About markets and people

Economics is not only a body of knowledge about the creation and distribution of wealth, but also a way of thinking about a wide variety of problems.

Why are internet browsers free? Why are employees sometimes paid a fixed salary and other times through commission? Should car manufacturers produce their own car bodies or buy them from suppliers? Why is dinner more expensive than lunch? Can farmers benefit from biofuel subsidies more than the biofuel producers themselves? Can increasing penalties reduce crime? Why do companies maintain excess capacity that they do not use? Why don't popular restaurants raise their prices even though there are long queues outside? Why don't doctors specialise in nostrils when greater specialisation leads to higher productivity? Why do people buy books they don't read? Why do restaurants offer bottomless drinks for fizzy drinks but not for wine?

This book equips readers with useful tools to answer these and similar questions and thus better understand the world around us.