DescriptionRobert Frank?s Microeconomics and Behavior covers the essential topics of microeconomics while exploring the relationship between economics analysis and human behavior. The book?s clear narrative appeals to students, and its numerous examples help students develop economic intuition. This book introduces modern topics not often found in intermediate textbooks. Its focus throughout is to develop a student?s capacity to 'think like an economist.'
Key Features
# One-term undergraduate intermediate microeconomic courses as taught in departments of economics and in select business schools at the graduate level. It is expected that students will have had a micro principles course. Most students will be either economics or business majors. The text has been used as well for graduate applied microeconomics courses and for both graduate and undergraduate economics courses taught in public policy schools.
# One-term undergraduate intermediate microeconomic courses as taught in departments of economics and in select business schools at the graduate level. It is expected that students will have had a micro principles course. Most students will be either economics or business majors. The text has been used as well for graduate applied microeconomics courses and for both graduate and undergraduate economics courses taught in public policy schools.
# Now 4-Color! Graphs and photos pop in the new edition, facilitating student learning and comprehension.
# Now 4-Color! Graphs and photos pop in the new edition, facilitating student learning and comprehension.
# Bonus Online Chapter: General Equilibrium and Market Efficiency (previously Chapter 16) has been moved to the Online Learning Center, making the text more concise while still offering professors the option to cover the chapter.
# Bonus Online Chapter: General Equilibrium and Market Efficiency (previously Chapter 16) has been moved to the Online Learning Center, making the text more concise while still offering professors the option to cover the chapter.
# Economic Naturalism: The Economics Naturalist feature of Bob Frank?s principles book is also part of Microeconomics and Behavior. The concept aims to teach students to use economic principles to explain everyday details of ordinary existence. Throughout the text, Economic Naturalist examples help develop economic intuition and demonstrate the relevance of economics. New examples show how basic microeconomic principles can help answer such questions as:
* Why has the demand for luxury grills grown so rapidly in recent years?
* Why do doctors and lawyers often offer discounts to people with low incomes?
* Why do lawyers in small towns buy cheaper suits than their counterparts in big cities?
* Why might a firm build a bigger factory than it would ever need?
* Why is it so hard to find a taxi on rainy days?
The book aims not just to enable students to apply economic concepts to such questions, but also to instill in them an inclination to do so.
# Economic Naturalism: The Economics Naturalist feature of Bob Frank?s principles book is also part of Microeconomics and Behavior. The concept aims to teach students to use economic principles to explain everyday details of ordinary existence. Throughout the text, Economic Naturalist examples help develop economic intuition and demonstrate the relevance of economics. New examples show how basic microeconomic principles can help answer such questions as:
* Why has the demand for luxury grills grown so rapidly in recent years?
* Why do doctors and lawyers often offer discounts to people with low incomes?
* Why do lawyers in small towns buy cheaper suits than their counterparts in big cities?
* Why might a firm build a bigger factory than it would ever need?
* Why is it so hard to find a taxi on rainy days? The book aims not just to enable students to apply economic concepts to such questions, but also to instill in them an inclination to do so.
# Business Examples: In order to make Microeconomics and Behavior even more relevant for business majors, the text contains more examples that relate to business issues. The Economic Naturalist tackles such questions as:
* Why do some amusement parks charge only a fixed admissions fee, with no additional charge even for rides with long lines?
* Why do builders use prefabricated frames for roofs but not for walls?
* Why do color photographs cost less than black-and-white ones?
* Why do theater owners offer students discounts on admission tickets but not on popcorn?
# Useful Appendixes: These include the utility function approach to the consumer budgeting problem, additional topics in demand theory, additional applications of rational choice theory, search theory, production theory, cost theory, additional models of monopolistic competition, and a more detailed look at exhaustible resource allocation. The inclusion of this material offers instructors unmatched latitude in their choice of technical level and topic coverage. Those who desire to teach a calculus-based course will find comprehensive coverage of optimization theory in the appendices to Chapters 3, 9, and 10. Starred problems that require calculus are included in the end-of-chapter problem sets.
# Design: The text boasts a design modeled after the successful Frank/Bernanke Principles of Economics text. Line drawings illustrate the Examples and the Economic Naturalist features. The attractive look of the book will aid students in their understanding and motivate them to read.
# An exceptionally clear writing style engages students in the fundamentals of microeconomics.
# The generous use of worked examples and exercises promotes a solid understanding of economic principles. These are clearly indicated in the table of contents.
# A complete, detailed coverage of the rational consumer choice model (Chapters 3, 4, and 5). Where most texts use abstract examples (If the price of x falls, what happens to the quantity demanded of y?). Frank uses concrete examples. For example, ?When the price of computer memory falls, people buy video games with more elaborate graphics.?
# Distinctive chapters explore incomplete information, altruism, and cognitive limitations (6, 7, and 8). Most intermediate texts provide little or no coverage of economic behavior, even though the importance for understanding these topics is now widely recognized.
The 2001 Nobel prize was awarded for the pioneering work of George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz on the economics of information. Chapter 6 describes the work of these scholars in more detail than any other intermediate text. Frank shows how this material enables us to answer questions such as ?Why is coyness often seen as an attractive attribute in persons of the opposite sex?? and ?Why do residents of small towns generally spend less on their professional wardrobes than their counterparts in big cities??
The 2001, the John Bates Clark award went to Matthew Rabin, and the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics went to Daniel Kahneman, scholars whose work shows how important principles from cognitive psychology can be incorporated into microeconomic models to help explain otherwise puzzling inconsistencies in the data. Chapter 8 provides the only comprehensive summary of this emerging field available in any intermediate text.
Economists are also increasingly recognizing the extent to which the assumption of self-interested preferences limits the ability of traditional models to explain observed behavior. Chapter 7 presents a principled framework within which traditional models can be expanded to accommodate more general representations of preferences. Robert Frank is very well known for his original research on the economics of human behavior and is the author of several trade books on the topic. Many of his original insights are distilled in these chapters. Because these chapters are written in a more discursive form than other chapters, instructors who feel they don?t have time to cover them in class often assign them as independent readings.
# Chapters on capital and government (15 and 18) along with the chapters on economic behavior give the instructor an unusual range of topic coverage.
# End-of-chapter exercises and problems are closely linked with the text?s concepts and examples. Students can more readily relate the economic concepts to the pedagogy.
Table of Contents
Microeconomics and Behavior, 7e Robert Frank
Part 1: Introduction
1. Thinking Like an Economist
2. Supply and Demand
Appendix: How Do Taxes Affect Equilibrium Prices and Quantities?
Part 2: The Theory of Consumer Behavior
3. Rational Consumer Choice Appendix: The Utility Function Approach to the Consumer Budgeting Problem
4. Individual and Market Demand
Appendix: Additional Topics in Demand Theory
5. Applications of Rational Choice and Demand Theories
6. The Economics of Information and Choice Under Uncertainty
Appendix: Search Theory and the Winner?s Curse
7. Explaining Tastes: The Importance of Altruism and Other Nonegoistic Behavior
8. Cognitive Limitations and Consumer Behavior
Part 3: The Theory of the Firm and Market Structure
9. Production Appendix: Mathematical Extensions of Production Theory
10. Costs
Appendix: Mathematical Extensions of the Theory of Costs
11. Perfect Competition
12. Monopoly
13. Imperfect Competition: A Game-Theoretic Approach
Part 4: Factor Markets
14. Labor
Appendix: The Economics of Workplace Safety
15. Capital
Appendix: A More Detailed Look at Exhaustible Resource Allocation
Part 5: Welfare Economics
16. Externalities, Property Rights, and the Coase Theorem
17. Government
18W. General Equilibrium and Market Efficiency (online only)
Supplements
# Instructor's CD Rom (IM/CTB/PPTs) to accompany Microeconomics and Behavior
ISBN: 0073343374
Author(s): FRANK
