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• Cover
• Introduction
• About This Book
• Foolish Assumptions
• Icons Used in This Book
• Beyond the Book
• Where to Go from Here
• Part 1: Economics: The Science of How People Deal with Scarcity
• Chapter 1: What Economics Is and Why You Should Care
• Considering a Little Economic History
• Framing Economics as the Science of Scarcity
• Sending Microeconomics and Macroeconomics to Separate Corners
• Understanding How Economists Use Models and Graphs
• Chapter 2: Cookies or Ice Cream? Exploring Consumer Choices
• Describing Human Behavior with a Choice Model
• Pursuing Personal Happiness
• You Can’t Have Everything: Examining Limitations
• Making Your Choice: Deciding What and How Much You Want
• Exploring Violations and Limitations of the Economist’s Choice Model
• Chapter 3: Producing Stuff to Maximize Happiness
• Figuring Out What’s Possible to Produce
• Deciding What to Produce
• Promoting Technology and Innovation
• Part 2: Microeconomics: The Science of Consumer and Firm Behavior
• Chapter 4: Supply and Demand Made Easy
• Deconstructing Demand
• Sorting Out Supply
• Bringing Supply and Demand Together
• Price Controls: Keeping Prices Away from Market Equilibrium
• Chapter 5: Introducing Homo Economicus, the Utility-Maximizing Consumer
• Choosing by Ranking
• Getting Less from More: Diminishing Marginal Utility
• Choosing Among Many Options When Facing a Limited Budget
• Deriving Demand Curves from Diminishing Marginal Utility
• Chapter 6: The Core of Capitalism: The Profit-Maximizing Firm
• A Firm’s Goal: Maximizing Profits
• Facing Competition
• Analyzing a Firm’s Cost Structure
• Comparing Marginal Revenues with Marginal Costs
• Pulling the Plug: When Producing Nothing Is Your Best Bet
• Chapter 7: Why Economists Love Free Markets and Competition
• Ensuring That Benefits Exceed Costs: Competitive Free Markets
• When Free Markets Lose Their Freedom: Dealing with Deadweight Losses
• Hallmarks of Perfect Competition: Zero Profits and Lowest Possible Costs
• Chapter 8: Monopolies: Bad Behavior without Competition
• Examining Profit-Maximizing Monopolies
• Comparing Monopolies with Competitive Firms
• Considering Good Monopolies
• Regulating Monopolies
• Chapter 9: Oligopoly and Monopolistic Competition: Middle Grounds
• Oligopolies: Looking at the Allure of Joining Forces
• Understanding Incentives to Cheat the Cartel
• Regulating Oligopolies
• Studying a Hybrid: Monopolistic Competition
• Part 3: Applying the Theories of Microeconomics
• Chapter 10: Property Rights and Wrongs
• Allowing Markets to Reach Socially Optimal Outcomes
• Examining Externalities: The Costs and Benefits Others Feel from Your Actions
• Tragedy of the Commons: Overexploiting Commonly Owned Resources
• Chapter 11: Asymmetric Information and Public Goods
• Facing Up to Asymmetric Information
• Providing Public Goods
• Chapter 12: Health Economics and Healthcare Finance
• Defining Health Economics and Healthcare Finance
• Noting the Limits of Health Insurance
• Comparing Healthcare Internationally
• Inflated Demand: Suffering from “Free” and Reduced-Cost Healthcare
• Investigating Singapore’s Secrets
• Chapter 13: Behavioral Economics: Investigating Irrationality
• Explaining the Need for Behavioral Economics
• Complementing Neo-Classical Economics with Behavioral Economics
• Examining our Amazing, Efficient, and Error-Prone Brains
• Surveying Prospect Theory
• Countering Myopia and Time Inconsistency
• Gauging Fairness and Self-Interest
• Part 4: Macroeconomics: The Science of Economic Growth and Stability
• Chapter 14: How Economists Measure the Macroeconomy
• Getting a Grip on the GDP (and Its Parts)
• Diving In to the GDP Equation
• Making Sense of International Trade and Its Effect on the Economy
• Chapter 15: Inflation Frustration: Why More Money Isn’t Always Good
• Buying an Inflation: When Too Much Money Is a Bad Thing
• Measuring Inflation
• Pricing the Future: Nominal and Real Interest Rates
• Chapter 16: Understanding Why Recessions Happen
• Introducing the Business Cycle
• Striving for Full-Employment Output
• Returning to Y*: The Natural Result of Price Adjustments
• Responding to Economic Shocks: Short-Run and Long-Run Effects
• Heading toward Recession: Getting Stuck with Sticky Prices
• Achieving Equilibrium with Sticky Prices: The Keynesian Model
• Chapter 17: Fighting Recessions with Monetary and Fiscal Policy
• Stimulating Demand to End Recessions
• Generating Inflation: The Risk of Too Much Stimulation
• Figuring Out Fiscal Policy
• Dissecting Monetary Policy
• Chapter 18: Grasping Origins and Effects of Financial Crises
• Understanding How Debt-Driven Bubbles Develop
• Seeing the Bubble Burst
• After the Crisis: Looking at Recovery
• Part 5: The Part of Tens
• Chapter 19: Ten Seductive Economic Fallacies
• The Lump of Labor
• The World Is Facing Overpopulation
• Sequence Indicates Causation
• Protectionism Is the Best Solution to Foreign Competition
• The Fallacy of Composition
• If It’s Worth Doing, Do It 100 Percent
• Free Markets Are Dangerously Unstable
• Low Foreign Wages Mean That Rich Countries Can’t Compete
• Tax Rates Don’t Affect Work Effort
• Forgetting Unintended Consequences
• Chapter 20: Ten Economic Ideas to Hold Dear
• Self-Interest Can Improve Society
• Free Markets Require Regulation
• Economic Growth Relies on Innovation
• Freedom and Democracy Make Us Richer
• Education Raises Living Standards
• Intellectual Property Boosts Innovation
• Weak Property Rights Cause All Environmental Problems
• International Trade Is a Good Thing
• Government Can Provide Public Goods
• Preventing Inflation Is Easy
• Chapter 21: Ten (Or So) Famous Economists
• Adam Smith
• David Ricardo
• Karl Marx
• Alfred Marshall
• John Maynard Keynes
• Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu
• Milton Friedman
• Paul Samuelson
• Robert Solow
• Gary Becker
• Robert Lucas
• Appendix: Glossary
• About the Author
• Advertisement Page
• Connect with Dummies
• Index
• End User License Agreement