Economics in Two Lessons

Thanks to everyone who commented on the first nine chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons.

Here’s a draft of Chapter 10: Market failure -Externalities and pollution. Comments, criticism and praise are welcome.

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Thanks to everyone who the first seven chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons. I’ve tried to think about all of them and respond to as many as possible, but I’m seeking comments from quite a few sources and may have missed some. Feel free to remind me if you think you have a point that’s been overlooked.,

I’ve just posted a draft of Chapter 8:Unemployment. This is one of the most important chapters in the book where I confront a central error in both Hazlitt and Bastiat – the implicit assumption that full employment is the norm in a market economy. So,

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Thanks to everyone who the first six chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. That brings us to the end of Lesson 1: Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers.

Now its time for Lesson Two: Market prices don’t reflect all the opportunity costs we face as a society.

I’ll start with a brief intro and then the draft of Chapter 7: Property rights, and income distribution

As usual, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement.
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Thanks to everyone who the first five chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. Now here’s the draft of Chapter 6: The opportunity cost of destruction This is the last part of the book devoted to Lesson 1 Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers. and the one where I agree mostly with Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. It seems particularly apposite 15 years after the beginning of the Iraq War.

As usual, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement. I’d appreciate any comments on/ alternative suggestions for the opening quote – it’s not a perfect fit, but the best I could come up with.

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Thanks to everyone who the first four chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. I’m continuing with policy applications of Lesson 1: Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers.
That will be followed by Lesson 2: Market prices don’t reflect all the opportunity costs we face as a society.

Now here’s the draft of Chapter 5. Again, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement.
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Thanks to everyone who the first three chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. I’ve learned a lot from the comments and made changes in response to some of them. These chapters have been a bit abstract, but now I’m moving on to some applications, which might be more interesting for some readers. Here’s the introduction to Part II

Lesson 1, Part II: Applications

The economic analysis showing how market equilibrium prices reflect the opportunity costs facing producers and consumers is elegant and, for a certain kind of mind, convincing.

For most of us, however, it’s more useful to see how the logic of prices and opportunity costs works in particular cases, sometimes in ways that conflict with strongly held intuitions. This will also give us more insight into the ways in which prices can fail to reflect opportunity costs for society as a whole, some of which we will examine in Lesson 2.
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Now here’s the draft of Chapter 4:Lesson 1: Applications. Again, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement.
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Thanks to everyone who commented on Chapter 2 of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. I’ve learned a lot from the comments but haven’t yet had time to respond to them.

Now here’s the draft of Chapter 3. Again, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement.

The book so far is available
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Chapter 1
draft of Chapter 2
Feel free to make further comments on these chapters if you wish.

A comment on my last post, about Chapter 2 of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons, convinced me that I needed to include something about bounded rationality. I shouldn’t have needed convincing, since this is my main area of theoretical research, but I hadn’t been able to work out where to work this into the book. I’m still not sure, but at least I’ve written something I’m reasonably happy with. Comments, praise and criticism welcome as usual.

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Thanks to everyone who commented on Chapter 1 my book, Economics in Two Lessons. I’ve benefited a lot from the comments and implemented quite a few changes.

The book so far is available
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Chapter 1
Feel free to make further comments on these chapters if you wish.

Moving along, here’s the draft of Chapter 2. Again, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement.

At the suggestion of a reader , I’m posting a draft Table of Contents for Economics in Two Lessonshere
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Thanks to everyone who commented on the draft introduction to my book, Economics in Two Lessons. The revised introduction is here. Feel free to make further comments on it if you wish.

Moving along, here’s the draft of Chapter 1. Again, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement.

I’ve finally committed to delivering a manuscript of my long-overdue book Economics in Two Lessons. As part of the process, I’m going to post the chapters, one at a time, and ask for comments, criticism, encouragement and so on. To begin at the beginning, here’s the Introduction.

I’m working on the environmental policy chapter of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons, which is a reply to Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, which in turn is a repackaging of Bastiat’s What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen. Hazlitt was aware of the difficulties posed for laissez-faire by pollution, and chose to avoid the issue. But, on Googling Bastiat + pollution, I came across a remarkable package in which Bastiat anticipates the climate change debate and takes the denialist side in advancee.

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Another excerpt from my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons (partial draft here). As usual, praise is welcome, useful criticism even more so.

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