I’ve been putting together a progress studies reading list for myself, drawing upon reading lists found on the internet. I’ve also seen people repeatedly asking for reading lists and being pointed in different directions. So, I thought it may be helpful to some to collect the various progress studies (related) reading lists I’ve come across thatI’m using for my own reading.
Quick caveat, the progress studies field is quite diverse consisting of people working on different fields: growth, economic history, innovation etc. Thus, I’ve kept the scope fairly broad. Also, I imagine there’s substantial overlap between many of the lists.
Here it is:
- Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe and co-author of ‘We Need a New Science of Progress’) has a link to various articles/books on progress, growth, fast projects, social/cultural change, and research labs.
- Matt Clancy (assistant professor of economics at Iowa State University) has an economics of innovation reading list.
- Daniel May has a Progress Studies reading list covering a wide array of topics. He also has smaller lists on economic history, longtermism, and growth.
- Jasmine Wang has a list of Progress Studies related readings.
- Jason Crawford (Roots of Progress) has a bibliography of books he has read on Progress Studies.
- Dietrith Vollrath (Professor of Economics at the University of Houston) has released some of his teaching materials online, with a focus on economic growth. He has classes on: intermediate undergraduate macroeconomics/growth, graduate macroeconomics/growth, and a higher-level graduate class on growth and development.
- Chad Jones (Professor of Economics at Stanford) has some of his teaching materials online, with a focus on economic growth. An intermediate class on growth, and for the more adventurous, a PhD class on growth, with a focus on analysing papers at the frontier of economic growth. *this link is temporarily down.
- Anton Howes has reading lists from undergraduate classes he previously taught. ‘The World Economy and its History‘ and ‘Capitalism: For & Against‘.
- Richard Ngo has a reading list on longtermism and existential risks.
- David Bernard has a reading list on various global problems (global priorities research). It’s a syllabus intended for economists but I think many of the ideas can be intuitively understood without a technical background.
- The Charter Cities Institute has a reading list on Charter Cities.
- The Institute for Competitive Governance has a reading list on Charter Cities.
- Although these lists haven’t been updated for a while, Pseudoerasmus has a list of economic history books and economic history papers.
- Sami Mubarak has a list of government/policy related readings, spanning a lot of different areas related to Progress Studies.
- Tony Morley has a recommended list of books on: Australian progress, energy and resources, and the history of civilisation.
- Sagar Devkate, Rahul Garg, and Jason Crawford put together an amazing assortment of progress studies related books, articles, podcasts, papers, and videos.
A few other quick mentions:
- Anton Howes also has a newsletter on, “the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation.”.
- Jason Crawford has a great podcast, ‘The Torch of Progress’, which invites guests to talk about topics related to progress, which I’d definitely recommend.
- Tyler Cowen has a great podcast “Conversations with Tyler”, with a variety of guests. Quite a few focus on progress-related topics.
- ‘Works in Progress’ is an online magazine (released every quarter) with a focus on progress.
If I’ve missed anything, please reach out to me and I’ll add it to this list. I hope to continually update this with new resources.
I’m on Twitter @krisgulati, where I tweet about the causes and consequences of progress, economic growth, technological change, and innovation.
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