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| Preface | |
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| Can You Get Too Much of a Good Thing? | |
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| The Price of a Good | |
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| Life Is Full of Tradeoffs | |
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| Can There Ever Be Too Little of a Bad Thing? | |
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| Actions Speak Louder Than Words | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| There Is a Right Amount of Everything | |
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| Benefits and Costs | |
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| Total and Marginal Magnitudes | |
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| Finding the Optimum by Thinking in Terms of Marginal Benefits and Marginal Costs | |
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| Hitting Yourself in the Head With a Hammer | |
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| The Right Amount of Time to Play Tennis | |
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| A View of Life | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Have a Question, Build a Theory | |
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| If You Are Eight, Then You Should See | |
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| There Is Cause for Concern if a Theory Cannot Be Falsified | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Change Often Begets Change | |
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| The Way Things Could Be | |
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| Why Dieters Often Don't Lose Weight | |
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| Price Ceilings | |
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| One Change Begets Another Change Begets the Need for Empirical Evidence | |
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| To Tell the Whole Story, We Need to Identify All the Changes | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Why Is It Harder to Predict Than to Explain? | |
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| What Do You Need to Know to Make a Prediction? | |
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| What Do You Need to Know to Give an Explanation? | |
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| If You're So Smart, Then Why Aren't You Rich? | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Did You Really Mean to Pay for That? | |
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| Why Not Give Goods Instead of Money? | |
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| Let's Change the Example and See if We Get Different Results | |
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| Why Professors Might Say No to Review Sessions | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Is the Grass Really Greener on the Other Side of the Fence? | |
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| Which Stock Is Better? | |
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| Let's Summarize Our Analysis | |
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| Now Let's Look at House Prices | |
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| Which Is the "Greener" Side of the Fence? | |
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| A Pinch of Reality | |
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| Are Physicians Really Rich? | |
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| Trying to Stop the Adjustment Process | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Why There Will Always Be Lies and Liars | |
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| We Lie to Ourselves All the Time | |
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| Why Do People Lie? | |
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| What Are People Most Likely to Lie About? | |
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| Reducing the Number of Lies | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| How Things Will Turn Out | |
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| The Economist's Mindset | |
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| Our Divorce Situation | |
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| An Important Condition Is Necessary to Reach Our Conclusion | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| What Kinds of Explanations Do Economists Use? | |
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| Grapes in California and New York | |
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| Use What Works Often and Well | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Good Things Can Just Happen | |
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| What Are the Benefits of Money? | |
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| Money Was Not Invented | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Winners and Losers | |
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| Positive-Sum Games | |
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| Negative-Sum Games | |
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| Zero-Sum Games | |
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| How the Economist Thinks About the Various Games | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Life Is Just One Big Real Estate Market | |
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| What Does Superior Market Position Imply? | |
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| What the Economist Will Do at This Point | |
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| The College Market | |
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| The Dating Market | |
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| The Marriage Market | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Rational Men and Women | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Rationing Devices | |
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| Many Arguments in Life Are About Rationing Devices | |
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| "That's Not Fair" | |
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| No Matter What the Rationing Device, People Will Compete for It | |
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| The Beauty of Money Price as a Rationing Device | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Where's Waldo? Where's the Economics? | |
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| Aisle, Window, and Middle-of-the-Row Seats | |
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| Overhead Compartments | |
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| Will More Overhead Compartment Space Do the Trick? | |
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| Going to the Restroom | |
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| The Curtain | |
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| Airline Magazines | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Drug Busts and SUVs, or the Importance of Thinking in Threes | |
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| Drug Busts and Crime | |
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| SUVs and Terrorism | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Is It the Same Everywhere? Is It the Same All the Time? | |
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| New York Apartments | |
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| The Question the Economist Asks | |
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| Gas Prices and Another Question the Economist Asks | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Gifts, Trades, and Transfers | |
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| Gifts | |
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| Trades | |
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| Transfers | |
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| Looking for Gifts, Trades, and Transfers | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| There Are No $10 Bills on the Sidewalk | |
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| How Does the $10 Bill Principle Help the Economist? | |
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| The $10 Bill Principle and the Law of Demand | |
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| The $10 Bill Principle and Cheating on Cartel Agreements | |
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| The $10 Bill Principle and Hiring | |
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| Is It Over Yet? | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Ratios: More Than Twice As Good | |
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| Ratio of Percentage Change in Dollar Income to Percentage Change in Prices | |
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| Ratio of Quantity Demanded to Quantity Supplied | |
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| Ratio of Prices in One Year to Prices in Another Year | |
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| Ratio of Percentage Change in Quantity Demanded to Percentage Change in Price | |
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| Ratio of Average Variable Cost to Price | |
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| Ratio of Marginal Revenue to Marginal Cost | |
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| Will It Last? | |
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| Another Will-It-Last Ratio | |
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| Buddha's Ratio | |
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| Finding Your Own Ratios | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| More Than Common Sense Is Needed | |
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| How Would You Answer This Question? | |
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| Why Didn't Ricardo Simply Rely on His Common Sense? Or, How Can We Become Ricardians? | |
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| Adam Smith Had a Puzzle Too | |
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| Common Sense and a Ratio | |
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| How Do I Know When I'm Wrong? | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Did I Ask for This? Would I Have Asked for This? | |
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| We Sometimes Constrain Ourselves for a Good Reason | |
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| Do Students Want Challenging Exams? | |
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| Are Speeding Tickets a Bad? | |
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| Bosses and Workers | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |
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| Right for Me, Right for You, But Wrong for Us | |
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| The Cold War | |
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| Disneyland | |
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| Self-Interest and Group Outcome | |
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| Analysis of a Negative Outcome-The Free Rider | |
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| What the Economist Thinks | |
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| Questions to Answer | |