Why The Paradox Between Practitioners Of The Different Disciplines?

Author Wheelan writes, "Life is about trade-offs, and so is economics." Indeed, so is Naked Economics. This book promises to be a good introduction to economics for the layman. Throughout the book, the author uses easy-to-understand language and vivid examples to illustrate his points in strategic places maintaining a sense of lightness with the readers in reading the material. Here is a summary of each of the 12 Chapters of the book Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan.

READ: Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, Charles Wheeland, W.W. Norton, 2003. Completely- cover to cover.

Chapter 1, the Lesson: One of the greatest fallacies associated with economics is that there is an abundance of economists selfish interests involved. Because are selfish nature men tend to see only the immediate effects of decisions. This is especially true when it comes to economics. Every group has it’s own interests and because of this certain policies that may benefit one group, may not benefit another group. Because of self-interest, groups will banter back and fourth persistently until a solution is reached. This is one of the first causes of

In fact, he claimed that they account for the limited role economists play in public life (2001). Common sense has it that policies are made by politicians and not by economists, it is by persuasion and rhetoric that economists can actually encourage authorities to implement the policies they deem most

In the first Dictator game, John List gave some participants the option to give half, nothing, or at least some amount of money to the other participants. If the other participants did not accept what they were given, both would go empty handed. Most of the participants that were given money, either gave half of their money or at least a small amount to the participants that did not receive anything. Because participants were giving money, the game portrayed the participants as altruistic. However, in the second Dictator game, List gave everyone money and told each participant that they could either give some of their money or take money away from the other participants. In this game, most of the participants took money away from the other

Hence, each person should take responsibility for her choices and assume the costs of these choices. As such, luck egalitarians seem to argue that distributive justice should be essentially choice-sensitive yet luck-insensitive. How well off people are should be wholly determined by the responsible choices people makes and not to differences in the circumstances they are not responsible for. (Tan, 2008, 665) What follows from this account of equality, endorsed by luck egalitarians, people should be compensated for undeserved misfortunes, and this compensation should come from that part of others’ good fortune that is undeserved. In other words, distributive justice indicates that the “lucky” should transfer some or all of their gains due to luck to the “unlucky”. This is grounded on the assumption that no one deserves their genetic endowments, such as native abilities and intelligence, or other involuntary circumstances, such as social factors like class and wealth of the family into which one is born. (Anderson, 1999; Tan,

The economic discourse community can be loosely identified as a set of shared values and knowledge in the field of economics. Different from other writings, economic discourse community usually include some technical economic terms and visual information, i.e. diagrams, tables and charts, etc. Each writing piece has its intended audience, and economists’ writing is no exception. Economists’ writing is usually targeted at economic majors or practitioners in the field of economics. Economic discourse community helps its intended readers to pick up information efficiently and effectively.

In Wealth of Nations, self-interest seems to be synonymous with selfishness, and be the driving force of capitalism and the necessary ingredient for personal and economic wealth. This is, however, and partial and superficial view. Although in Wealth of Nations Smith does declare that human’s primary motive for most actions is self-love, all of their actions are still made within the moral parameters of society, which were created because of sympathy. A man, for example, will not pursue his self-interest at any cost to the people around him. He has to be ethical and fair in his interactions in order to be seen as morally and socially acceptable. In this way an understanding of, and cooperation with the sympathetic nature of society proves to further one’s self-interests. Therefore, to act morally and sympathetically is in fact an act out of self-interest.

He argued that every human being has unique preferences which greatly influence them when making choices (Breen and Rottman 1995). People are mostly motivated by money and are likely to carry out a cost-benefit analysis before settling on a decision. It is based on the following premises: human behavior is based on rational calculations, human beings act with rationality when making choices and these choices are aimed at maximizing gains or pleasure. In a similar manner, Interactionist Theory (IT) is used to study social interactions among people. It does not study the entire population at once, but rather studies smaller social groups. It focuses on how individuals act and how they make behavioral choices depending on the way they interpret situations (Hindess, 1998, p.42). From another perspective, it states that human beings only react to social stimuli. As such, they are social actors, and must adjust their behaviors in consideration to the behaviors of other human

The concept of equality is multi-faceted and widely debated among scholars. While there is no singular definition for equality, equality deals with the distribution of some “thing” in a specific domain. For this paper, equality will be narrowed down to the domains of economic and political. It is essential to note that distinct types of equality can become conditions for equality in a different domain. In this case, economic equality will be analyzed as a condition for political equality. How is it exactly that economic equality can undermine political equality? By answering this question, this paper will prove that economic equality is a necessary pre-condition for political equality. I will do this by analyzing the political writings of

Gary Becker in “An Economic Way if Looking at Life” claims that economic way of looking at life reflects the relationship between day to day economy and human behavior; their way of thinking and reasoning when handling social aspects such as crime, family, marriage, discrimination among others. Economic way of looking at life discusses various methods of economic analysis. It raises individuals into a different thinking level during decision making and the understanding of the today’s economic market and society in general. Basically economics helps in analyzing different human behaviors and especially on monetary issues (Becker, 1993).

In assessing arrangements to solve the "problem" of free riding, economists claim to be guided by the principle of Pareto efficiency. That is, they claim to put forward arrangements that will make at least some people better off without any detriment to others, in terms of their own happiness. If they are serious about this efficiency criterion then any proposed arrangement must surely accord with the preferences of the people involved, as revealed through their actual behaviour. It follows that the ultimate test of any allegedly Pareto-efficient arrangement must surely be to convince all of the parties affected that they are better off or at least, no worse off under the proposed arrangement. Indeed, the consent and agreement of all parties

There are many different approaches to the justice of distributions in societies and there are arguments that can be made to support each of them. Three types of approaches are distribution justice based on a distributive approach that was introduced by John Rawls, emergent which was advocated by Robert Nozick and a market democratic hybrid supported by Tomasi. This paper will illustrate the basic premise of each of these approaches and the impacts that they have on the economics of a society. After briefly explaining these three approaches to just distribution I will demonstrate why Tomasi 's "Free Market Fairness", or the democratic hybrid approach, is the most logical and productive way to achieve justice of distributions while having a

This is an argument between the conceptuality and the practicality of Nash equilibrium in Economics. To understand it we need to first look into what economics is about, which is the study of social and human interaction and rational decision making quantitatively. Nash equilibrium can act as a tool to provide an insight into such interaction. In the first part of this essay, I am going to evaluate why the statement ‘economics without the concept of Nash equilibrium is conceptually flawed’ is true, by looking into the importance of rationality in economics and the mechanism of the Nash equilibrium. In the second part, I am going to assess why the argument for ‘Economics with the concept of Nash equilibrium is practically useless’ is true

imagine living in a world in which there are infinite amounts of goods and resources to satisfy every human desire. People will not find need to budget their limited incomes, businesses will not worry about the cost of labor, and governments will not have reason to tax its citizens, or give importance to environmental issues. People living in this society will be equal to one another and everything would be free, like water in the ocean and sand in the desert. All prices would be zero and society will not find need for markets or financial institutions. Unfortunately we do not live in a utopia of limitless possibilities; we live in a scarce world of unlimited wants. Given unlimited wants, we must make the best use of our limited resources, a science our ancestors have developed and named economics. This study measures how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them efficiently among different people.