世界に豊かな地域と貧しい地域が存在し、その途方もない格差が消えないのはなぜなのでしょうか。グローバルな視点で日常生活の例を用いて、アメリカ中西部とエチオピアという、地球上の異なる地域で、まったく違った生活を送る二人の子どもの人生を追っていきます。持続可能な経済発展、自然資源の問題を、経済学はどのように捉えるのでしょうか。最先端の知見も盛り込みながら、経済学が現実世界を解明する理論と分析を考察します。
   

• Compares the lives of two children in the Developed and Developing Worlds, and uses this as a key to uncover the processes that shape our lives and our futures.
• Shows how economics uncovers and explains these processes, and how it can form solutions and policies.
• Up-to-date and progressive, this short book is written by an internationally recognized authority in the field.
• Introduces key economic factors and concepts such as individual choices, national policies, efficiency, equity, development, sustainability, dynamic equilibrium, property rights, markets, and public goods.
• Ties in politics, anthropology, ecology, geography, sociology, and development studies.

  
Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life, and offer solutions to them too. Combining a global approach with examples from everyday life, Partha Dasgupta describes the lives of two children who live very different lives in different parts of the world: in the Mid-West USA and in Ethiopia. He compares the obstacles facing them, and the processes that shape their lives, their families, and their futures. He shows how economics uncovers these processes, finds explanations for them, and how it forms policies and solutions. 
 
Along the way, Dasgupta provides an intelligent and accessible introduction to key economic factors and concepts such as individual choices, national policies, efficiency, equity, development, sustainability, dynamic equilibrium, property rights, markets, and public goods.