The Armchair Economist

Über

The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life is an economics book written by Rochester professor of economics Steven Landsburg. The first edition appeared in 1993. A revised and updated edition appeared in May 2012. The underlying theme of the book, as Landsburg states on the first page, is that "[m]ost of economics can be summarized in four words: People respond to incentives." With this apparently innocuous observation, Landsburg discusses some unexpected effects of various policies such as automobile safety legislation and environmental policies. The rest of the book includes expositions on a wide range of topics, including budget deficit, unemployment, economic growth, and cost–benefit analysis.
Chapter 4 covers the "Indifference Principle".
Chapter 9 covers the Coase Theorem of professor Ronald Coase.
The book was translated into Arabic in 2008, and published under the same title: فيلسوف الاقتصاد by Kalemat Arabia for Translation and Publishing, an Egyptian publishing house. It is also recommended reading by the departments of economics at several universities.