Local or global, economic issues are on the public's mind-but making sense of supply and demand isn't so simple. This book explains in everyday terms how markets work, introducing the key players-consumers, business, and government-and using their behavior to illustrate basic theories and ideas. In addition, it coaches both general readers and students in the key concepts and analytical tools of macroeconomics and microeconomics, and teaches the dynamics of markets, consumer behavior, business investment, budgets and taxation, recession and expansions, unemployment and inflation, and more.