Chapter 2
Cookies or Ice Cream? Exploring Consumer Choices
IN THIS CHAPTER
Deciding what will bring the most happiness
Cataloguing the constraints that limit choice
Modeling choice behavior like an economist
Evaluating the limitations of the economics choice model
Economics is about how groups and individuals make choices and why they choose the things they do. Economists have spent a great deal of time analyzing how groups make choices, but because group choice behavior often turns out to be broadly similar to individual choice behavior, my focus in this chapter is on individuals.
To keep things simple, my explanation of individual choice behavior focuses on consumer behavior because most of the choices people make on a day-to-day basis involve which goods and services to consume. Human beings are constantly forced to choose because their wants almost always exceed their means. Limited resources, or scarcity, is at the heart not only of economics but also of ecology and biology. Darwinian evolution is about animals and plants competing over limited resources to produce the largest ...
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