Summary: Naked Economics

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[ NOTE: These book summaries are designed as captures for what I’ve read, and aren’t necessarily great standalone resources for those who have not read the book. Their purpose is to ensure that I capture what I learn from any given text, so as to avoid realizing years later that I have no idea what it was about or how I benefited from it. ]

Capture

Check out this excellent external summary. Link

Summary

  1. Everything affects everything else. When you design policy you have to understand the effects that will rise from your decisions. Most policy makers don’t have any idea that this part of economics and that people dedicate their lives to studying these kinds of effects.

  2. Incentivization is the whole game with policy design. You have to understand how people work so you can know how their behavior will change as the result of policy changes.

  3. The best example is the even/odd license plate policy to reduce carbon emissions. The result was that people kept two cars instead of one, making the problem worse rather than better.

  4. Economics, because of this book, has become part of my core set of interests. It’s nothing less than understanding people and why they do what they do, and using that information to create good policy that benefits as many people as possible.

[ Find my other book summaries here. ]

CREATED: JANUARY 2017

Notes

  1. One of the best books I’ve ever read in terms of opening my mind as to how the world works.

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