Customer Reviews

Principles of Microeconomics and ActiveEcon CD Package (6th Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Principles of Microeconomics by Case, Fair, and Oster 9th edition was an adequate text for an introductory microeconomics class, assuming students received a good high school foundation in microeconomic terminology. Otherwise, the textbook will be confusing because it really stresses the mathematical and graphic foci of economics.

For example, the book places a lot of emphasis on cost and revenue curves: for example, it emphasizes time and time again where firms should be producing to make a profit, whether the firm be a perfectly competitive firm or a monopolistic firm. The book does not really talk a whole lot about firms in-between, but then determining profit in a monopolistically competitive firm or oligopoly is far more challenging than the hypothetical perfectly competitive firm.

Overall, I was satisfied with this textbook for an introductory level microeconomics course. It would have been nice if the book would have stressed norminative ecomomics a little more, rather than simply focusing almost entirely on positive economics, but I guess the authors felt that students would have received considerable instruction time for norminative economics in high school.

Also, along with the book, as a study resource, were PowerPoints (although I am not certain if you can access these PowerPoints when purchasing a text on Amazon.com, unless inside the book you can find an access code to online resources from the publisher).

The PowerPoints were pretty helpful in sumarizing the main points - the major themes, especially information like: when in a monopoly, profit is maximized where MR = MC (i.e. the monopoly will produce as long as MR is greater than MC), while in perfect competition, a firm will produce as long as the price is greater than MC. Because it is an introductory-level texts, 'exceptions' to the rules are not frequently discussed.

Overall Opinion:

The textbook is decent. I have read economics textbooks I liked better. I have suffered though economics texts that were worse.

This product needs better warning and a more specific (accurate) description, "may not" and "does not" are significantly diferent terms when refering to the missing package contents of the Kindle edition versus the bounded print edition. The product describes what it ought to contain and gives a vague term for what a different version "may" contain; this is very misleading. For those who need MyEconLab Access code for their course DO NOT get the kindle edition.

This textbook is very easy to understand and the examples are interesting because the authors make it relative to the average student, whether young or old.

This book by far exceeds my first Macroeconomics text and I give a big thumbs up to those who contributed to the design and text in this book.

The text is of medium reading level, although sometimes the extensive introduction to terms is unavoidable in introductory texts. That is to say, we can find pages with five or six terms crowded together, but that's what happens to almost every introductory textbook and generally expected when you touch a new subject at the first time.

The general orientation of the book is theory with applications, and the authors seem to emphasize the real-world application a lot.

Most of the tables and figures have been updated with the 1997-1998 data. And there are up-to-date real life examples throughout the text, which are well connected to the theoretical contexts. In Part 4 (Chapter 18~20), Current Microeconomic Issues, the authors address important topics that have recently emerged as major economic issues, including health-care reform, immigration, urban problem and crime, and welfare reform. All this, together with those Issues and Debate boxes, may greatly facilitate our attempt to make the course more attractive to the principle students.

I like the ABC News/ Prentice Hall Video Library (1998/99), Powerpoint lecture presentation, and computerized test bank that come with this book. These stuffs can enhance the efficiency of your teaching, especially to those graduate teaching assistants like me.

As the economy goes global, we'd tell our students more about what's going on around the world. In the last part, International Economics, the authors not only address the traditional topics in international trade but cover the economic growth in developing nations, transition economics, and alternative economic systems as well.

But for some unknown reason, under the topic of "a new world trade agreement: GATT and the final act", the authors failed to mention the WTO which came into existence on 1 January 1995 as a fruit of Uruguay Round negotiations (1986-94).

wow another gripping economics textbook!!!!

I keep this one on my coffee table, displaying it proudly in my home.

the chapters dont match the ones in the case fair hardcover principles of economics.

Mathematics is used broadly in the book but limited to simple algebra, i.e., no calculus is used. So the level thus is appropriate for an introductory economics class.