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When you study economics from a textbook such as this, you learn different economic theories. In this book, we have looked at the theory of the consumer, which helps explain how individuals make their choices about what goods to buy. We have looked at the theory of the firm, which explains how firms make decisions about which goods to produce and what price to sell them at.
Our goal in this book is to help you see that economics is not only a matter of graphs and definitions but also the study of the world around you. Economists see economic decisions and economic forces everywhere they look. This chapter gave you many examples linked to one particular and very familiar product. Yet we have only scratched the surface in terms of the ways in which we could apply economic analysis to cars and the car industry.
Perhaps you can think of other ways in which you could apply the things you learned from your study of economics to the market for automobiles. In any case, we hope that, now, every time you see a car, you will remember that you are also seeing economics in action.
Economics Detective
Spreadsheet Exercise