San Antonio College Library

Everybody wants to be happy. But how much happiness will each life choice bring? Should I get married? Am I going to feel good in that new job? Is seeing friends worth more than a Ferrari? How can we decide not only which choice is better for us, but how much better? The Happiness Equation reveals the cutting-edge new science of happiness economics for the first time and explains, quantifiably, how and why some things matter more to our happiness...

A curated collection from the most readable economics blog in the universe. Over the past decade, Levitt and Dubner freely admit that most of their posts were rubbish. But now they've gone through and picked the best of the best. You'll discover what people lie about, and why; the best way to cut gun deaths; why it might be time for a sex tax; and, yes, when to rob a bank. (Short answer: never; the ROI is terrible.).

A colorful examination of why people do what they do--observed through the lens of incentives that can spur people to achieve--as reviewed by two superstars revolutionizing economics.

In the first collection of his popular Financial Times columns, Undercover Economist Tim Harford offers witty, charming, and at times caustic answers to our most pressing concerns--all through the lens of economics. Does money buy happiness? Can cities be greener than farms? Can you really "dress for success"? When's the best time to settle down? Harford provides hilarious, unexpected, and wise answers to these and other questions. Arranged by topic,...

The author offers his view of how the economy really works, examining issues from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing, offering a very different view on what drives the economy.

"Revolutionary developments in economics are rare. The conservative bias of the field and its enshrined knowledge make it difficult to introduce new ideas not in line with received theory. Happiness research, however, has the potential to change economics substantially. Its findings, which are gradually being taken into account in standard economics, can be considered revolutionary in three respects: the measurement of experienced utility using psychologists'...

Presents an analysis of such issues as income distribution, saving, taxation, spending, health care, employment, and financial investment, and explains why they have become problematic under current American economic policies.

In this eye-opening exploration, author and psychologist Michael Shermer uncovers the evolutionary roots of our economic behavior. Drawing on the new field of neuroeconomics, Shermer investigates what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and establishing trust in business. He scrutinizes experiments in behavioral economics to understand why people hang on to losing stocks, why negotiations disintegrate into tit-for-tat disputes, and...

Akerlof and Shiller argue that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception. Based on the intuitive idea that markets both give and take away, they show how phishing affects everyone, in almost every walk of life. We spend our money up to the limit, and then worry about how to pay the next month's bills....

"In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof a letter insisting that his most recent paper was wrong. Identity, she argued, was the missing element that would help to explain why people--facing the same economic circumstances--would make different choices. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year collaboration--and of Identity Economics. Identity economics is a new way to understand people's decisions--at work,...