KEY BENEFIT: This book is well known for its coverage of modern topics (Game theory, Economics of Information, and Behavioral Economics), clarity of its writing style and graphs, and integrated use of real world examples.
KEY TOPICS: The emphasis on relevance and application to both managerial and public-policy decision-making are focused goals of the book. This emphasis is accomplished by including MANY extended examples that cover such topics as the analysis of demand, cost, and market efficiency; the design of pricing strategies; investment and production decisions; and public policy analysis.
Economists and strategists looking to stay current with economic information.
Awesome Pricing! Brand new book, awesome pricing, and excellent delivery time. Perfect alternative to buying over-priced books at your College Student Store. This was about $50 less even including tax and s&h.
Puzzled... If you have to purchase it for your class - sure, go for it, however, I would never recommend it a bedside reading for people interested in microeconomics - the content is very dry and puzzling at times...
within my expectation It arrived on time and the condition is just what I expected from the description online.
Good intro to the subject, not for in-depth analysis I used the 6th Edition in my executive MBA class at Wharton. It is a good book if you are looking for an introductory level description of the subject. The authors did a great job explaining the intuitions behind the concepts and effectively used graphs as an illustration tool. Authors took the effort to link key definitions back to where they were first introduced throughout the book. I found it very useful, whenever I am not so sure about the definition, I could easily go back to the original discussion to remind myself. The cases used in the book help to ground the theoretical discussions in economical reality. I enjoyed most of them. However, this book is not for readers looking for advanced rigorous treatment of the subject. The mathematical treatment is very basic -- no differential equation is used in the analysis. All of the supply and demand curves are assumed to be linear. These choices do not necessarily represent a comprmise in learning as long as the readers know what the book has to offered.
Gaps in conceptual explanations: not for the intelligent reader I currently use this book to teach at the University of Michigan. (I chose it because it's what has been used here before.) The book is written in an accessible, reader-friendly style. It has many examples and pictures, which make it attractive -- a feature, I suppose, that is necessary to hold an undergrad's attention in these times we live in.
But what annoys me is the absence of conceptual rigor/detail and the sudden jumps in explanation. I want my students to be able to see what is going on and appreciate the simple elegant logic of microeconomic theory. Instead the book reads like it's delivering information to you, but isn't really explaining why it makes sense.
Here's an example. In Section 4.2 on Income and Substitution Effects, the effect of a price change is decomposed into income and substitution effects using constant utility. But as many of us know, there's an alternative way to do this too, which is holding purchasing power constant. For some reason that approach isn't mentioned. Instead, the text reads as though we were interested in the constant purchasing power approach, but then suddenly switches to a constant utility approach by saying "This substitution is marked by a movement along an indifference curve." But why? Wouldn't any intelligent student at this point start wondering how we went from purchasing power to utility? Flip back to Section 4.1 and find that the word utility has been quietly introduced there in a sentence that's in parentheses: "(Because the price of food has risen, the consumer's purchasing power -- and thus attainable utility -- has fallen.)"
Pooh. I don't like books that sneak important ideas into parentheses in order to avoid answering the all important question -- i.e. "Why?"
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
