Amihai Glazer - Böcker

This new seventh edition of the book offers extensive discussion of information, uncertainty, and game theory. It contains over a hundred examples illustrating the applicability of economic analysis not only to mainline economic topics but also issues in politics, history, biology, the family, and many other areas. These discussions generally describe recent research published in scholarly books and articles, giving students a good idea of the scientific work done by professional economists. In addition, at appropriate places the text provides 'applications' representing more extended discussions of selected topics including rationing in wartime (Chapter 5), import quotas (Chapter 7), alleged monopolistic suppression of inventions (Chapter 9), minimum wage laws (Chapter 11), the effects of Social Security upon saving (Chapter 15), fair division of disrupted property (Chapter 16) and whether individuals should pay ransom to a kidnapper (Chapter 17).

This book looks beyond politics to show how the ability of the U.S. government to implement policies is strongly affected by various economic constraints. These include the credibility of the policies, the ability of government to commit to them, the extent to which firms and consumers rationally anticipate their effects, whether the success of a policy further encourages firms and individuals to behave in intended ways, and whether the behavior of such actors can be sustained without continued government intervention.The authors apply these concepts to four areas of policy: macroeconomic policies to promote employment and economic growth, redistributive policies to benefit the poor and the elderly, production policies to provide goods and services, and regulatory policies to guide the behavior of firms and individuals. In doing so they provide plausible explanations of many puzzling phenomena—for example, why government has been successful in reducing cigarette smoking, but has failed to get people to install and maintain emission-control devices in their cars.This book recasts debates about public policy, avoiding conventional “pro-government” or “anti-government” positions; rather, it helps to predict when public policy will succeed.

This book contains articles on the theory of conflict. Conflict appears in many forms, from a dictator terrorizing his country to organized crime demanding protection money. Among the questions addressed are the conditions which make conflict severe (for example, is class conflict worse than ethnic conflict?), whether voluntary agreements can avoid future conflict, how the outcome of one war will affect the incentives of countries to wage war in the future, how dictators hold power, and why revolutions appear. The book provides an overview of existing literature, applies the theory of conflict to new situations, and gives foundations for future work. It should interest both researchers and students studying political economy, public choice, international relations, and comparative politics.

Economists and political scientists have recently begun to study formally how conftict and the possibility of conftict affects resource allocation and economic performance.!

By using Japanese and US data, the authors conduct statistical analysis of whether regions with aging populations may adopt policies that generate benefits during a short period of time instead of policies that could benefit current young generations for an extended period of time.