Steven E. Landsburg – författare

It’s one of the big questions of our time: Are there too many people in the world? Or too few?Whichever way, how would we decide? Here, economist Steven E. Landsburg, acclaimed author of The Armchair Economist and Can You Outsmart an Economist?, assesses the benefits – and the drawbacks – of having a bigger global population. The People Paradox is based on the transcript of his fascinating 2017 IEA Hayek Memorial Lecture, in which Landsburg details how the growth in the world population has brought immense improvements to our quality of life. He contends the planet still has plenty of room – and addresses continued calls for population control.Landsburg, professor of economics at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, draws on everything from modern history to everyday life (including the contents of his sock drawer!) to mount a thought-provoking, powerful – and often humorous – argument for continued population growth.With a commentary by Dr Stephen Davies, Head of Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.

Steve Landsburg has been leading the pack of economists who are transforming their science from a drab meditation on graphs and charts into a fascinating window on human nature. Now he's back and more provocative than ever with surprises on virtually every page. In More Sex is Safer Sex, Professor Landsburg offers readers a series of stimulating discussions that all flow from one unsettling fact. Combining the rational decisions of each of us often produces an irrational result for all of us. Avoiding casual sex can actually encourage the spread of diseases. To solve population pressures, we need more people. In his tantalizing, entertaining narrative, Landsburg guides us through these shocking notions by the light of compelling logic and evidence and makes suggestions along the way: Why not charge juries if a convicted felon is exonerated? Why not let firemen keep the property they rescue? As entertaining as it is inflammatory, More Sex is Safer Sex, will make readers think about their decisions in unforgettable ways-and spark debate over much that we all take for granted.

The extensively revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg’s hugely popular book, The Armchair Economist—“a delightful compendium of quotidian examples illustrating important economic and financial theories” (The Journal of Finance).In this revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg’s hugely popular book, he applies economic theory to today’s most pressing concerns, answering a diverse range of daring questions, such as: Why are seat belts deadly? Why do celebrity endorsements sell products? Why are failed executives paid so much? Who should bear the cost of oil spills? Do government deficits matter? How is workplace safety bad for workers? What’s wrong with the local foods movement? Which rich people can’t be taxed? Why is rising unemployment sometimes good? Why do women pay more at the dry cleaner? Why is life full of disappointments? Whether these are nagging questions you’ve always had, or ones you never even thought to ask, this new edition of The Armchair Economist turns the eternal ideas of economic theory into concrete answers that you can use to navigate the challenges of contemporary life.

In the wake of his enormously popular books The Armchair Economist and More Sex Is Safer Sex, Steven Landsburg uses concepts from mathematics, economics, and physics to address the big questions in philosophy: What is real? What can we know? What is the difference between right and wrong? And how should we live? Widely renowned for his lively explorations of economics, in his fourth book Landsburg branches out into mathematics and physics as well—disciplines that, like economics, the author loves for their beauty, their logical clarity, and their profound and indisputable truth—to take us on a provocative and utterly entertaining journey through the questions that have preoccupied philosophers through the ages. The author begins with the broadest possible categories—Reality and Unreality; Knowledge and Belief; Right and Wrong—and then focuses his exploration on specific concerns: from a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God; to the real meaning of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Godel Incompleteness Theorem; to the moral choices we face in the marketplace and the voting booth. Stimulating, illuminating, and always surprising, The Big Questions challenges readers to re-evaluate their most fundamental beliefs and reveals the relationship between the loftiest philosophical quests and our everyday lives.

With his witty and instructive book The Armchair Economist, Steven Landsburg won popularity and acclaim by using economics to illuminate the mysteries of daily life, and using daily life to illuminate the mysteries of economics.Now Landsburg returns to address fundamental issues like fairness, tolerance, morality and justice—issues that are as important on the playground as they are in the marketplace. With the help of his daughter, Cayley, he contrasts the wisdom of parents with the wisdom of economists—not always to the credit of the latter.How should we feel about taxes that redistribute income? Ask how parents feel about children who forcibly "redistribute" other children''s toys. How should we respond to those who complain that their neighbors are too wealthy? Ask how parents respond when children complain that their siblings got too much cake. By insisting that fairness can''t mean one thing for children and another for adults, Landsburg shows that the instincts of the parent have profound consequences for economic justice.Along the way, Landsburg—with his customary sharp wit and challenging logic—pauses to reflect on an astonishing variety of issues in economic theory, the philosophy of parenting, the true nature of family values, and how to get the most out of life. He uses parent-child interactions to explain the economics of free trade and immigration, progressive taxation, minimum wages, racial discrimination, and the role of money. He makes the best possible philosophical cases for and against progressive taxation, and weighs them against the wisdom of the playground. He explains why children are a good thing, and why economic theory tells us we don''t have enough of them. He meditates on the role of authority in our lives, the effects of cultural bias, and why it''s important to read poetry to your children. This lively and entertaining book will inform and delight readers who have forgotten the human side of the dismal science.

Air bags cause accidents, because well-protected drivers take more risks. This well-documented truth comes as a surprise to most people, but not to economists, who have learned to take seriously the proposition that people respond to incentives. In The Armchair Economist, Steven E. Landsburg shows how the laws of economics reveal themselves in everyday experience and illuminate the entire range of human behavior. Why does popcorn cost so much at the cinema? The 'obvious' answer is that the owner has a monopoly, but if that were the whole story, there would also be a monopoly price to use the toilet. When a sudden frost destroys much of the Florida orange crop and prices skyrocket, journalists point to the 'obvious' exercise of monopoly power. Economists see just the opposite: If growers had monopoly power, they'd have raised prices before the frost. Why don't concert promoters raise ticket prices even when they are sure they will sell out months in advance? Why are some goods sold at auction and others at pre-announced prices? Why do boxes at the football sell out before the standard seats do? Why are bank buildings fancier than supermarkets? Why do corporations confer huge pensions on failed executives? Why don't firms require workers to buy their jobs? Landsburg explains why the obvious answers are wrong, reveals better answers, and illuminates the fundamental laws of human behavior along the way. This is a book of surprises: a guided tour of the familiar, filtered through a decidedly unfamiliar lens. This is economics for the sheer intellectual joy of it.

Air bags cause accidents, because well-protected drivers take more risks. This well-documented truth comes as a surprise to most people, but not to economists, who have learned to take seriously the proposition that people respond to incentives. In The Armchair Economist, Steven E. Landsburg shows how the laws of economics reveal themselves in everyday experience and illuminate the entire range of human behavior. Why does popcorn cost so much at the cinema? The ''obvious'' answer is that the owner has a monopoly, but if that were the whole story, there would also be a monopoly price to use the toilet. When a sudden frost destroys much of the Florida orange crop and prices skyrocket, journalists point to the ''obvious'' exercise of monopoly power. Economists see just the opposite: If growers had monopoly power, they''d have raised prices before the frost. Why don''t concert promoters raise ticket prices even when they are sure they will sell out months in advance? Why are some goods sold at auction and others at pre-announced prices? Why do boxes at the football sell out before the standard seats do? Why are bank buildings fancier than supermarkets? Why do corporations confer huge pensions on failed executives? Why don''t firms require workers to buy their jobs? Landsburg explains why the obvious answers are wrong, reveals better answers, and illuminates the fundamental laws of human behavior along the way. This is a book of surprises: a guided tour of the familiar, filtered through a decidedly unfamiliar lens. This is economics for the sheer intellectual joy of it.

Price Theory and Applications challenges students to master the economic way of understanding the world, with equal emphasis on intuition and precise logic, and special emphasis on the interplay between them. The writing is inviting, humorous, and sometimes folksy, without sacrificing the insistence that arguments need to be airtight. Important concepts are introduced via entertaining examples and fleshed out with rigor.The learning experience is supported by a vast number of intriguing and entertaining exhibits, examples, numerical exercises, and problem sets, some integrated within the text and others included at the end of chapters. The problems vary widely in their demands on students — some are straightforward applications of the theory, while others require a great deal of creativity and a willingness to think considerably outside the box.

Price Theory and Applications challenges students to master the economic way of understanding the world, with equal emphasis on intuition and precise logic, and special emphasis on the interplay between them. The writing is inviting, humorous, and sometimes folksy, without sacrificing the insistence that arguments need to be airtight. Important concepts are introduced via entertaining examples and fleshed out with rigor.The learning experience is supported by a vast number of intriguing and entertaining exhibits, examples, numerical exercises, and problem sets, some integrated within the text and others included at the end of chapters. The problems vary widely in their demands on students — some are straightforward applications of the theory, while others require a great deal of creativity and a willingness to think considerably outside the box.

Understanding Time and Space is an invitation to the theory of relativity for anyone who is now or has ever been an inquisitive high school student.Relativity can seem violently counterintuitive. It says that different observers can describe the world in very different ways and they can all be correct. It helps to be reminded that you've known this since childhood, when you learned that the direction you call left might be the same as the direction I call right, and we can both be correct. This book illuminates and demystifies the theory of relativity through repeated analogies to that kind of everyday experience. Dozens of drawings, analogous to the maps we all use to navigate through ordinary space, emphasize that relativity is a branch of geometry — the geometry of navigating through that more mysterious venue called spacetime.The reader is assisted by exercises sprinkled throughout, and by "dangerous curve" sections that identify and combat the most common misunderstandings.Steven Landsburg is a professor at the University of Rochester. He has published widely in mathematics, economics, physics and philosophy. His hobby is answering questions about relativity on the internet, which has taught him a lot about how to be helpful.