5 Basic Principles of Economics

Thinking Like an Economist

Tag: Gains from Trade

  • The Challenges and Opportunities of using GenAI: Business and Education

    —

    by

    PA
    in

    Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is a very impressive general purpose technology: it can write poetry, recipes, cover letters for jobs and (after several suggestions were rejected) these images. The people who developed the foundations were recently recognized with a Nobel Prize. Every new and old business seems to claim that it is using AI: e.g.,…

  • Predicting an Election (Stock Market)

    —

    by

    PA
    in

    On Tuesday night, two US politicians will talk and then some media experts will talk about what the politicians talked about. Polls suggest that the country is nearly split 50/50 about which politician is preferred. For media companies, that is great news: they can say “Stay tuned for the latest news on this small but…

  • Swiftonomics: Economic Ideas and Taylor Swift

    —

    by

    PA
    in

    Taylor Swift is accused of causing inflation. She also represents an innovative organization worth more than US$1,000,000,000. Beyond this high-level perspective on her impact, many teachers are using her career to demonstrate old economic ideas more memorably. Some instructors offer entire courses in university [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] and at the high school level.…

  • The Gains from Trade Principle

    —

    by

    PA
    in

    Most economic activities involving more than one person are not “zero-sum games”. They involve trading of some kind. Production without consumption is a waste and consumption without production is impossible. This perspective is not isolated to economics. Marketers encourage firms to adopt a “marketing orientation”, in which a firm seeks a profitable strategy which creates…