How can this be? Are not many murders crimes of passion or acts of irrationality? Perhaps so. But there are two responses to this objection. First, Ehrlich's results indicate that each execution prevents 8 murders; it does not indicate which 8 murders are prevented. As long as some murderers can be deterred, capital punishment can be a deterrent. The second response is this: Why should we expect that people engaged in crimes of passion would fail to respond to incentives? We can imagine a man who hates his wife so much that under ordinary circumstances he would do her in if he thought he had a 90% chance of escaping execution. Perhaps in a moment of rage, he becomes so carried away that he will kill her even if he has only a 20% chance of escaping execution. Then even in the moment of rage, it matters very much whether he perceives his chances to be 15% or 25%. Witty economists are about as easy to find as anorexic mezzo-sopranos, natty mujahedeen, and cheerful Philadelphians. But Steven E. Landsburg...is one economist who fits the bill. In a wide-ranging, easily digested, unbelievably contrarian survey of everything from why popcorn at movie houses costs so much to why recycling may actually reduce the number of trees on the planet, the University of Rochester professor valiantly turns the discussion of vexing economic questions into an activity that ordinary people might enjoy.

This is not just the worst book masquerading as an introduction to economics I've read - it's a textbook example of the kind of malicious tunnel vision logic that causes people who've taken a bad quality econ 101 course to go around extolling the virtues of the perfect free market with the typical disdain that half knowledge and bad actors bring when they maliciously try to wow interested novices into a field they might have little to no experience in - but using 'logic' will bamboozle the reader into aligning with the author's rather crazy and fringe ideas about political theory, policy and human behavior. In this revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg’s hugely popular book, he applies economic theory to today’s most pressing concerns, answering a diverse range of daring questions, such as:P.S. Since I joined GoodReads, I’ve tried to make a habit of reviewing everything I’ve read more or less right after I finished it, if only as a reminder to myself of what it was and what I thought of it. For the most part, it’s proven to be a pretty good discipline, and I’ve enjoyed it, and in the process, encountered some fascinating fellow readers in the world, so bonus points there, and now just you shut up about the narcissism of it all, if you please. The Armchair Economist is a wonderful little book, written by someone for whom English is a first (and beloved) language, and it contains not a single graph or equation...Landsburg presents fascinating concepts in a form easily accessible to noneconomists. Why money is good?-->There is one instance shared by the author in which he and his wife fight over the movie to be watched while having dinner. They come up with a novel solution to decide which movie will play and the method of selection will create a win-win situation. Both of them allotted an amount of money to their choice of movie. Whichever amount will be higher will win and that movie will be played. Here's the catch, the winner will have to pay the smaller amount to the loser. The decision has been reached upon by the simple logic that how much monetary value does one attribute to the movie or how much money are you willing to lose to watch that movie. Novel, isn’t it?

Revised edition on sale May 1. In this revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg’s hugely popular book, he applies economic theory to today’s most pressing concerns, answering a diverse range of daring questions, such as: Why are seat belts deadly? Why do celebrity endorsements sell products? Why are failed executives paid so much? Who should bear the cost of oil spills? Do government deficits matter? How is workplace safety bad for workers? What’s wrong with the local foods movement? Which rich people can’t be taxed? Why is rising unemployment sometimes good? Why do women pay more at the dry cleaner? Why is life full of disappointments? Whether these are nagging questions you’ve always had, or ones you never even thought to ask, this new edition of The Armchair Economist turns the eternal ideas of economic theory into concrete answers that you can use to navigate the challenges of contemporary life. Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life by Steven E. Landsburg – eBook Details PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Armchair_Economist_-_Steven_E_Landsburg.pdf, The_Armchair_Economist_-_Steven_E_Landsburg.epub This means that if you chose this book randomly off the shelf, it would be as likely to exceed your expectations as to fall short of them. But you didn’t choose it randomly off the shelf. Rational consumer that you are, you chose it because it was one of the few available books that you expected to be among the very best. Unfortunately that makes it one of the few available books whose quality you are most likely to have overestimated. Under the circumstances, to read it is to court disappointment." After this slight digression into the challenges of empirical research, let me return to my main topic: the power of incentives. It is the economist's second nature to account for that power. Will the invention of a better birth control technique reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies? Not necessarily -- the invention reduces the "price" of sexual intercourse (unwanted pregnancies being a component of that price) and thereby induces people to engage in more of it. The percentage of sexual encounters that lead to pregnancy goes down, the number of sexual encounters goes up, and the number of unwanted pregnancies can go either down or up. Will energy-efficient cars reduce our consumption of gasoline? Not necessarily -- an energy-efficient car reduces the price of driving, and people will choose to drive more. Low-tar cigarettes could lead to a higher incidence of lung cancer. Low-calorie synthetic fats could increase the average weight of Americans.People respond to incentives" sounds innocuous enough, and almost everyone will admit its validity as a general principle. What distinguishes the economist is his insistence on taking the principle seriously at all times. Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

There were parts of this which I would recommend to many people - explanations of commerce and government spending that made a hell of a lot of sense and which cut through the rubbish we see all the time in social and news media, stuff which I'd encourage everyone to take on board to avoid lazy assumptions and being a bit gullible. Some of the key discussions of 'zero sum' games/situations had great clarity. The extensively revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg’s hugely popular book, The Armchair Economist—“a delightful compendium of quotidian examples illustrating important economic and financial theories” ( The Journal of Finance). Another problem that Landsburg covers is price discrimination, which he finds an inherent part of the market. The author provides several examples in which price discrimination can and cannot work, showing that its success depends on the target customer group and the industry’s conditions. For instance, a difference between a barber and a baker offering senior discounts is the person that is able to use the service immediately (Landsburg, p. 42). A person cannot get a haircut at a lower price if they are a senior, while someone could ask their grandmother to buy them bread. Thus, this tactic works in particular markets, and managers should always consider the demographic they aim to attract (Chevalier and Kashyap, p. 128). There are two technologies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit, and the other is to grow them in Iowa. Everybody knows about the first technology; let me tell you about the second. First you plant seeds, which are the raw material from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships, and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them. The details of Ehrlich's methods have been widely criticized by other economists, but it is possible to make too much of this. Most of the criticisms involve esoteric questions of statistical technique. Such questions are important. But there is widespread agreement in the economics profession that the sort of empirical study that Ehrlich undertook is capable of revealing important truths about the effect of capital punishment.

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Even before the regulations went into effect, any economist could have predicted one of their consequences: The number of auto accidents increased. The reason is that the threat of being killed in an accident is a powerful incentive to drive carefully. But a driver with a seat belt and a padded dashboard faces less of a threat. Because people respond to incentives, drivers are less careful. The result is more accidents. Let me mention a third response as well. Ehrlich did not just make up the number 8; he arrived at it through a sophisticated analysis of data. Skepticism is fine, but it is incumbent on the serious skeptic to examine the research with an open mind and to pinpoint what step in the reasoning, if any, he finds suspicious.) That means that protection for Detroit does more than just transfer income from farmers to autoworkers. It also raises the total cost of providing Americans with a given number of automobiles. The efficiency loss comes with no offsetting gain; it impoverishes the nation as a whole. Then about halfway through, the author has a whole section dedicated to points where the media "said something stupid about economics" (not a direct quote but Lord does it make me roll my eyes). Suddenly we went from fun simplified theoretical economical problems and solutions - to bashing people for stating things that the author doesn't agree with. Maybe he has a point but all it served to do was enlighten me to his arrogance. And his condescending attitude. This soured the rest of the book.