Chapter 2 foreword

When I started teaching introductory economics, a senior colleague suggested to me that before each class began, it was a good idea to tell a joke.He explained that this can bring students a good mood so that they can more easily accept the content of the main class later. Too bad I never took his advice.I don't think there's anything wrong with what he said.I just think it's too difficult to find a relevant joke every time, but if you tell an irrelevant joke, it seems a bit vulgar. Luckily for me, I stumbled upon a joke that would be a good introduction to this book.The joke, set in Boston, a city known for its knowledgeable taxi drivers, many of them dropouts from Harvard and MIT: A woman gets off a plane at Logan Airport, grabs her luggage, and jumps on board hungry. I took a taxi and wanted to find a better seafood restaurant, and took me to a place where I could eat fresh fish fillets, she told the driver.The driver raised his eyebrows, turned around, and said to the lady: This is the first time I've heard someone say that in the past perfect subjunctive tense. (Based on the above definitions and example sentences, the lady in the joke is not using any past perfect subjunctive at all. If the joke is true, it can only be because most of us have no idea what a past perfect subjunctive is.)

Few people really know what the past perfect subjunctive tense is.I don't know either, or rather, I don't know that I know.So I searched online: The past perfect subjunctive tense is used to express a hypothetical situation or action that is contrary to reality.Therefore, the verb in the main clause must use the conditional form, and the subordinate clause must use the subjunctive mood. Let me give you another example that fans of the New York Yankees will probably be familiar with.In a game in the late 1990s, the team's second baseman Chuck.Nabrak (Chuck Knoblauch) to first base Tino.Tino Martinez took a short shot and inexplicably missed it.Use the past perfect subjunctive to say this: If Nabrak had made that pitch in the first place, the Yankees would have won.

Does it matter?Psychologists once put forward a theory: unless the various subjunctive tenses are clearly understood.Otherwise, people cannot clearly develop hypothetical thinking contrary to the facts. But this view does not stand up to scrutiny.For example, most American sportscasters don't know the past perfect subjunctive tense at all (or at least don't choose to use it), and have no trouble imagining situations that aren't true.So, in the aforementioned game, Yankees announcer BobbyHere's what Bobby Murcer said: Nabrak hits that pitch and they win. Knowing the past perfect subjunctive tense is not a bad thing.But if your goal is to learn to speak a new language, you might as well do something else than spend your time and energy learning the precise details of this tense.A course that focuses on learning such details is no fun for students, and it's horribly ineffective.

I took four years of Spanish in high school and three semesters of German in college.In these courses, I spent a lot of time learning all kinds of grammar that the instructor thought was important, but I didn't learn how to speak.I traveled to Spain and Germany and found it difficult to communicate even basic ideas.Many friends have had similar experiences. Later, when I volunteered for the Peace Corps to go to Nepal, the pre-departure training made me realize for the first time that there is a more effective way to learn languages: the training program was only 13 weeks long, and it was completely different from the language classes I had taken before. .It doesn't mention anything about the past perfect subjunctive tense.Its mission is to teach us to speak Nepali, and mastering the mystical tenses isn't necessary to accomplish that goal.It uses the method of imitating the way babies learn to speak their mother tongue.

At the beginning, the instructor took out some simple sentences and asked us to read them over and over again.The first sentence is that this hat is expensive.When buying something in Nepal, you have to haggle at any time, so this is a very useful sentence.The second step is to change a noun.For example, socks, we have to respond in Nepali, these socks are expensive.The goal here is for us to answer without thinking. In short, the lecturer found a simple example from a common context, let us read it several times, and then changed it slightly, and then repeated it.When we can have a conversation at the current level, they will teach deeper content.The job of the training program was to make sure we could live on our own after thirteen weeks of school.Soon after my fellow volunteers and I arrived in Nepal, we were teaching nature and math.Everything started from scratch, and we actually did it.Throughout the process, I experienced a sense of initiative that I never felt in a traditional language learning class.

Therefore, first of all, I would like to thank my Nepali teachers many years ago. They opened my eyes to the problem of learning efficiency and made me understand what it means to teach less and learn more.Over the ensuing years, students and I have discovered that this approach works equally well for learning the core concepts of economics.In most introductory economics classes, students spend a great deal of time mastering the economics equivalent of the past perfect subjunctive tense.The economic concepts the reader encounters in this book appear only in examples drawn from everyday experience.The role of these examples is to illustrate related concepts.

Like learning a new language, learning economics is important to start slowly and see how each concept is applied in different contexts.If you find that this method of learning works better than the one you encountered in your introductory economics class in college, hats off to my Nepali teacher. This book is the product of many brilliant minds.Hall.Berman, Chris.Frank, Haydn.Frank, Srinajish.Gevinene, Tom.Gilovich, Bob.Libby, Allen.McCallister, Phil.Miller, Michael.O'Hare, Dennis.Reagan, Andy.Boehner made many comments on the first draft of this book.There are not enough words of thanks.In the later revised manuscript, many people also helped.Some readers may notice that many of the examples in this book feature my grade teacher George.Aykerlof and former colleague Richard.Taylor's name.But when it comes to knowledge debt, I owe Thomas.Schelling has the most, he is the greatest naturalist economist of our time.Allow me to dedicate this book to him.I would also like to thank Andrew.Willie and William.Ferut, without their efforts, I am afraid this book would not be in the hands of readers.

In addition, Piush.Nayer, Elizabeth.Seva, Maria.Christina, Cavanagro and Matthew.Leighton, who provided me with valuable research assistance, Crisona.Schmidt's copying of the manuscript is also excellent.Can and Mick.It was a great honor to collaborate with Stevenson, who illustrated many of the examples in this book.I'm rarely jealous of others, but if anyone has a more interesting career than mine, it's probably him.Over the years, whenever possible in class discussions, I have used stick figures or other illustrations to illustrate examples.Cognitive theorists might be able to explain why this is done: it engenders concepts more firmly in students' minds.Even if my drawings are funny and don't contain specific economics content, I encourage students to make their own drawings when they encounter new concepts.Doodling on notes works too!I tell them.What a wonderful experience to be able to tell my favorite New Yorker magazine illustrators about my ideas, wait a day or two and see the finished product, much better than I thought it would be.

In particular, thanks to the early 1980s John.Knight College recruited me when they started the rigorous writing program at Cornell University.If I hadn't participated in this training, I would never have been able to think of any natural economics assignments, and naturally I would not have been able to promote the birth of this book.But more importantly, I want to thank the students for the short essays that inspired this book.Although, in the final draft, I selected only a small subset of the questions they asked, I would not have been able to come up with these brilliant examples were it not for the painstaking efforts they poured into the thousands of short essays.

Most of the questions selected for this book were taken directly from short essays by students.After these questions, I have attached the names of the students.Some of the questions were inspired by articles and books written by other economists, and I have also appended the names of the relevant authors to the questions.As for the questions without the author's name attached, most of them are quoted from my own articles, or cases I discussed in class. As a token of gratitude to my former students, I will donate half of the royalties from this book to John A.Knight College's rigorous writing program, I deeply believe that money is the most effective thing to give future students of Cornell University a better learning experience.