Any help for economics assignments and "The World is Fl

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CaptainMac
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13 Dec 2008, 2:01 am

I'm normally a pretty good student and tend to understand just about everything. However, I have an assignment that's rooted in economics that I have to complete for Monday. Specifically it is dealing with economic recovery in Africa and relating it to the concepts of "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

For the life of me I don't understand economics. I got an A in high school econ only because I'm good at rote memorization. Unfortunately this one is a paper so I can't just fill out little bubbles on a sheet and know I have a 25% chance of getting it right this time.

Does anyone have any good resources for this book? I cannot bring myself to read it because I disagree with the author on everything. Also, if anyone has a good website with definitions of economies, types of economies, etc it would be much appreciated. (Wikipedia will not do here...I already tried it and it's too complex).



mystyc
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13 Dec 2008, 6:22 am

For resources on the book check out the wikipedia article on it, and the wikisummary of it.

As for understanding economics, the basic idea of economics is that it is the sociological study of how people respond to incentives. Its not about money, rather, that is merely the most obvious incentive to study. Money also makes it easier to quantify the "value" balanced against some risk.

But lets look at a non-monetary example of economics. Suppose you want to deter crime through legislation. On one extreme you can give the death penalty for every offense, even jay walking. On the other extreme, you could make no legislation and merely have anarchy. In anarchy, crime has no risk beyond the reaction and retaliation of the victims, and the benefits are getting what ever you want. In the "death to all" extreme, every crime is equally risky, but the benefits of each crime differ. Thus people, who live with the daily threat of execution, might commit a crime, independent of how severe the crime is.

Thus clearly there is a balance between under legislation and over legislation. To find out where that is, you do science.



Orwell
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13 Dec 2008, 2:54 pm

Send a PM to user Awesomelyglorious. He doesn't normally hang around this subforum, but he is our resident econ guru.


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Awesomelyglorious
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13 Dec 2008, 11:39 pm

I wouldn't say that I am an econ guru, but I am alright with the subject. I usually am more interested in the history of economic thought.

In any case, mystyc is somewhat right. I would hesitate to use the term "sociological" though, as economics is separate from sociology in both it's methodology and focus. If anything, economics has more to do with rather psychology, as it involves the role of incentives on individual beings, rather than classes of them, however, in general, economics really has a lot more to do with logic, and data analysis, as for the most part, economists use simplified models of human behavior and statistical methods rather than incorporating much from either psychology or sociology.

The example given by mystyc is good too, Nobel Laureate Gary Becker actually did some work on the economics of crime. I find that the conclusion might blend normative and positive economics too much. Where the balance is, is outside of economics, describing the possibilities is inside of economics. So, one can use economics and decide that everybody, or nobody, should be executed, or anywhere between those 2 extremes, but economics is meant to give more clarity on what exactly is being chosen.

In any case, I don't know exactly what you are looking for with definitions of economies, types of economies, etc, as there are multiple sources with varying levels of depth, and possibly dispute over labels, and differing labels.(although economics is a field that tends to be good to sticking to a particular framework for analysis.)