There are no mathematical requirements for Assumptions, but there are thinking requirements. The book is about what economists do in their secret lives as economists, when they aren’t dashing off op-eds to tell everybody else what to believe, pulling the wool over undergraduates’ eyes in textbooks, or otherwise engaging in public relations. What economists otherwise do is make simplified assumptions about our world, build imaginary economies based on those assumptions – otherwise known as models – and use them to draw practical lessons. In fact, we all do much the same thing less formally when we think about economies, since the real world is way too complicated to understand in … Continue reading Jonathan Schlefer