Distinguishing Features
Microeconomics: Brief Edition includes several features that encourage students to read and retain the content. 

State-of-the-Art Design and Pedagogy
The Brief Edition incorporates a single-column design with a host of pedagogical aids, including a strategically placed “To the Student” statement, chapter opening objectives, definitions in the margins, combined tables and graphs, complete chapter summaries, lists of key terms, carefully constructed questions and problems, connections to our Website, an appendix on graphs and a web appendix on additional examples of demand and supply, and an extensive glossary.

Focus on Core Models
Microeconomics: Brief Edition shortens and simplifies explanations where appropriate but stresses the importance of the economic perspective, including explaining and applying core economic models. Our strategy is to develop a limited set of essential models, illustrate them with analogies or anecdotes, explain them thoroughly, and apply them to real-world situations. Eliminating unnecessary graphs and elaborations makes perfect sense in a brief edition, but cutting explanations of the truly fundamental graphs does not. In dealing with the basics, brevity at the expense of clarity is false economy.

We created a student-oriented textbook that draws on the methodological strengths of the discipline and helps students improve their analytical reasoning skills. Regardless of students’ eventual occupations, they will discover that such skills are highly valuable in their workplaces.

Illustrating the Idea
Numerous analogies, examples, and anecdotes are included throughout the book to help drive home central economic ideas in a lively, colorful, and easy-to-remember way. For instance, elastic versus inelastic demand is illustrated by comparing the stretch of an Ace bandage and that of a tight rubber tie-down. A piece on Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Alex Rodriquez illustrates the importance of opportunity costs in decision-making. Art in the public square brings clarity to public goods and the free-rider problem.  A pizza analogy walks students through the equity-efficiency trade-off, and a discussion of credit cards helps explain what money is and is not. These brief vignettes flow directly from the preceding content and segue to the content that follows, rather than being “boxed off” away from the flow and therefore easily overlooked.

Applying the Analysis
A glance though this book’s pages will demonstrate that this is an application-oriented textbook. Applying the Analysis pieces immediately follow the development of economic analysis and are part of the flow of the chapters, rather than segregated from the main body discussion in a traditional boxed format. For example, the basics of the economic perspective are applied to why customers choose the shortest checkout lines. Differences in elasticity of supply are contrasted by the changing prices of antiques versus reproductions. The book describes the principal-agent problem via the problems of corporate accounting and financial fraud. The concept of price discrimination is illustrated by the difference in adult and child pricing for ballgame tickets compared to the pricing at the concession stands. McDonald's sandwich "McHits" and "McMisses" over the years apply the concept of consumer sovereignty.  The graphics of fiscal policy are followed by a discussion of recent fiscal policy, and the Federal Reserve's role in the economy is demonstrated through an application of its responses to the mortgage debt crisis and the recession. These and many other applications clearly demonstrate the relevance and usefulness of mastering the basic economic principles and models to beginning students.

Photo Ops
Photo sets under the title Photo Op are included throughout the book to add visual interest, break up the density, and highlight important distinctions. Just a few of the many examples are sets of photos on traffic congestion and holiday lighting to contrast negative and positive externalities, Social Security checks and food stamps to highlight the differences between social insurance and public assistance, and photos of lumber and newly constructed homes to illustrate the difference between intermediate and final goods. Other photo sets illustrate normal versus inferior goods, complements versus substitutes in consumption, homogeneous versus differentiated products, substitute resources versus complementary resources, and more.

Web Buttons
The in-text web buttons (or indicators) merit special mention. Three differing colors of rectangular indicators appear throughout the book, informing readers that complementary content on a subject can be found at our website. Scattered throughout the text you’ll see:

Worked Problems Written by Norris Peterson of Pacific Lutheran University, these pieces consist of side-by-side computational questions and procedures used to derive the answers. From a student perspective, they provide "cookbook" help for problem solving.

Interactive Graphs These pieces (developed under the supervision of Norris Peterson) depict major graphs and instruct students to shift the curves, observe the outcomes, and derive relevant generalizations. This hands-on graph work will greatly reinforce the main graphs and their meaning.

Origin of the Idea Pieces These brief histories, written by Randy Grant of Linfield College (OR), examine the origins of major ideas identified in the book. Students will find it interesting to learn about the economists who first developed such ideas as opportunity costs, equilibrium price, elasticity, creative destruction, and comparative advantage.

Global Snapshots
Global Snapshot pieces include bar charts and line graphs that compare data for a particular year or other time period among selected nations. Examples of these lists and comparisons include income per capita, the world’s 10 largest corporations, the world’s top brand names, the index of economic freedom, the differing economic status of North Korea and South Korea, and so forth. These Global Snapshots join other significant international content to help convey that the United States operates in a global economy.