachim Voth

69. Taxes Are Paid Because of Expected Punishment
Hannelore Weck-Hannemann

70. Better Safe than Sorry
Antoinette Weibel

71. The End of Work
Boris Zürcher

72. Postscript
Bruno S. Frey, David Iselin

Keywords: Popular Science, Popular Science in Economics, History of Economic Thought/Methodology