The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas 牛奶可乐经济学

作者： Robert Frank 著

出 版 社：

出版时间： 2008-4-1字数：版次： 1页数： 226印刷时间：开本： 大32开印次： 1纸张：I S B N ： 9780465003570包装： 平装内容简介

Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando? For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of learning how economic principles operate in the real world-which they do everywhere, all the time. Once you learn to think like an economist, all kinds of puzzling observations start to make sense. Drive-up ATM keypads have Braille dots because it’s cheaper to make the same machine for both drive-up and walk-up locations. Travelers from Kansas City to Orlando pay less because they are usually price-sensitive tourists with many choices of destination, whereas travelers originating from Orlando typically choose Kansas City for specific family or business reasons. The Economic Naturalist employs basic economic principles to answer scores of intriguing questions from everyday life, and, along the way, introduces key ideas such as the cost-benefit principle, the “no cash on the table” principle, and the law of one price. This is as delightful and painless a way to learn fundamental economics as there is.

作者简介

Robert H. Frank is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. His “Economic Scene” column appears monthly in the New York Times. His previous books include The Winner-Take-All Society (with Philip Cook), Luxury Fever, and Principles of Economics (with Ben Bernanke). Frank’s many awards include the Apple Distinguished Teaching Award and the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

目录

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Rectangular Milk Cartons and Cylindrical Soda Cans: The Economics of Product Design

2 Free Peanuts and Expensive Batteries: Supply and Demand in Action

3 Why Equally Talented Workers Often Earn Different Salaries and Other Mysteries of the World of Work

4 Why Some Buyers Pay More Than Others: The Economics of Discount Pricing

5 Arms Races and the Tragedy of the Commons

6 The Myth of Ownership

7 Decoding Marketplace Signals

8 The Economic Naturalist Hits the Road

9 Psychology Meets Economics

10 The Informal Market for Personal Relationships

11 Two Originals

Parting Thoughts

Notes

Index