Экономика для чайников

by Sean Masaki Flynn, Шон Масаки Флинн

Книга знакомит читателя с основными понятиями экономической теории, позволяя легко усвоить важнейшие экономические концепции, касающиеся как развития экономики в целом, так и благосостояния каждого из нас. Автор говорит о преимуществах рыночной экономики при выполнении таких условий, как

стабильность цен,
отсутствие торговых барьеров и прямого контроля над ценами,
четкое определение прав собственности и строгая конкуренция.

Книга рассчитана на широкий круг читателей — студентов вузов, изучающих экономическую теорию, преподавателей экономической теории, аналитиков государственных учреждений и исследовательских центров, бизнесменов и всех, кто ищет краткого и вразумительного объяснения экономических явлений и закономерностей.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Business, Finance, Reference, Money, Self Help

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Dachokie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great Source of Information, but Dummies Beware ...

This book was reviewed as part of Amazon's Vine program which included a free advance copy of the book.

Having accumulated several of the "for Dummies" books over the years, I find that they offer a great base knowledge of information on a wide variety of subjects and are very useful as a reference. That being said, some topics are a little too "meaty" to simplify so easily ... and I would have to include economics as one of those topics.

Although a business management degree required me to take several courses in economics over 20 years ago, I was well aware then that the subject matter was far more complex and deep than any of the overview courses I took. Needless to say, only the most basic economic principles have stuck with me over the years. Fast forward to today, with the economy being such an important issue in our lives, and ECONOMICS FOR DUMMIES seemed logical as both a refresher course and a reference. While I thought the presentation of economic s was as good as any of the "for Dummies" books, I quickly understood the reason I never retained the old college course material in the first place ... the subject matter is simply tedious. Face it, economics is a specialized and involved field of study that requires an attention span of more than a passing interest. In other words, economics is not for dummies at all.

What I like about ECONOMICS FOR DUMMIES is the standard "Dummies" format with the icons in the margins that allows the reader to distinguish what material is important to remember from the material that is superfluous. There are plenty of real-life scenarios presented to further illustrate the various economic concepts. What gets complicated is that the foundation of basic principles is compounded by so many intervening variables that the material may quickly overwhelm a reader. The real-life scenarios are helpful, but the speedy progression of economic concepts can render the reader lost in a sea of graphs, charts and economic vernacular. In other words, a person completely unfamiliar with economics may find the onslaught of such complicated, and quite frankly, boring subject matter a turnoff. I venture to say that the book would be better served if presented in smaller doses ("Supply and Demand for Dummies", "Macro-economics for Dummies", "Recession for Dummies", etc.) rather than a condensed overview of the entire realm of economics. Regardless, the book DOES provide an decent overview of economics and how it relates to the world today (meaning a lot of time is spent covering inflation and recession) in as simplified a manner as possible (no small feat). At the end of the book, the author provides an interesting list of economic myths that should be very enlightening to most readers.

The true value of the book, however, may be as a quick reference tool or resource to disseminate and somewhat understand what is being reported on the news, day in and day out ... after all "it's the economy, stupid". While most of us generally like to read a book from start to finish, there are some books that are best served as a reference to be pulled from the shelf when a question needs to be answered ... in that case, this book is invaluable.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The one and only economics class I ever took was in high school. It was one semester, and it was taught by a history teacher. Plus, it was taught to a class of mindless Catholic girls, some of whom were under the impression that Sarah Palin was the president (from the bottom of my heart, I wish I were making this up).

But here I am bumbling through the world with zero knowledge of a highly relevant topic, making an idiot out of myself whenever the topic comes up, or else avoiding it entirely and simpering like a loon until someone changes the topic.

What to do? Go to the library, of course.

This is my first “for dummies” book I’ve read, mostly because I felt insulted the entire time I was reading it, but it does exactly what it says it’s going to. Spells out complicated concepts for the feeble-minded among us.

By the way, I totally skipped over the microeconomics section (except the chapter on private vs. public healthcare) because I truly, sincerely don’t care how McDonalds and Burger King compete. I really do not. I know this is important and affects everything else, so I’m really glad other people can care, but my ability to give a fuck is zero. Absolutely zero.

Free Trade
Free trade is good because it encourages specialization, which in turn increases productivity and makes everybody happier. Being xenophobic and saying all countries should be independent helps no one so we shouldn’t do that. The end.


Recessions
Recessions happen because things called “shocks” (terrorist attacks/bad gov policy/natural disasters/spikes in price important resources like oil) cause changes in supply and demand. Lots of goods/services adjust easily to their new supply/demand but some things have “sticky” prices- more fixed- and they’re slow to adjust. They’re like the wet blanket of the party, they bring the rest of their buddies down. This causes the recession. (A guy named Keynes figured this out during the Great Depression. He’s like, the Name To Drop when it comes to econ apparently. Noted.) One very sticky thing: wages. Because people get pissed if you cut their wages. But if you can’t cut wages, you can’t cut the price of the things you sell. But if you do cut wages, productivity falls, and you produce less, you need to charge more for them. So they fire people. Higher unemployment, lower output for the country, worse recession. See the issue?

Solutions: Keynes endorses lots of government intervention to fix recessions instead of just letting them eventually fix themselves. He also thinks that instead of looking at the change in prices to figure out how much to produce, which is difficult with “sticky” prices, businesses should look at how fast their inventory disappears.

Government Intervention
Monetary policy= how much money the government prints to influence the economy. Fiscal policy= tax laws and legislation and government spending that influence the economy. But they can only go so far in helping an economic recession. The government can influence peoples’ willingness to buy things (aggregate demand) by lowering taxes and whatnot, but they can’t change the level of output long term to be more than it would otherwise be. Because this requires people working more than they would normally be (either overtime, which requires higher wages, or getting people like retirees to work when they wouldn’t otherwise, which would also require higher wages to tempt them back to work). And that would make companies increase the cost of their good/service, which starts the whole cycle over again. Also, if people know about the stimulus plan from the government in advance, the plan won’t work and it’ll just go straight to inflation and won’t even temporary increase output. For some reason. That I didn’t quite catch. God I hate being stupid.

Governments can lower taxes or pay for lots of goods/services, but then they create a budget deficit (lots of debt). So you can only do this to a certain extent. (I imagine because a budget deficit somehow affects the weight of our money against another country’s money which affects inflation, but that could be nonsense. Please do not listen to me.) Also, what I’m getting from the description of the way the government pays off bonds to people is that it’s a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Except we call this “rolling over the debt.”

Healthcare
Private insurance (US before Obamacare): bought by individuals only. Has the problem of adverse selection, which means that people with preexisting conditions are more likely to pay for insurance, and they cost more, causing the company to raise prices, which makes healthy people more likely to drop out, which makes them raise it even more, and lose more healthy people to cover the cost of the unhealthy, and so forth. Solution: group insurance (through work or whatever) where companies are forced to buy insurance for ALL their employees, healthy and sick, hopefully ensuring enough healthy people to cover the costs of the unhealthy ones. Problem: this means not everyone gets healthcare.
Public insurance (Canada): government forces everyone to buy health insurance, so that there are enough healthy people to cover unhealthy people and distribute the costs, so no adverse selection issue. Problems: longer wait times.
No insurance (Great Britain): government supplies all health-care itself, from taxes, so also no issue with adverse selection. Problems: longer wait times.

US spends more of its money on healthcare than any other country, but its life expectancy and infant mortality is poorer than many. For example, Singapore has much higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the US but spends SUBSTANTIALLY less. Just above them is UK, and Canada falls somewhere between the UK and the US (suggesting that the more socialized healthcare is, the better it is, in terms of cost and quality).

Basically, Singapore got it right. First, they force hospitals to make public cost and quality statistics, so people can get the care they want for the price they’re willing to pay. They also require most people to pay out of pocket for most healthcare costs, paid for by Singapore’s mandated health savings accounts (takes 6% out of their income). However, if your health savings account runs dry, or you’re poor and don’t have enough income to have accumulated enough, the government subsidizes your healthcare. This system encourages people not to go to the doctor for silly things like colds, and so the system can devote its resources to serious cases, and also to innovating ideas that cut costs and increase healthcare quality.

Conclusions
I am sad to say, what I have just recounted for you is the most I’ve ever understood about the economy in my entire life. And, God willing, it will be all I will ever know, because this is hell on earth. And I never want to think about it again, when I could be spending my time on Kafka or law or philosophy or, God bless it, trashy teen sci-fi/fantasy. I leave this to more stalwart souls than mine. Four stars for the clarity of the explanation, not the entertainment factor.

[Christian D. D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly, I'm a tad bit biased in favour of both the topic of economics in general and the author in particular, as (1) I had more interest in economics than the average Joe at a young age due to my Dad (Dr. Earle W. Orr, Jr, God rest his soul) having been a professional economist and former Econ professor (at Northwestern and Purdue Universities), and (2) Sean Masaki Flynn is an old personal friend from our USC days (Fight On, Trojans!!✌️️✌️️).

Those biases aside, this is an excellent book. Sean presents his wealth of knowledge on the subject with just the right amount of detail and technical terms balanced by layman's terms and delightful wit that makes economics--all too often perceived as dry and boring--genuinely easy to learn about and fun to read.

P.S. Sean is currently running for Congress in California....best of luck and Fight On, Sean!!!

RANDOM STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS (and noteworthy passages):

--p. 19: "Economics is all about how people deal with scarcity, which is a situation that occurs when the quantities of goods and services that are available for consumption are less than the amounts that people desire to consume. There’s never enough time, and there’s a limited supply of natural resources such as oil and iron." Sounds almost exactly like my high school Econ textbook (except that one had a bit of liberal bias).

--p. 20: "Part I explains how people go about dealing with scarcity and the tradeoffs that it forces them to make. The rest of economics is just seeing how scarcity forces people to make tradeoffs in more specific situations." Reminds me of what USC Macroeconomics Professor Dr. Peter Gordon used to say to my class: "There are no 'solutions,' only tradeoffs."

--p. 23: "Stick with me: I make this discussion as painless as possible for you history haters." Heh heh, gotta love your sense of humour, Sean ol' buddy!

--p. 24: "The Ancient Greeks invented a simple steam engine and the coin-operated vending machine. They even developed the basic idea behind the programmable computer." Wow, you really do learn something new every day!

--p. 29: "All pollution issues, as well as all cases of species loss, are the direct result of poorly designed property rights generating perverse incentives to do bad things." Interesting proposition, which flies in the face of the environmental activists' anti-private property, anti-capitalist agendas.

--p. 34: " for simplicity, economists use the term demand curve to refer to all plotted relationships between price and quantity demanded, regardless
of whether they’re straight lines or curvy lines. (This convention is consistent with the fact that economists are both eggheads and squares.)" [author's original emphasis] Haha, ZING!!

--p. 35: "(Yes, you can write in the book!)" Unless you're using an e-reader like Kindle or (in my particular case) Nook, heh heh.

--p. 38: "However, an economist can view altruism, helping others at one’s own expense, as a personal preference.".......

....."Most people consider such generosity “selfless,” but it’s also consistent with assuming that people do things to make themselves happy. If people give because doing so makes them feel good, their selfless action is motivated by selfish intention."

"Because economists see human motivation as selfish, economics is often accused of being immoral; however, economics is concerned with how people achieve their goal rather than with questioning the morality of those goals"....."Consequently, economics is amoral rather than immoral."

Or, to quote Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, "Greed is good."

--p. 44: "Marginal utility is for the birds!" Reminds me of the premise of the book The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman!

--pp. 79-80: To quote Dr. Peter Gordon again, "Prices adjust to clear the market."

--p. 100: "Some things just go together....Hamburgers and ketchup." Er, some of us would dispute that (make mine either with mustard or A1 sauce, please)!

--p. 170: Haha, the Soviet-lampooning "Swimwear" Wendy's TV advert from 1987, childhood flashback!

--p. 175: "If someone owned the atmosphere, the mill’s managers would have to pay for the right to emit pollution. And if the atmosphere were owned by the people who would have to breathe in the mill’s pollution, the firm would be forced to pay those people for the right to pollute and would be forced to take into account the harm that the pollution causes them."

--p. 181: "Notably, most animal extinctions are the result of an absence of property rights."

--p. 204: "Even more remarkable: in almost every health-quality category monitored by the World Health Organization, Singapore is either number one in the world or near the top of the list. **The natural conclusion is that it’s possible to get very good healthcare without spending very much money**." [emphasis added] Not to mention Singapore ranks high on the Economic Freedom Index!

--pp. 208-209: "The secret to Singapore’s success has been a unique blend of private and public medical funding that keeps costs down by paradoxically making people pay a lot of money out-of-pocket for their care. It also ensures that the poor will be cared for.
Singapore’s healthcare system has three main cost-saving features:

Government mandates to encourage competition:

High out-of-pocket costs for consumers:

Laws requiring people to save for future health expenditures"

--p. 209: "Crucially, the prices patients pay in Singapore are not artificially low."

--p. 210: "To see the power of profits, consider the fact that a medical doctor in the United Kingdom who comes up with an innovation will get no reward from that country’s National Health Service. Indeed, her innovation will probably never be implemented, because dozens of committees would have to give their approval before her idea could be carried out. By contrast, a doctor with such an idea in Singapore could put it into practice quickly." Singapore's healthcare system has so much going for it, yet you NEVER hear about it from Western pols or the media (not even Fox News or the WSJ)!

--p. 255: "The Tao of P;" is that a deliberate wordplay on "The Tao of Pooh" (as in Winnie The)?

--p. 258: " The recessions of 1991 and 2001 were very mild," yet the mainstream media (and my high school teachers at the time) made it out to be total gloom-and-doom disaster....thus enabling Bill Clinton to defeat George H.W. Bush in the 1992 presidential race, never mind that the recovery actually began in mid-1991!

--p. 318: All right, a shoutout to AEI and the Heritage Foundation, woot-woot!!

[Hayley Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned SO much. 👏🏻😻

[Michael]

What can I say--it explains terms I need to know.

[Juan Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is another great entry in the "For Dummies" series. It's good introduction for the layperson into how the economy works. I decided to read it after hearing various opinions on how certain policies should be handled, how the government handles money & the economy & because of the "Great Recession" as it has been called. I also decided to read it out of genuine curiosity because I once took an economics class & my "professor" said that all you needed was an opinion, which was more than unhelpful to say the least. It was an eye-opener into how complex the economy is & what affects it from top to bottom. It goes into monetary & fiscal policies, supply & demand, as well as the cycles & practices that lead to recessions & depressions. Actions that are taken to keep things going smoothly or give boosts are given as well & it is gives the basics of how the Federal Reserve works & why it does what it does, which doesn't make it as sinister as some would have people believe. Overall, as someone who doesn't know much about economics, I think it's a good book as a starting point & one can branch off from there wherever their interests take them.

[Motahasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

جایی از کتاب به نقل از اقتصاددانی بنام جان رابینسون میگه:
هدف از مطالعه اقتصاد به دست آوردن مجموعه پاسخهای از پیش آماده برای پرسشهای اقتصادی نیست، بلکه آموختن شیوه پرهیز و مصون ماندن از فریب خوردن و گمراه شدن از سوی یک اقتصاددان است.
خب البته ما بیشتر در معرض مغالطه ها و فریبکاری ها و بدفهمیهای سیاستمدارهاییم تا اقتصاددانها؛ بخشی ازین کتاب هم جداگانه به این مغالطه ها پاسخ داده، مثلا همین اصرار بر خودکفایی و حمایت از تولید ملی با تعرفه ها، که برخلاف تولید با مزیت نسبی شادکامی کل بشر و حتی خودمون رو بیشینه نمیکنه.
در کل تو این کتاب به زبان ساده و گاهی طنز (به سبک کتابهای فور دامیز) سعی شده مباحث اقتصاد خرد و کلان مثل مطلوبیت نهایی نزولی، بازده نزولی، سیاستهای پولی و مالی، مالیات، اشتغال کامل، یارانه و امثالهم پرداخته شده و میتونین آشنایی با اقتصادو از همین کتاب شروع کنین، حتی برای کسانی مثل من که با مباحث اقتصاد خرد و کلان آشنایی مقدماتی دارن میتونه نکات و بینشهای خوبی داشته باشه.

[Adrian · Rating 2 out of 5]

An ok book on Economics for the general layperson, but if you already have a little knowledge on this subject, then i would find a book that is a little more in depth.
I cannot recommend another book on Economics at the moment as i have only just started reading about it, but will do once I've read a few more 'in depth' books.
P.s I thought i didn't really know i had much knowledge on this subject, but after reading this book i realized i had more knowledge than this book could give me.

[RRvbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Das Buch gibt einen guten Einblick über viele wirtschaftliche Teilbereiche. Es werden dem Leser einige Theorien und Ansätze geliefert, die es einem leichter machen die Argumentationsstrukturen des Autors nachzuvollziehen.
Zu Kritisieren ist einerseits die häufige Wiederholung einiger Themenbereiche und Fachwörter, was jedoch der Idee des Autors zu schulden ist, das Buch so aufzubauen, dass jedes Kapitel unabhängig und ohne großes Vorwissen zu verstehen ist. Darüber hinaus habe ich streckenweise das Gefühl gehabt, dass manche Sachverhalte zu einseitig dargestellt werden und so, mögliche, negative Seiten dieser nicht erwähnt wurden.
Insgesamt kann ich es trotzdem jedem weiterempfehlen, wer sich ein breiteres wirtschaftliches Wissen aneignen möchte.

[Vamsi Krishna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to read this book is because of the 3 main branches of politics, social issues, economic issues and foreign policy issues, economic issues has always been my weakest and I really wanted to get my foot in the door with economics. Like constantly criticizing Bernie Sanders for being “economically illiterate” doesn’t really hold a lot of water when you yourself don’t know how to calculate GDP.

But more importantly, I wanted to learn economics from the most unbiased source possible. Like I could have gone to the Mises Institute or read “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt, but I wanted the least politically biased thing to teach me economics. And I think this book I did exactly that.

Now, even though it is an unbiased account of economics, I feel as if conservative views on economic seem to win out based on reading this book. For example, he tackles liberal talking points by explaining how things like price ceilings (eg. rent control) and price floors (eg. minimum wage laws) are bad for the economy, how taxes create deadweight loss, how income taxes lead to less consumption, and most importantly, how free trade is good for the economy. He also debunks a lot of libertarian talkings points, by explaining how government is necessary to break up monopolies and prevent collusion. And how property rights enforcement have led to new innovations being created (although I do know not all libertarians are opposed to this).

Now I am not actually sure how to accurately critique a book like this and I guess I have no choice but to give it a 10/10. Mainly because I think it did its job. I knew jack sh*t about economics prior to starting this book and now I know way more than when the year started. So yeah, it taught me a lot about basic economics concepts.

[Ryan Swensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. I never took an economics class in high school or at university. I decided to read this book part way through reading Alan Greenspan's "The Age Of Turbulence" book so that I could get a better appreciation of what he was trying to convey. This book did that and them some. I highly recommend it for anybody seeking to understand economics simply and effectively.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been interested in understanding more about economics, so I picked this book up. My angle was to understand better the principles of economics. Though this book addressed those principles and explained them quite well, I felt it spent too much time with math and formulas to try and explain those principles.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, so I've gotten over being offended by the title of the books. Once that was put behind me, I was able to get something out the work.

I love economic theory, so anything dealing with a semi-tangible whose direction is determined by psychology and human behavior is easily palatable to me.

[Charles Terry]

If you don't like numbers, formulas, ratios, and probabilities then avoid this book. But, if you love em like I do then you MUST read this book.

[Sahar Abdel-Hameed · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is my first book on economics. I found it to be very helpful, simple and interesting. It gave me a pretty fair overview on the subject.

[Diogo Jesus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good to explain practical parts and simplify some jargon. I really must be a dummy

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book a 2/5, but I should note that how one wishes to use this book is likely to change how it should be rated. As an introduction to pretty mainstream economics, this is a good guide as to what lots of economists think. As a guide to how we 'should' think about economics, I'd say it's not very good.

In terms of the absolute bare bones, the book is very useful. The book explains supply and demand, and how they are represented graphically, and how they interact, very well. The book also defines and explains many other important concepts well (e.g., competition, monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, and so on).

On the negative side of the equation, I could note many examples of the book's failures, but some noteworthy ones are its very uncritical appraisal of antitrust laws and of so-called 'perfect competition'. The book is absolutely crippled by the latter, where it promotes interventionism on the basis of pretenses to knowledge of how the economy somehow should be. As for antitrust laws, the book praises the break-up of Rockefeller's Standard Oil company as having increased competition to the supposed benefit of consumers, when in fact, all it did was diminish the benefits of economies of scale (a concept routinely forgotten throughout the book). The book also fails to mention how the free market is able to deal with cartels and monopolies. Indeed, if you'd only read this book, you'd probably walk away thinking that it was impossible.

It was also perplexing that the book found no space for the mention of Ludwig von Mises or Friedrich Hayek in its chapter on important economists. One does not need to be sympathetic to Austrian economics to acknowledge these two very important economic thinkers and writers. It would have at least been interesting to see a neoclassical critique of some of the Austrian arguments and theories, but they aren't so much as mentioned, let alone rebutted.

Another failure was the lack of critical appraisal of the artificial lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve. The book notes that increasing the money supply can stimulate investment and consumption, but fails to examine in sufficient detail what the flip-side of this equation is. The lower rates are a disincentive for saving, and to the extent that borrowing requires the presence of a pool of savings, the book fails to mention how to strike a sustainable balance (if there is an artificial one to be struck at all).

The book also gets quite repetitive. In part, this is due to the intended structure of the book, whereby all chapters are meant to be readable as stand-alone chapters, which do not require the reading of previous chapters to be understood. However, even considering that, the book does repeat itself a lot, to the point that it becomes a little tedious. At first it's quite a page-turner, but by the end, it's a struggle to maintain concentration.

While it's a valuable read as a guide to how many economists think, it is too uncritical of many of the pet theories of modern economists. I was hoping for something more balanced in this book, but that's certainly not what you're going to find. Worse still, many of the things it says appear dubious, no matter where one sits on the political spectrum (various more socialistic arguments regarding health-care, for example, receive only minimal treatment, despite how significant a topic this is in economics).

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ...For Dummies series of books have a bad reputation, but I've gotten use out of them over the years. Being an engineer, I never took any economics courses in college, but the subject is one that impacts so much in politics that I wanted to learn more. This did the trick. However...

It also confirmed for me how misguided some economists must be. Their Achilles heel is believing too fully in their models, when time & again we find that the models are too simplistic. Creating a supply vs demand chart is easy. So is using straight, slanted, or curved lines on those charts. As is describing shifts in those curves, and noting key points. Ok, fine, you want to call that "analysis," go ahead. But it's only as accurate or useful as the underlying model. If economics is to be a useful SOCIAL science for public policy, then its models need to include all of what matters to society or the public.

What I find is that some (most?) economists have entirely too much faith in their models. Worse, they treat skeptics as ignorant of the "science" when it's they who are ignorant of the gaps in their own models.

All that venting aside, I DO think that our world is a better place for informed economic theory & practice. I think the economists who have a proper respect for the limitations of their field are doing good work.

[♏Vanessa♏ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not an audiobook. It's virtually impossible to follow it without the book or at the very least a pdf file. Whilst I can easily imagine the curve of a graph when he describes them, there is no way for me to know what on earth he is on about when he say "if you look at graph X" or "if you see point Z". He often references graphs and formulas we have no visual access to, and that makes it really difficult to follow. Audible should have added a PDF with all the relevant data in order to make this a better listening experience.
Now, with that a side, I would highly recommend the actual book as he explains the subject in simple terms and makes easy to understand analogies. I'm not sure it could be said it's for dummies as you will need some solid maths basis, but the language and the way he relates the information is simple enough.
I didn't like the heavy USA influence in his way of thinking, but as I couldn't finish the audiobook (listen to 51% of it) I can not say for certain that didn't change later on.

[Ibrahim Habib · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. It explains economic concepts in simple and funny terms (for dummies).

I liked the graphs where supply and demand interact to set the market price. It also shows that markets work efficiently with less government intervention.

One of the chapters I liked much was about the new tech markets (e.g. Facebook and YouTube) and how they are different from traditional markets in that they serve mostly free products. So it's challenging to decide whether it's better to regulate them to prevent monopoly or not.

One of the new concepts I learned is asymmetric information and how they affect markets negatively. The concept itself is intuitive but I haven't materialized it that way before.

One think to note is that there's a clear bias from the author towards free markets and capitalism. It's assumed that it's the best economic ideology. While in reality we see it has major flaws and it has caused devastations and severe income inequalities through the world. So you should be careful and take the opinions with a grain of salt.

[Tyler · Rating 1 out of 5]

good context but Amazon needs to fix highlighting.

Overall was a good informational read, however; it made it very frustrating and difficult to highlight. When ever I would try to highlight anything that went to the next page it would NOT flip to the next page and allow me to select the text I wanted highlighted. Instead it highlighted EVERYTHING past that page. Then it wouldn’t delete all the highlighted text so I then had to mess around with my oasis for about 25 mins before I found out how to delete the highlight with a backend loop hole I found on YouTube. I’ve had continuing issues with Amazon and kindle. I’ve made it clear to them on the issue they need to fix and so have many others! What happened to the customer centric Amazon there was in the past.

[MK · Rating 1 out of 5]

I remember taking an economics class when I was uni student.
I was learning the basic concepts described in this book.
After entering the workforce and working at a company, that knowledge was not of much practical use.
In reality, the economy is not driven by consumer behavior, but by private financial institutions, the world's wealthy, who hold the power to issue currency.
The power to drive the economy is held by international financial forces, and these private entities have proven to have more power than government agencies.
All past economic history and history are scenarios planned by private financial institutions that own central banks, mainly in the United Kingdom and the United States.

[Kalyan Tirunahari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good refresher course on brushing up Economics fundamentals like Price equilibrium, how GDP of a nation is calculated, supply demand curves, microeconomics and macroeconomics. In detail explanation of how government has to encourage innovation by providing patent rights. If exclusive patent rights are not given, then people are not motivated to invent. But giving patent rights could also cause monopoly. So regulation has to be in place to control this. Using Theories like Prisoners Dilemma to avoid oligopoly. We hear a lot about Protectionism rights, which is good only for active and non dying industries.

[Navid Mirbagheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, lots of economic concepts affect your daily life, especially when you are from Middle East. It surely gave me a better view into economics, however, I think the author could have gone deeper into markets. I would have gave it four stars if he had talked about macroeconomics as much as he talked about microeconomics. Pretty great book though. I recommend it if you know nothing about economics.

[Martin L. Cahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for those who really want to learn economics from a, mostly, layman’s point of view. Of the three econ books I’ve read this year, this was the best — not because it “dummied” things down, but because it was clear and concise without being overburdened by “high tower” language. Heck, like most “For Dummies” books, it had some great humor sprinkled in, too.

[Dave Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this while cramming for my teaching certification test.

My head still hurts.

That being said, this is a great introduction to economics, both micro and macro. It's written clearly and concisely, and hits all of the basics. For me, it took a little while to wrap my head around some of the graphs, so I recommend taking this slow.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot of information provided in this book. I do believe it is a good overview of Economics on with discussion of both micro- and macroeconomics. My only hesitation to recommending would be that the reader needs to have a conceptual understanding of graphing and algebra. The demand-supply graphs are a critical part of understanding this material.

[Pranav Pandya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read if you want to brush up all your basic concepts about Economics (both Micro and Macro). Also a good read if you are not a student of Economics and just want to demystify the subject. Obviously, if you want to go deeper, or if you are a research student, you'll need to read much more than this book. This book will also guide you there.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a very useful overview of economics. You can easily dip in and out of chapters as you wish and there's a glossary at the end.

My frustration was with the lack of detail and lack of consideration for confounding factors, but that isn't what this book is designed to do. This is a good jumping off point for more specialised books.

[Ntombizakhona Mabaso · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you studied Economics in University or High School, this might be a great book to refresh your memory when it comes to important concepts in basic Micro- and Micro- economics.

For others, Economics might seem like a tedious subject, but this book really gets you going once you’re in it with the simplified concepts.