Pop Quiz: How Do You Stop Sea Captains From Killing Their Passengers? : Planet Money. Hide captionCaged prisoners below deck on a transport ship bound for Australia. Hulton Archive/Getty Images To get into the back-to-school spirit, we've been asking economists about the stories they tell to kick off their classes. Here's one from Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University (and Marginal Revolution). It gets right to the heart of economics. Back in the 1700s, the British government paid sea captains to take felons to Australia. About a third of the males on one particularly horrific voyage died. This was a scandal back in England, so the government tried to fix it with all different kinds of rules. The clergy begged the captains, for humanity’s sake, to take better care of the prisoners.
Finally, an economist (who else?) Instead of paying for each prisoner that walked on the ship in Great Britain, the government should only pay for each prisoner that walked off the ship in Australia. Here is the first, fundamental lesson of economics: Incentives matter. United States Main Exports and Trade Partners. List of the main exports the United States produces and ships around the world and the economies that purchase the most exports from the USA. The largest export trade partners of the United States. The United States exported roughly $1.1 trillion dollars worth of goods and services in 2009. Listed here are the main exports the United States ships to the rest of the world and the major trade partners who import the most goods and services from the United States. Main Exports 1) Capital Goods - 49% Image Source Almost half of all the goods the United States exports each year fall into the capital goods category. 2) Industrial Supplies - 26.8% Image Source (Lance Armstrong wearing spandex made from organic chemicals) Industrial supplies like organic chemicals is the second largest category of exports the United States ships to other economies around the world. 3) Consumer Goods - 15% Image Source (Chevrolet Volt built by GM) 4) Agricultural Products - 9.2% Image Source 1) Canada - 13.2% Image Source.
University Archive for the History of Economic Thought. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Contents. Introduction Chapter 1. Of the Division of Stock Chapter 2. Of Money considered as a particular branch of the general Society, or of the Expense of maintaining the National Capital Chapter 3. Of the Accumulation of Capital, of of Productive and Unproductive Labour Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Introduction Chapter 1.
Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Part 1. PART 2. CHAPTER 4. CHAPTER 5. CHAPTER VI Of Treaties of Commerce CHAPTER VII Of Colonies PART 1 Of the Motives for establishing new Colonies PART 2 Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies PART 3 Of the Advantages which Europe has derived from the Discovery of America, and from that of a Passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope CHAPTER VIII Conclusion of the Mercantile System CHAPTER IX Of the Agricultural Systems, or of those Systems of Political Economy which represent the Produce of Land as either the sole or the principal Source of the Revenue and Wealth every Country. Online economics textbooks.