Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Economics Trumps Common Sense
I Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll: Economics Really Does Apply to Everything
1 Sex: Can You Have Too Much of a Good Thing? 3
2 Illegal Drugs: It's the Economy, Man 8
3 Risky Business: Why Most Teenagers Don't Act Like Economists 17
4 Sports: Better Than Sex 23
5 Music: The New Economy's Robber Barons 31
6 Food Fights: Helping Lame Ducks Waddle 38
II What Governments Are Good For: Public Goods, Externalities, and Taxes
7 Infrastructure: But I Never Travel by Train 49
8 Scoreboard for Energy Taxes: Industry 5, Environment 1 59
9 Auctions: Call My Bluff 69
10 Tax Incidence: Only People Pay Tax 76
11 War Games: A Government's Gotta Do What a Government's Gotta Do 81
III New Technology: How Business Is Coping with Change
12 Movies: Why Subtitles Need Subsidies 91
13 Networks: "The Program Has Unexpectedly Quit" 96
14 The Internet: The Economics of Dot-Bombs 104
15 Industrial Change: Creative Destruction 112
IV There's a World Out There: Globalization Isn't All Globaloney
16 Disease: No Man Is an Island 123
17 Multinationals: Sweatshop Earth? 131
18 Immigration: The Missing Link 139
19 Demography: The South Has the Last Laugh 148
20 Development: The Triumph of Fashion 153
V Life, the Universe & Everything: Macroeconomics
21 Japan: Kogaru versus One-kei, or Why Tokyo's Teenage Fashions Matter 161
22 Inflation: Targeting the Sleeping Beast 172
23 Defense Spending: Farewell to the Peace Dividend 178
24 Weather: Why Economists Care About the Sex Life of Pigs 184
25 Work: Why Do It? 190
Epilogue: In Praise of Economics 195
Ten Rules of Economic Thinking 221
Glossary 228
Selected Bibliography 245
Index 249