The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life

Most people associate economics with larg-scale wonders like the stock-market, big business, and international trade. Most people also assume that economists are dismally technical. Stephen Landsburg attempts to prove them wrong. He shows how the laws of economics can reveal themselves in surprising and humorous ways. He demonstrates that, no matter what the endeavour, people respond to incentives in understandable, if not always predictable ways. By illustrating how economists think about daily experience, he lays the basis for a richer appreciation of the full range of economic activity. In this guided tour of the familiar, through an unfamiliar lens, Landsburg explains many of the key issues of economics in chapters that read more like detective stories than textbook lessons.