One of the greatest and most joyful challenges of adult life is to develop skills that make the people around us better off with us than without us. Integrity is a key part of that challenge. We are social animals, aiming not simply to trade but to make a place for ourselves in a community. You don't want to have to pretend that you feel proud of fooling your customers into believing you could be trusted. The ethical question is: how do people have to live in order to make the world a better place with them than without them? The economic question is: what kind of society makes people willing and able to use their talents in a way that is good for them and for the people around them? The entrepreneurial question is: what does it take to show up in the marketplace with something that can take your community to a different level? In this book, the authors discuss the connections between the ethical, economic, and entrepreneurial dimensions of a life well-lived.
Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship Why Ethics? Why Economy? Why Entrepreneurship? Part 1: Key Concept Trade Resources Cost Institutions Value Part 2: Progress Adam Smith on Progress Transaction Cost and Progress Commerce and Progress Production Possibilities Frontier What Seems Like Progress Part 3: Understanding Trade Conditions for Trade Comparative Advantage Division of Labor Buyers Sellers A Market: Supply and Demand A Market Responds: Price and Quantity Economic Surplus Price Signals and Spontaneous Order Price Controls Economic Science: Putting Theory to the Test Progress and Wealth Creation Part 4: Trust, Agency, and Bystanders Principal-Agent Framework Cost to Bystanders Competitors are not Bystanders The Logic of the Commons Environmental Tragedies Property Parcels Communal Property Trust Benefits for Bystanders Market Power Monopoly Power Monopsony Power International Trade and Trade Protection What Should Not be for Sale Part 5: Management of a Commercial Society Financial Institutions Fractional Reserve Banking Measuring Economies Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Unemployment Rate Measuring the Price Level Fiscal Policy Monetary Policy Public Choice Corruption Part 6: Personal and Business Finance Accounting Basics Compound Growth Saving, Borrowing, and Investing Marketing Fundamentals Insurance Break-Even Analysis Budgeting Financial Management Part 7: Innovation and Entrepreneurship Knowledge Discovery It Takes More than Ideas What Innovation Looks Like Entry, Exit, and the Role of Profit Creative Destruction Entrepreneurs as Resource Integrators Entrepreneurship as a Process Markets Don't Exist Competitive Advantage - The Dynamics of Remaining Viable The Big Errors The Entrepreneur and Self-Assessment
