Customer Reviews

Experiments With Economic Principles

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I took a course that used this book (taught by one of the authors) to fulfill an economics core requirement. Since then, I have studied economics on my own and know that I have retained a lot of the information that I learned in that first introductory class. In contrast, I've forgotten much of what I learned in standard lecture-style courses. I disagree with the previous reviewer in that I think this book is great for a beginner. You may not learn all of the mainstream technical terms and how to do economic busywork, but it does a really good job of teaching key concepts: supply and demand, market vs. regulated prices, etc... Conceptual understanding is extremely important in any field, and encourages the student to think creatively. Most importantly, this book encourages learning and instills an interest in economics.

I had the fortune of being in an introductory economics class where the experimental approach along with this book is used. I already had lots of microeconomics background and scored a 5 on my AP micro and macro eco exam. I believe that experimental approach to economics, although can be interesting at times, is not suitable for students with little or no economics background. It is essential for students to have a solid grasp of important economic concepts such as marginal cost/revenue, opportunity cost, and the experimental approach lacks in that respect. I tried this course and this book, because I wanted a different angle on something I already knew, and I didn't get much out of it. If you're new to economics, and perhaps want to continue into more economics courses later on, this book/course is not the way. The chapters are no more than explanations of the experiments done in class. Very little reference material exists, and everything is over simplified. By the end of this book, students will not be able to draw the MC/MR/TR/TC curves for perfect competitions/monopoly/oligopoly/monopolistic competiton. I got an A in the course, not because the book was so helpful to me, but because I already knew the stuff before I even registered for the class.