《经济学原理》英文第六版第一课 曼昆

这本书的特色首先在于简明性。曼昆在写这本书时依据的原则是：“写作最重要的是简单明了，而不是事无巨细包罗万象，读者的时间是稀缺资源。”这也就体现了经济学本身的“经济”二字。

经济学原理曼昆第一课 Preliminaries

• Background
  • Scarcity——The limited nature of society’s resources
  • Economics —— the study of how to manage the scarce resources
• Ten Principles of economics
  • How people make decisions
    • Principle 1 :People face trade-offs
      • To get something that we like,we have to give up something else that we also like
    • Principle 2 :The cost of something is what you give up to get it
      • making decisions requires comparing the cost and benefits of alternative choices
      • Opportunity cost
        • The value of the best alternative to a decision
        • Whatever must be given up to obtain something
        • Examples : going to college ——cost for food and living
    • Principle 3 :Rational people think at the margin
      • Do the best they can to achieve their objectives,giving the available opportunities
      • Make decisions by evaluating costs and benefits of marginal change
    • Principle 4 :People respond to incentive
      • Incentive:something that induces a person to act
      • Examples:when prices of beef rides,consumers eat less beefs
  • How people interact
    • Principle 5 :Trade can make every better off
      • People benefit from trade
      • Countries benefit from trade and specialization
    • Principle 6:Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activities
    • Principle 7 :Governments can sometimes improve markets outcomes
      • Governments enforces the rules and maintains the institutions that are key to market economy
      • Promote efficiency and equality
  • How the economy as a whole works
    • Principle 8 :A country’s standard of living depends on its ability to produce goods and services
      • The huge difference in living standard——Productivity
    • Principle 9 :Prices rise when the government prints too much money
      • Inflation
    • Principle 10 :Society faces a short-off trade-off between inflation and unemployment
      • In the short run the inflation and unemployment will be in opposite directions
• Microeconomics and Macroeconomics
  • Microeconomics:households and firms
  • Macroeconomics:economywide
  • Why study Microenomomics
    • Major goal is to apply Microeconomics principles to assist consumers and producers in making decisions