You’ve spent a lot of time building up your economic muscles—now it’s time to flex them. In the chapters ahead, we’ll put your economic toolkit to work, analyzing the most important economic forces that will shape your life, make news headlines, and spark family arguments.
We’ll dig into the effects of globalization by evaluating the costs and benefits of international trade. We’ll consider climate change as an example of a broader problem in which side effects create a conflict between private interest and society’s interests.
We’ll explore what determines your wage and how many jobs are available by evaluating the demand for labor, the supply of labor, and the effects of labor market regulations. And then we’ll turn to assessing the broader social issues of income inequality, and the incidence of poverty, and assess the government’s role in income redistribution.
These are big issues, and they shape both your everyday life and the lives of those around you. Learn to deal with them effectively, and you’ll be better equipped to deal with the messy reality of our world.