Economics: A Very Short Introduction

Economics: A Very Short Introduction

Partha Dasgupta

Language: English

Pages: 172

ISBN: 0192853457

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Here Partha Dasgupta, an internationally recognized authority in economics, presents readers with a solid introduction to its basic concepts, including efficiency, equity, sustainability, dynamic equilibrium, property rights, markets, and public goods. Throughout, he highlights the relevance of economics to everyday life, providing a very human exploration of a technical subject. Dasgupta covers enduring issues such as population growth, the environment, and poverty. For example, he explores how the world's looming population problems affect us at the local, national, and international level.

Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life. Here, Dasgupta goes beyond the basics to show it's innate effects on our history, culture, and lifestyles.

About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRADE ORGANIZATION Amrita Narlikar Available soon: AFRICAN HISTORY John Parker and Richard Rathbone CHAOS Leonard Smith HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION Khalid Koser INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Paul Wilkinson RACISM Ali Rattansi For more information visit our web site www.oup.co.uk/general/vsi/ Partha Dasgupta ECONOMICS A Very Short Introduction 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford o x 2 6 d p Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the

In Desta’s village the same set of households share the local commons, offer one another loans, join the iddir, and help one another out in times of need. The interesting point isn’t that the same group of people are in a number of long-term relationships (who else is there to form long-term relationships with?), but that the relationships are tied to one another. Tied engagements To see how ties can help, suppose that in the patron–client relationship we studied in the previous chapter, the

know what is in their real interest’, or ‘My followers depend on me to explain the Holy Book to them’). In an opposite vein, rights have proliferated in Becky’s world to an extent that the very notion of rights is now debased. It is one thing to insist on the right not to be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged, it is quite another thing to claim that a 35-hour work week is a human right. The latter is an agreement won over the bargaining table, allied to some agitation; but it is a

industry 121, 133 long-term relationships 40–6, 58, 64–71, 149 Lubchenco, Jane 119 M McNally, Justice Nicholas 159 macroeconomics 14–29, 46, 86–7, 99, 147 Maddison, Angus 16 manufactured capital 18, 22, 23, 50, 127, 132, 133 marginal cost of production 75, 77, 78 market(s) 47, 56 communities and 149–50 failure 72, 82–9, 146–7 insurance 106–7 interdependent 79–81 natural resources 128 prices 8, 15, 48, 127, 133 single 72–9 socialism 78 wealth inequalities 147–8 N Nash equilibrium 32–3, 40, 43–4

the distribution of income 2,000 years ago was remarkably equal: almost everyone, everywhere was very poor. The figures he has reported tell us furthermore that average world income and the regional distribution of income per head were pretty much the same in CE 1000 as they had been 1,000 years earlier. It would appear that regional disparities became significant only from the beginning of the 19th century: income per head in Western Europe had by then become three times that in Africa. But world

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