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

Burton Malkiel, who was kind enough to write the foreword for this book, has written one of the best: A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Rather, this chapter is about what a basic understanding of markets—the ideas covered in the first two chapters—can tell us about personal investing. Any investment strategy must obey the basic laws of economics, jus

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.

It is remarkable enough that we can now shop for a television twenty-four hours a day from the comfort of our own homes; it is equally amazing that in 1971 a twenty-five-inch color television set cost an average worker 174 hours of wages. Today, a twenty-five-inch color television set—one that is more dependable, gets more channels, and has better

Taxes that fall more heavily on the poor than the rich, so-called regressive taxes, often offend our sense of justice.

One powerful feature of a market economy is that it directs resources to their most productive use.

The field of behavioral economics has evolved as a marriage between psychology and economics that offers sophisticated insight into how humans really make decisions.

In America, there is no central authority that tells stores what items to stock, as there was in the Soviet Union. Stores sell the products that people want to buy, and, in turn, companies produce items that stores want to stock. The Soviet economy failed in large part because government bureaucrats directed everything, from the number of bars of s

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,

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.