It only takes a small spark to ignite a child's mind! The ABCs of Economicsintroduces babies (and grownups!) to a new economic concept for each letter of the alphabet, from asymmetric, business cycle, and capital, all the way to zero sum. With a tongue-in-cheek approach that adults will love, this installment of the Baby University board book series is the perfect way to introduce basic concepts to even the youngest economists.

A second, updated edition of this accessible and myth-dispelling introduction to our current economic system.

The ABCs of RBCs is the first book to provide a basic introduction to Real Business Cycle (RBC) and New-Keynesian models. These models argue that random shocks—new inventions, droughts, and wars, in the case of pure RBC models, and monetary and fiscal policy and international investor risk aversion, in more open interpretations—can trigger booms and recessions and can account for much of observed output volatility. George McCandless works through a sequence of these Real Business Cycle and New-Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models in fine detail, showing how to solve them, and how to add important extensions to the basic model, such as money, price and wage rigidities, financial markets, and an open economy. The impulse response functions of each new model show how the added feature changes the dynamics. The ABCs of RBCs is designed to teach the economic practitioner or student how to build simple RBC models. Matlab code for solving many of the models is provided, and careful readers should be able to construct, solve, and use their own models. In the tradition of the “freshwater” economic schools of Chicago and Minnesota, McCandless enhances the methods and sophistication of current macroeconomic modeling.

"While most adults find economics confusing, there are many aspects that even kids can understand. Join the Tuttle Toddlers in this tongue-in-cheek breakdown of free-market basics!"--Page 4 of cover.

This volume focuses on the political economy of early state societies and the ways in which the income of the central government of such systems was collected and spent. At the theoretical end of the spectrum, this book offers a general discussion of the concept of political economy; modes of production in antiquity; and an overview of early state organizational forms. With the data represented in this volume, such theoretical viewpoints are evaluated and it is concluded that inherited approaches fall far short of explaining the political economies of early states.