Robert H. Frank,
Cornell University Ben S. Bernanke,
Princeton University
ISBN: 0073193984 Copyright year: 2007
Feature Summary
An Emphasis on Core Principles: A few core principles do most of the work in economics. By focusing on these principles, the text assures that students leave the course with a deep mastery of them. In contrast, traditional encyclopedic texts so overwhelm students with detail that they often leave the course with little useful working knowledge at all.
Economic Naturalism Introduced: The authors' ultimate goal is to produce “economic naturalists” –people who see each human action as the result of an implicit or explicit cost-benefit calculation. The economic naturalist sees mundane details of ordinary existence in a new light and becomes actively engaged in the attempt to understand them.
Why don't auto manufacturers make cars without heaters?
Why are whales, but not chickens, threatened with extinction?
Why do movie theaters give student discounts on the price of admission but not on the price of popcorn?
Active Learning Stressed: The only way to lean to hit an overhead smash in tennis or to speak a foreign language is through repeated practice. The same is true for learning economics. Thus, the authors consistently introduce new ideas in the context of simple examples and then follow them with applications showing how they work in familiar settings. And frequently, the text poses exercises that both test and reinforce the understanding of these ideas. The end-of-chapter questions and problems are carefully crafted to help students internalize and extend core concepts. Students are prepared to apply the important concepts to solve “economic riddles” drawn from the real world.
Well-Known Authors: Robert Frank and Ben Bernanke are renowned experts in their fields (micro and macro, respectively). Frank's research has looked at rivalry and cooperation in economic and social behavior. He is the author of a best-selling intermediate economics text, Microeconomics and Behavior, (McGraw-Hill/Irwin), and has published such award-winning books as The Winner-Take-All-Society and Luxury Fever. Bernanke is the co-author of a best-selling intermediate macroeconomics text and has done significant research on the causes of the Great Depression, the role of financial markets and institutions in the business cycle, and measuring the effects of monetary policy on the economy. Most recently, he served on Federal Reserve Board of Governors under Alan Greenspan, and he has just been named to the Council of Economic Advisors.
Modern Microeconomics: Economic surplus, introduced in Chapter 1 and applied repeatedly thereafter, is more fully developed here than in any other text. This concept underlies the argument for economic efficiency as an important social goal. Rather than speak of tradeoffs between efficiency and other goals, the authors stress that maximizing economic surplus facilitates the achievement of all goals. The tendency to ignore opportunity costs, the tendency not to ignore sunk costs, and the tendency to confuse average and marginal costs and benefits— common decision pitfalls identified by 2002 Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and others—are introduced early in Chapter 1. The book devotes a chapter to the economics of information, making available in intuitively accessible form key insights that earned the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics for George Akerlof, Joseph Stiglitz, and Michael Spence.
Web site: Developed by Scott Simkins of North Carolina A & T State University, an expert in the growing field of Economics education on the World Wide Web, the ambitious web site contains a host of features that will enhance the principles classroom, including dynamic graphs, video lectures, e-mail updates, microeconomic experiments, current news articles, information about the text, an eLearning session, and more.
Introductory Material Refined: The material in chapter 1 is presented in such a way as to launch these important concepts as clearly and efficiently as possible. From the very beginning, the focus is on how rational people make choices among alternative courses of action.
Cost Curve Coverage: The authors introduce average total cost and average variable cost curves in Chapter 6. Taking great pains to make the presentation as simple and uncluttered as possible, no single diagram ever portrays more than three cost curves at once, and most employ only two. This treatment remains faithful the authors' belief that a full-blown treatment of production functions and cost curves is ill advised at the principles level while providing teachers with greater flexibility. For example, it enables instructors to discuss a firm's shut down condition graphically and to portray profits and losses graphically. It also facilitates an enriched discussion of the invisible hand process by which profit and loss signals drive resource allocation in competitive markets (Chapter 8).
Streamlined Discussion of Labor Markets and Income Redistribution: Frank and Bernanke's Chapter 13 condenses coverage on Labor Markets and Income Redistribution, eliminating sections on monopsony and comparable worth, utilitarianism, tax policy and occupational choice, progressive consumption taxation, and redistribution and cost-benefit analysis.
NEW! A new core principle has been added to Chapter 1 that says “A person [or a firm or a society] is more likely to take an action if its benefit rises, and less likely to take it if its cost rises. In short, incentives matter.” Also the discussion of positive vs. normative economics has been expanded.
NEW! The supplements package has been extensively revised and improved. We have new authors for the micro Test Bank, the micro Study Guide, and the macro portion of the Instructors' Manual. This material has also been extensively checked for accuracy. These improvements should help in the difficult tasks of learning and of teaching Principles of Economics.
NEW! The international trade chapter [now Chapter 9] has been made more robust and moved forward. Because international trade involves important micro principles and policy issues, students will benefit greatly from this expanded coverage early in the book.
NEW! The strategy chapter [now Chapter 11] has been revised to include more on oligopoly and monopolistic competition--two topics that are typically used to present game theory.
NEW! Indifference curve material has been added as an appendix to Chapter 5. In the Second Edition this material was placed on the web site; in this edition, it is a part of the text, making it easier for students to access it.
NEW! DiscoverEcon with Solman Videos: We now have an interactive software program for homework management, tutorials, videos, and assessment. This software houses both the best-selling tutorial software for Principles of Economics, and brand-new videos featuring Paul Solman of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. This product includes 250 minutes of video that explains introductory economic concepts in a real-world, student-friendly manner. DiscoverEcon includes updated graphing applets, interactive exercises, animated tutorials, and hundreds of multiple-choice questions to test student comprehension in each book chapter. The videos are integrated into the website and are available web streaming or on DVD.
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2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education