1. Economics: choices, trade-offs, and the forces behind daily life

Prices are not just numbers on tags. They carry information about scarcity, demand, risk, and opportunity. A higher price can signal that something is hard to get, urgently wanted, or costly to make. This idea helps explain everything from concert tickets to housing markets.

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Markets often look messy, but patterns appear when many buyers and sellers interact. Economics asks why some markets work smoothly, why others fail, and why rules matter. Pollution, traffic, healthcare, and banking show that individual choices can create shared problems.

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Economics is not only about money. It helps explain decisions about education, time, health, technology, crime, voting, and family life. By looking at incentives, costs, and behavior, economists can ask why people do what they do—not just what they say they value.

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People use economics to evaluate policies, run organizations, forecast demand, compare risks, and measure social problems. Economists and economics-minded teams work in government, businesses, research groups, newsrooms, international organizations, startups, and local communities.

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Review this chapter with practice based on your mistakes.