While physics describes the world in terms of mass, motion, and energy, economics describes the world in terms of costs, constraints, and choices. If people make choices on the basis of which ones will bring them the most happiness, they need a way of comparing how much happiness each possible thing brings with it. This book contains core ideas and concepts that economists agree are true and important — I try to steer clear of fads or ideas that foster a lot of disagreement.

Widespread literacy and education: Without highly educated inventors, new technologies don’t get invented.Along those lines, it’s important to point out that many poverty-related problems can be cured by extending to poorer nations the institutions that have already been proven by already-rich countries to lead to rising living standards. Because of the uneven playing field and the suspicions it creates, a lot of potentially beneficial economic transactions never get completed.

My son is currently studying GCSE economics and he as found it an invaluable book, better than most of the school texts that he has. In fact there is a wee bit of repetition, which is great because it's not boring and not horribly extensive. This fact means that oligopoly firms often end up competing against each other despite their best efforts not to. Financial crises are recessions triggered by the failure of important financial institutions to keep their financial promises.This information can be interesting and informative, but I’ve designed the book so that you don’t need to understand it to get the big picture about what’s going on. Here are the four basic market structures:

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  Perfect competition: Perfect competition happens when numerous small firms compete against each other. In the absence of externalities (costs or benefits that fall on persons not directly involved in an activity), the market equilibrium quantity, q * , is also the socially optimal output level. Usually, I think that the series works well for things like software and less well for more general subjects where the bitty structure and characteristic Dummies contents like the "Part of Tens" as well as the humour tend to get in the way.

  They’re allocatively efficient, which simply means that they produce the goods and services that consumers most greatly desire to consume. p>\n

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  Expansionary fiscal policy: Increasing government purchases of goods and services or decreasing taxes can stimulate the economy. Economics For Dummies is an approachable reference book for students, as well as an informative guide for anyone interested in learning more about today’s economy.Scarcity is the fundamental and unavoidable phenomenon that creates a need for the science of economics: There isn’t nearly enough time or stuff to satisfy all desires, so people have to make hard choices about what to produce and consume so that if they can’t have everything, they at least have the best that was possible under the circumstances. This gallery is dedicated to some of the best fiction and nonfiction portraying one of the greatest cities in the world. Suppose that you can see only the data in the preceding orange juice table and can’t look at Figure 1-1. You can gain a lot by studying choice behavior because if you can understand the choices people made in the past, you stand a good chance of understanding the choices they’ll make in the future. There is a very useful glossary of economic terms at the back as well as very brief summaries of the top 12 (it should be 10 but they squeezed two more in the list) most influential economists.

  Without scarcity of time, scarcity of resources, scarcity of information, scarcity of consumable goods, and scarcity of peace and goodwill on Earth, human beings would lack for nothing. The book is also divided into independent parts so that you can, for instance, read all about microeconomics without having to read anything about macroeconomics. This book gives you everything you need to understand our rapidly evolving economy―as well as the economic fundamentals that never change. This book is really helpful, it gives information in the most simple way it can, as I am a foreigner therefore it's even more important to me.This Dummies guide has your back, with online practice and chapter quizzes to help you get the score you need. Which I would guess would make it of greater use to the scholarly or student readership using it as a tutorial text but can be accessed by anyone.

  
  
  

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