Happy New Year to all readers of this blog.

I thought a top ten of the past year would be a suitable final post of 2009. Here they are:

1. Review of Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen
2. Review of the Public Domain by James Boyle
3. George Orwell on money and the lack of it
4. Warren Buffet – a guest review by Nick Clack of The Snowball
5. Martin Wolf scares me on global finance
6. Pre-university reading lists
7. Books, e-books and the decline of civilisation – or perhaps not
8. The Idea of Justice
9. Murder, mayhem and capitalism – not strictly economics
10. The Romantic Economist guest reviews The Nature of Technology

I didn't seasonally adjust the figures nor take account of the (upward!) time trend in the number of readers through the year. So make of them what you will. And please carry on reading in 2010.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, of which I'm a big fan, isn't strictly about economics. But not only does it have a business journalist as hero, the third volume (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, a Christmas present) is all about governance. There could hardly be a hotter topic in economics. The book is fiction not fact so I assume it exaggerates the vulnerability of Sweden's democracy to rogue secret policemen. On the other hand, all the western democracies have seen erosions of civil liberties thanks to the threat of terror attacks, so it's useful to be reminded that democracy is a constant process rather than a permanent state. It's also a great testament to a thriller that it can keep the reader turning the page when the heroine is immobilized and isolated in a hospital bed for much of the book.

The other aspect I really appreciated is the author's feminism. Remember feminism? Women of my age will recall the heady days of the late 1970s when the momentum towards not only equal rights but equal outcomes seemed unstoppable. Not only did it grind to a halt, but the attainments and status of women have gone into reverse in the noughties. The economics profession has always been dire in this regard, and I haven't seen any improvement. Women have been more or less purged from the City, from the Cabinet and senior political ranks, have gained no ground in the boardrooms of big companies. This despite a compelling case that diversity in the conventional politically correct sense – women and men, people of different ages, races and cultural backgrounds – strengthens organisations. (See Scott Page's The Difference, a brilliant book on this subject.) There are next to no senior women to be seen in the papers or on the news, so no role models. Any women who gain power and prominence tend to be subjected to nasty, sexist comments in the media.

So I like an author who's a feminist. And although Larsson's heroine, Lisbeth Salander, is anti-social and frankly not very nice, I adore her. She's an expert computer hacker, adept at martial arts, mathematically gifted and tough and stroppy as anything. What's not to like?

I've posted before about the Google Books Settlement (and my reasons for opting out). For those who find the legal settlement and the decision complicated – pretty much anybody – Gillian Spraggs, whom I cited before, has done an excellent update.

Whatever your inclination, if you've written a book covered by the settlement, I highly recommend reading this article. The key date is 28 January 2010, for opting out of the settment, with a final fairness hearing 3 weeks later. Dr Spraggs has done a public service in working to understand what the deal means and to explain it so clearly. The full 367 page settlement is online too, for reference.

It's the time of year when the newspapers are full of year in retrospect and year ahead features, and there seems to be a general feeling that the major industrial economies are over the worst. Macro indicators seem to be showing signs of stabilisation, unemployment is nothing like as bad as feared, and the financial markets have been quite perky. Is it all too good to be true?

I certainly thought so after finishing The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth, edited by James Ledbetter and Daniel Roth. Roth Senior was a lawyer in his late 30s in 1931 when he started a diary chronicling the way the Depression played out in the steel town of Youngstown, Ohio. It isn't exactly a page-turner – the diary format means there's no dramatic thread pulling you through a narrative. However, it is illuminating in several ways.

For one thing, the impact of bank failures makes one realize just how important deposit insurance and guarantees have been in limiting the devastation caused by our financial crisis. Banking is so fundamental to the economy that's it's alarming to reflect on how little change there has been in the regulation and oversight of the system post-crisis. What are policymakers thinking of?

The second lesson is that commentators and policymakers are so eager to say that the worst is past that they keep on saying it. Nobody at the time expected the Depression of the 1930s to last as long as it did. Maybe we're prey to the same delusion this time?

There are other highlights too. Roth was a Republican and it's very interesting to read a critical appraisal of FDR, so sanctified is his reputation now. Roth also used the experience of the long slump to teach himself the principles of value investing.

Anyway, the New York Times liked the book too. One to read on New Year's Eve before heading out for a party to see in 2010?

Through the mailbox today, a great Christmas present courtesy of the publicity department at Yale University Press – Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy. How could I not love it, with that title? I've been looking forward to reading it properly, and with a few days' holiday now, the timing couldn't be better.

The blurb says:

“Mokyr goes beyond the standard explanations
that credit  geographical factors, the role of markets, politics, and
society to show that the beginnings of modern economic growth in
Britain depended a great deal on what key players knew and believed,
and how those beliefs affected their economic behavior. He argues that
Britain led the rest of Europe into the Industrial Revolution because
it was there that the optimal intersection of ideas, culture,
institutions, and technology existed to make rapid economic growth
achievable. His wide-ranging evidence covers sectors of the British
economy often neglected, such as the service industries.”

A review will follow in due course.

Meanwhile, Season's Greetings to all readers of this blog.