these arguments in turn.

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2.3 • Confronting Objections to the Economic Approach 39

First Objection: People, Firms, and Society Do Not Act Like This

The economic approach to decision-making seems to require more information than most individuals possess

and more careful decision-making than most individuals actually display. After all, do you or any of your

friends draw a budget constraint and mutter to yourself about maximizing utility before you head to the

shopping mall? Do members of the U.S. Congress contemplate production possibilities frontiers before they

vote on the annual budget? The messy ways in which people and societies operate somehow doesn’t look much

like neat budget constraints or smoothly curving production possibilities frontiers.

However, the economics approach can be a useful way to analyze and understand the tradeoffs of economic
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