Chapter Summary Of Cocktail Party Economics

Over the past few days I have been reading a book that I believe you would enjoy. The book is called Cocktail Party Economics and is meant to explain economics to people who have never been taught the course. One thing that separates this book from other economic books is the way the author explains the topics. She starts off each chapter with a story and relates it to what the chapter is about which allows the reader to connect these topics to the real world. This results in a better overall understanding of economics.

When I read the book, there were

Like i mentioned earlier, the stories are referenced throughout the chapter to help relate economic ideas to the real world. In this chapter, one of the topics the story helps explain is efficiency. It does this by relating the amount of drinks the bartender serves per hour to how efficient the bartender is. This is useful because it is a real world example of how efficiency could be measured. Efficiency occurs when it is not possible to make someone better off without making someone else worse off through the use of a resource. In the bartender example, the drinks are the resource and the amount of drinks the bartender makes determines if she is efficient or not. For example, if the bartender is not efficient she will not make enough drinks. Because of this someone will get a drink over another person resulting in someone else being worse off. The chapter also covers some

For example, if I was able to make 50 units of cloths in one day and whomever I am trading with is only able to make 20 units of cloths, I would have a comparative advantage in cloths. Now if I also had a comparative advantage in making food, this would mean I would have an absolute advantage over everything. Trading like this works because it is all about the opportunity costs (p. 53). Although the player may be able to produce most of the items by him or herself, things such as time are scarce and they have to make choices on what to produce which leads back to specialization. If a player dedicate all of their time producing one product, they can then trade part of that product to someone else who has spent all their time making a different product. This is an important idea to take into consideration when thinking about trades, and is personally an idea that I find quite interesting. One thing I find particularly interesting is how a player with absolute advantage in a trade can still make gains if they choose to