[A]cademics and politicians continue to sing the praises of abstract markets as if... descended... from heaven while maintaining... silence about the… - John Komlos

In all studies without exception, the positive relationship between social status and physical stature has been consistently documented in various societies and at different times. ...[E]ven in egalitarian America, social standing affected height throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the wake of the New Deal, these effects became less pronounced as became less skewed.

[Imperfect information is ubiquitous.] People with more [or better] information can take advantage of people with less information, so exploitation becomes a real possibility.

I hope the present volume can... improve the teaching of economics by presenting a real-world perspective as opposed to the fantasy world of mainstream textbooks.