One of the benefits of writing a successful text is the opportunity to revise—to delete the outdated and install the new, to rewrite misleading or ambiguous statements, to introduce more relevant illustrations, to improve the organizational structure, and to enhance the learning aids. The more significant changes include the following.

Two New Chapters

Two chapters are new to the print version of Microeconomics. Our common purpose for both chapters is to incorporate contemporary analytical themes and address current economic issues.

Chapter 15: Natural Resource and Energy Economics. This new micro chapter—brought from our Web site for the seventeenth edition—is now in Part 3 (Microeconomics of Resource Markets). This chapter addresses the question of whether the world is becoming overpopulated and rapidly running out of resources. It covers topics such as declining fertility rates, the optimal rate of resource extraction, resource substitution, resource sustainability, oil prices, and alternative energy sources. An understanding of the basic economic principles of natural resource economics will be critical to future voters and leaders. This micro treatment of natural resource and energy topics is particularly timely since many students are regularly exposed to alarmist views on these subjects.

Chapter 22: Immigration. This new micro chapter covers the economics of immigration—both legal and illegal—in an analytical and balanced way. Students are highly interested in this subject, yet often lack the economic knowledge and tools to grasp the issues and debates. This chapter provides that basic economic understanding. The chapter also serves as a timely application of the economic principles developed in the prior chapters on resource markets.

To make room for our new chapters, we had to make certain accommodations. Specifically, we moved “Technology, R&D, and Efficiency” to the book’s Web site. This chapter is available free to students for full-color viewing and can be printed for off-computer study. Furthermore, it is fully supported by all the supplementary materials such as the Study Guide and Test Banks. Instructors who wish to cover the R&D chapter, rather than, for example, the new resource chapter, can easily make the substitution. We also deleted the chapter “Labor Market Issues and

Institutions: Unions, Discrimination, and Immigration.” The core of the union content is now in an appendix to the wage determination chapter; the discrimination material is consolidated and placed in the chapter “Income Inequality, Poverty, and Discrimination;” and the immigration content now is part of the full new chapter on this subject. Also, we deleted the mainly macro chapter on the balance of payments, exchange rates, and trade deficits from this micro split version of Economics . It continues to be in Economics and the macro split.

Three New Appendixes

Three additional chapter appendixes are available for optional assignment in this edition. All are supported by the supplementary materials. The concise new appendixes are:

Chapter 3: Additional Examples of Supply and Demand. At the end of Chapter 3 we provide several additional examples of supply and demand, including concrete examples of simultaneous shifts in supply and demand curves. Products covered include lettuce, corn and ethanol, pink salmon, gasoline, and sushi. We also use the Olympic Games to illustrate examples of preset prices, shortages, and surpluses.

Chapter 11: Additional Game Theory Applications. We placed several applications of game theory in a new appendix at the end of the micro chapter on monopolistic competition and oligopoly. Instructors who like to stress game theory in dealing with oligopoly now have strong backup support from the textbook for their efforts. The appendix discusses concepts such as dominant strategies, Nash equilibrium, repeated games, and first-mover advantages.

Chapter 13: Labor Unions and Their Impacts. This compact appendix covers union membership, the decline of unions, collective bargaining, and the economic effects of unions.

New (or Relocated) “Consider This” and “Last Word” Boxes Our “Consider This” boxes are used to provide analogies, examples, or stories that help drive home central economic ideas in a student-oriented, real-world manner. For instance, the idea of trade secrets is described with the legend of “cat gut” and violin strings, while McDonald’s “McHits” and “McMisses” demonstrate the idea of consumer sovereignty. These brief vignettes, each accompanied by a photo, illustrate key points in a lively, colorful, and easy-to-remember way. New or relocated “Consider This” boxes include such disparate topics as an economic comparison of the two Koreas (Chapter 2), “buying American” (Chapter 5), the prisoner’s dilemma (Chapter 11), government policies and birth rates (Chapter 15), turning entrails into oil (Chapter 15), putting corn in our gas tanks (Chapter 19), consumption inequality (Chapter 20), the cancer fight that is going nuclear (Chapter 21), and the contributions of past immigrants to the U.S. economy (Chapter 22). Our “Last Word” pieces are lengthier applications and case studies located toward the end of chapters. New or relocated Last Words include those on fair trade products (Chapter 5); insights from behavioral economics (Chapter 7); (Chapter 15); past, current, and proposed U.S. immigration laws (Chapter 22); and Bastiat’s “Petition of the Candlemakers” (Chapter 23).

Contemporary Discussions and Examples

The eighteenth edition refers to and discusses many current topics. Examples include the cost of the war in Iraq, surpluses and shortages of tickets at the Olympics, the myriad impacts of ethanol subsides, offshoring of American jobs, trade adjustment assistance, the additions of countries to the European Union and to the euro zone, normal trade relations status, aspects of behavioral economics, game theory, the most rapidly expanding and disappearing U.S. jobs, oil and gasoline prices, climate-change policies, consumption versus income inequality, prescription drug coverage under Medicare, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), comprehensive immigration reform, U.S. trade deficits, and many more. Also new to this edition is an intuitive discussion of compound interest and the time value of money. We have located this new content in Chapter 15 on rent, interest, and profit.