Description
Book SynopsisThe highly engaging introduction to thinking like an economist, updated for a new generation of readers. When economists wrestle with any social issuebe it unemployment, inflation, healthcare, or crime and punishmentthey do so impersonally. The big question for them is: what are the costs and benefits, or trade-offs, of the solutions to such matters? These trade-offs constitute the core of how economists see the worldand make the policies that govern it. Trade-Offs is an introduction to the economic approach of analyzing controversial policy issues. A useful introduction to the various factors that inform public opinion and policymaking, Trade-Offs is composed of case studies on topics drawn from across contemporary law and society. Intellectually stimulating yet accessible and entertaining, Trade-Offs will be appreciated by students of economics, public policy, health administration, political science, and law, as well as by anyone following current social policy debates.
Table of ContentsPreface to the Third Edition
Acknowledgments
1 Stepping into Social Policy Analysis
2 Do You Want to Trade?
3 Is Saving Lives Repugnant?
4 Organ Donor, I Presume?
5 Stop Bothering Me
6 The Government Taketh Away
7 To Create and Protect
8 Don’t Do the Crime If You Can’t Do the Cane
9 What a Fine Mess
10 Three Strikes and You’re In
11 For Shame
12 A Valuable Life to Some Extent
13 No Insurance for You
14 A Pound of Prevention
15 Hazardous to Your Morals
16 Doctors Behaving Badly
17 You’re Offsetting Me
18 Smoke If You Got ’Em
19 Joe Camel Wants YOU
20 A Safer Cigarette?
21 Fast-Food (Expla)Nation
22 The Addictive Choice
23 Consistently Inconsistent
24 We Will Make You Better Off—Like It or Not
25 There Are No Solutions
Index
