THE ECONOMIC NATURALIST

In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas

Contributors

By Robert H. Frank

Formats and Prices

Price

$16.99

Price

$21.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. ebook $16.99 $21.99 CAD
  2. Trade Paperback $22.99 $29.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 3, 2018. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando? For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of learning how economic principles operate in the real world-which they do everywhere, all the time. Once you learn to think like an economist, all kinds of puzzling observations start to make sense. Drive-up ATM keypads have Braille dots because it’s cheaper to make the same machine for both drive-up and walk-up locations. Travelers from Kansas City to Orlando pay less because they are usually price-sensitive tourists with many choices of destination, whereas travelers originating from Orlando typically choose Kansas City for specific family or business reasons. The Economic Naturalist employs basic economic principles to answer scores of intriguing questions from everyday life, and, along the way, introduces key ideas such as the cost-benefit principle, the “no cash on the table” principle, and the law of one price. This is as delightful and painless a way to learn fundamental economics as there is.
Request Desk/Exam Copy

Genre:

On Sale
Jul 3, 2018
Page Count
240 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9781541673830

Robert H. Frank

About the Author

Robert H. Frank is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management Economics at Cornell University’s Graduate School of Management and a regular columnist for the New York Times. His previous books include The Economic Naturalist, Falling Behind, The Winner-Take-All Society, Luxury Fever, and Principles of Economics (with Ben Bernanke). He lives in Ithaca, New York.

Learn more about this author