Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated)

By one calculation, if no new cases were filed in India, it would still take 324 years to clear all the existing cases from the docket.

This idea has profound implications when it comes to something like organ donation. Spain, France, Norway, Israel, and many other countries have “opt-out” (or presumed consent) laws when it comes to organ donation. You are an organ donor unless you indicate otherwise, which you are free to do. (In contrast, the United States has an “opt-in” system,

Economics starts with one very important assumption: Individuals act to make themselves as well off as possible.

Good government makes a market economy possible. Period. And bad government, or no government, dashes capitalism against the rocks, which is one reason that billions of people live in dire poverty around the globe.

In 1999, Angola’s rulers spent $900 million in oil revenues to purchase weapons. Never mind that one child in three dies before the age of five and life expectancy is a shocking forty-two years.

In the years of communism, there were roughly two abortions for every single live birth. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western contraceptives have become widely available and the abortion rate has fallen by half.

By 1991, the Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation had been up and running for twelve years.3 Every day, twelve hundred employees reported to work with the avowed goal of producing fertilizer. There was just one small complication: The plant had never actually produced any salable fertilizer. None. Government bureaucrats ran the plant using public funds

Per capita income in the United States is higher than per capita income in France; the United States also has a higher proportion of children living in poverty.

Good policy uses incentives to channel behavior toward some desired outcome. Bad policy either ignores incentives, or fails to anticipate how rational individuals might change their behavior to avoid being penalized.

Self-interest makes the world go around, a point that seems so obvious as to be silly.