My Favorite Essays (in progress)

In no particular order, the below are my all time favorite non-fiction readings (Borges is not fiction!):

1.  College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage. A superb article (a bucket list one by all means).
2. Econometric Policy Evaluation: A critique. Very econo-nerdy, but I really liked it.
3. The Role of Monetary Policy. If you read this one and you do not feel like you should have been an economist ... I just don't understand you.
4. Why we have never used the Black-Scholes-Merton Option Pricing Formula?. From the unbearable Nassim Nicholas Taleb (the black swan guy). Great paper.
5. Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. Only a genius could have written something like this. It is also a bucket list reading. I suggest to read it together with four. By the way, if you are a native Spanish speaker and you feel terrified by the idea of reading Borges in English; no worries, you can read it here instead.
6. Some Simple Economics of Mandated Benefits. Great ideas come in simple packages. Larry Summers might have been the worst president of Harvard University ever, but this one is a great essay.
7. There's something about macro. Before becoming a famous blogger Paul Krugman was already "blogging" at his MIT website.
8. What is seen and what is not seen. Yes, Bastiat. Really good.
9. Oracular philosophy and the revolt against reason. Chapter 24 of vol II of "The Open Society and its Enemies" by Karl Popper. Go buy the book, there is no link for it.
10. Why I am not a conservative? By Hayek, go read it.
11. Politics as Vocation and Science as Vocation. If you do not want to read both, then pick the first one.
12. What is philosophy? If you want to loose your religious faith, loose it with style. This one did it for me. If you are also terrified of reading Ortega y Gasset (who loved German) in English, the Spanish version is here.
13. The Labyrinth of Solitude. Want to show off in a party? This one is for you. It is more a self-portrait of the author than a description of Mexicans, but it is beautifully written (at least in Spanish, I have never read the English translation).
14. Expectations and Exchange Rate Dynamics. This is probably the only model on foreign exchange rates that I have actually understood. Pretty useful if you work in finance even if you probably cannot make money out of it.
15. Enforcing Property Rights Through Reputation: Mexico’s Early Industrialization, 1878–1913. Doing science in history is actually possible: math, stats and background narrative. All in one paper!