Microeconomics 1e

An Intuitive Approach, International Edition (with LiveGraphs Printed Access Card) Thomas Nechyba, 800pp Published by Cengage Learning, ©2011 Available Now £55.99

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Using intuition, a conversational writing style, everyday examples and outstanding graphs to present microeconomic theory as a way of looking at the world, MICROECONOMICS: AN INTUITIVE APPROACH, International Edition sets a new standard for clarity in the course and requires no prior background in calculus. It builds on the foundation of individual behavior, showing students the big picture of economic intuition while developing conceptual thinking skills with carefully written analysis. The first chapters establish a set of tools based on utility functions, so students learn about supply and demand in context, with a solid understanding of the underpinnings of those concepts. The package offers unprecedented flexibility in terms of topical coverage and graphical analysis. Each new copy of the text also includes access to a premium website featuring Nechyba’s LiveGraphs – a suite of interactive, animated graphs that allows students to view dimensional graphs and functions illustrated in the book, as well as some additional graphs that are not in the printed text. Students can play and replay the LiveGraphs while listening to a brief explanation of the graphs.

Features

• LiveGraphs: Have you ever sliced an onion in class to demonstrate the three-dimensional nature of a utility function? Nechyba''s LiveGraphs put graphical analyses online, where students can play and replay animated figures with audio captions. Students can watch lines get plotted, see curves move, and in some cases, change variables to affect results.
• Everyday Applications: Rather than confining applications to static boxed features, Nechyba incorporates applications into end-of-chapter exercises. By working through exercises that exemplify key applications, students learn by doing and can apply their knowledge beyond the text.
• Business Applications: How does pricing of one product affect demand for another produced by the same business? How might a firm most efficiently use cap-and-trade pollution vouchers? What is the impact of a capital-gains-tax-induced increase in the rental price of capital on firms within an industry? By working through exercises in each chapter, students answer these and other questions, questions that business professionals must also answer.
• Policy Applications: How do private school vouchers affect tuition levels? How effective are anti-price gauging laws during times of supply disruption? How do governments consider policies for subsidizing saving vs. taxing borrowing? Each chapter includes relevant policy applications such as these in the exercises.
• In-chapter Exercises: Each chapter is divided into digestible segments punctuated by learning exercises to help students check their understanding. Answers are available online.

1. Introduction.
Part I: CONSUMERS, WORKERS AND SAVERS/BORROWERS.
2. Choice Sets and Budget Constraints.
3. Choice Sets in Labor and Financial Markets.
4. Tastes and Indifference Curves.
5. Different Types of Tastes.
6. Doing the Best We Can.
7. Income and Substitution Effects in Consumer Goods Markets.
8. Wealth and Substitution Effects in Labor and Financial Markets.
9. Demand for Goods and Supply of Labor and Capital.
10. Consumer Surplus and Dead Weight Loss.
Part II: PRODUCERS (OR FIRMS).
11. Single Input Production.
12. Production with Multiple Inputs.
13. Production Decisions in the Short and Long Run.
Part III: PRICES, MARKETS, AND THE FUNDAMENTAL WELFARE THEOREMS.
14. Competitive Market Equilibrium.
15. The Invisible Hand and Market Equilibrium.
16. General Equilibrium.
17. Risk and Uncertainty.
Part IV: DISTORTIONS OF THE INVISIBLE HAND IN COMPETITIVE MARKETS.
18. Elasticities, Price Distorting Policies and Non-Price Rationing.
19. Taxes and Subsidies.
20. Interference with Trading Across Time and Space.
21. Production and Consumption Externalities.
22. Asymmetric Information (Insurance Markets, Discrimination).
Part V: DISTORTIONS OF THE INVISIBLE HAND FROM NON-COMPETITIVE MARKETS.
23. An Introduction to Game Theory.
24. Market Power: Monopoly and Monopsony.
25. Innovation and Monopolistic Competition.
26. Oligopoly.
27. Public Goods.
Part VI: MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.
28. Governments and Politics.
29. What is Good?
30. Balancing Government, Civil Society and Markets.

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Thomas Nechyba
Professor Nechyba, who received his PhD from the University of Rochester in 1994, joined the Duke faculty in 1999 after spending five years on the faculty at Stanford University. He has lectured as a Visiting Professor at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro and the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich, and he held the year-long National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford in 1998/99. Professor Nechyba is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves as Associate Editor for the American Economic Review, International Tax and Public Finance, and The BE Journals of Economic Analysis and Policy. He has previously served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Duke and is currently Department Chair. His research, which has been funded by agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, lies in the field of public economics, with particular focus on primary and secondary education, federalism and the functioning of local governments, as well as public policy issues relating to disadvantaged families.