"The Armchair Economist"
Nov. 3rd, 2006 05:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guslI've made it halfway through Landsburg's "The Armchair Economist". He seems to alternate between:
* speculative mode, in which he tackles non-traditional economic questions, e.g. "why does popcorn cost so much at movie theaters?", and
* skeptic / critic mode. The main target of his criticism is the media for its disrespect of economics as a science: in economics, everyone is invited to say what they think, unlike subjects like physics, where expertise is expected.
The first sounds like it would be more fun, but the tone of the latter makes it fun throughout.
He also taught me the name of the fundamental theorem that says that markets lead to efficient resource allocations: The first fundamental theorem of welfare economics. Since the theorem says nothing about the agents being human, this is a general idea, and applies to e.g. designing distributed algorithms efficiently.
* speculative mode, in which he tackles non-traditional economic questions, e.g. "why does popcorn cost so much at movie theaters?", and
* skeptic / critic mode. The main target of his criticism is the media for its disrespect of economics as a science: in economics, everyone is invited to say what they think, unlike subjects like physics, where expertise is expected.
The first sounds like it would be more fun, but the tone of the latter makes it fun throughout.
He also taught me the name of the fundamental theorem that says that markets lead to efficient resource allocations: The first fundamental theorem of welfare economics. Since the theorem says nothing about the agents being human, this is a general idea, and applies to e.g. designing distributed algorithms efficiently.