APPLIED MICROECONOMICS MANSFIELD E. Księgarnia

This is a book on applied microeconomics. It has been designed for the many classes given each year for students who want to learn how microeconomic theory can help them become better managers, public officials, lawyers, or members of other such professional groups.

The success of the First Edition of this book was very encouraging, but like any new textbook, use in the classroom has produced lots of good ideas for improvements. While the book's general structure and approach remain much the same in this edition as in the previous one, there are many noteworthy improvements.

A new Chapter 2 has been added, the purpose being to acquaint the student early in the course with the usefulness of microeconomics. This chapter contains three briefcases. The first case looks at the Atlanta Brewing Company, an Atlanta microbrewery, and the market for its products. The second case is concerned with the cocaine epidemic in the United States, with special attention to government policies aimed at dealing with our drug problems. The third case deals with the Federal Communication Commission's auction of spectrum rights. All these cases apply supply-and-demand models and elasticity concepts presented in Chapter 1. They cover material of interest both to business schools and departments of public policy.

Chapter 15 now contains the material on input pricing that formerly occupied two chapters. This combination of the input pricing chapters streamlines the exposition. Further, the addition of the Stackelberg and Bertrand models in Chapter 12, as well as maximin and mixed strategies in Chapter 13, extends the analysis of oligopoly. Also, a brief section on game trees has been added.

Further, many new boxed examples have been included. Specifically, the following are new or updated: (1) "Coffee Bars Invade Manhattan," (2) "The Price of Cotton: Highest since the Civil War," (3) "Calculating a Cost-of-Living Index," (4) "Is a CEO Worth $26 Million per Year?" (5) "Retail Market for Tires," (6) "Increasing the Minimum Wage: Controversy ove-rthe Effects," and (7) "Neil Simon Goes Off-Broadway."

My purpose in this book has been to show students repeatedly and in detail exactly how microeconomic theory can be applied to help solve real problems faced by actual decision makers in industry and government. P'ive chapters of this book are devoted entirely to individual industries-petroleum (Chapter 6), milk and dairy products (Chapter 9), movie theaters (Chapter 14), aircraft (Chapter 17), and California water (Chapter 19). In each of these chapters, after a brief discussion of the industry's structure and problems, the student is asked to use the theory he or she has met in previous chapters to solve ten real multipart problems related to major decisions and issues in this industry. The situation and actual data are given; the decision makers are described in detail and often quoted and pictured. Unlike the snippets currently available, each of these chapters forces the student to become immersed in much of the full complexity of actual industrial and government decisions and to bring a variety of microeconomic tools and concepts to bear on these decisions. For half the problems, answers are provided to guide the student and to provide useful feedback; for the other half, no answers are given. Additional material regarding each of these chapters is printed on the inside front cover of this book.

Further, each of these chapters draws on all preceding parts of the course, and thus helps to prevent the balkanization of knowledge that affects some classes. Too frequently, students forget some of the material presented early in the course by the time they get close to the final examination. Each of these chapters forces the student to use a wide range of analytical tools presented in all previous chapters, and thus encourages a periodic review of previous materials and an integration of various parts of the course. Also, many cases are extended beyond the particular chapters where they appear. Sections of later chapters (as well as end-of-chapter questions) revisit the industries studied in previous cases and show the student how the new techniques taken up in later chapters can be applied to these industries.

How much class time is devoted to each of these chapters will vary, of course, with the nature and length of the course, as well as with the characteristics of the students. To permit instructors to tailor the problems they assign to the needs of their own classes, a wide variety of problems arc included, some easy, some challenging. Because each is self-contained, there is no need to take up all of them. Since the answers to the even-numbered problems are not given at the end of the book, these problems may be particularly useful for class discussion or homework assignment. (Answers to the even-numbered problems are available in the Instructor's Manual.) Some instructors may prefer to assign many of the problems for homework, but not take them up in class. This can readily be done.

Excluding these five chapters and Chapter 2 (which also is devoted to case studies), this book contains a full treatment of microeconomic theory. Most chapters are almost identical to the corresponding chapters in my Microeconomics: Theory and Applications, Ninth Edition. The principal changes in this regard are that the material on uncertainty and investment decisions has been summarized in a single chapter here, and that much of the material on welfare economics, externalities, and public goods has been combined in a single chapter. Like Microeconomics: Theory and Applications, a hallmark of this book is the continuous interplay between theory and applications. A list of the over 100 real-world applications (excluding the five chapter-length presentations) contained here is printed on the inside back cover of this book.

A workbook accompanies this text. This supplement {Study Guide and Casebook/or Applied Microeconomics, Second Edition) contains hundreds of problem sets, problems, and review questions (as well as their answers), which should be helpful to students. The problems and questions have been tested for effectiveness in the classroom. An important feature of this supplement is the inclusion of the following six full-length classroom-tested cases: (1) "The Greatest Auction Ever" (by William Satire), (2) "The Standard Oil Company:

British Petroleum Loses Patience" (by J. David Hunger), (3) "The Dairy Industry" (by Richard Fallert, Don Blayney, and James Miller), (4) "Cineplex Odeon Corporation" (by Joseph Wolfe), (5) "Airbus Industries: A Wave of the Future" (by Shaker Zahra, Daniel Hurley, Jr., and John Pearce II), and (6) "California Water Pricing" (by Dorothy Robyn). Each of these cases supplements one of the six chapters of the text dealing with problems and issues in particular industries. Thus, they enable the student to go deeper into these problems and issues and enrich classroom discussion.

An Instructor's Manual is available for the text. In addition to teaching suggestions for each chapter, it includes a test bank of multiple-choice questions and problem sets which reflect the decision-making emphasis of the text. Kathryn Nantz, the author of the Instructor's Manual, has created a varied menu of teaching materials for this new book.

Test questions are also available to instructors on floppy disks for use with a personal computer. Information on these disks can be obtained from the publisher.

666 pages + Appendix (A1-A65)

Po otrzymaniu zamówienia poinformujemy,
czy wybrany tytuł polskojęzyczny lub anglojęzyczny jest aktualnie na półce księgarni.