Customer Reviews

Theory of Price

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I totally agree with the gentleperson from Brazil.

The traditional heart of academic economics is about how relative prices are determined: the theory of the household, of the business firm, and of how the two interact via markets. This is the best exposition there is of that traditional heart. (The only other book to which it can be compared is McCloskey's "The Applied Theory of Price", regrettably also out of print.)

Stigler was also one of the best scholars ever on the history of economic ideas, resulting in this book's many delightful detours. Finally, he was a masterful and witty writer. If Churchill had been an economist, he would have written something like the Theory of Price.

Having been an advisor to transition economies on transforming their tax systems to assist in the move to a market economy, I can unequivocally state that this book is the clearest explanation of why individuals and firms benefit from the freedom of the market. As one of my good friends from the London School of Economics says, `Stigler is light on math but heavy on economics.'

It is amazing how this book is still valuable and such a few people know that. This is a book which every undergraduate student of Economics (actually every economist) should know, because it is pretty well written and it gives all the basic intuition for Microeconomics in a very good humour style - something I thought hardly possible in this field. It starts with the consumer theory and then goes through the firm theory. Many things we learn from Varian and Pindyck and Rubinfeld are there. I recommend this book mainly because you can learn very difficult things having fun, and the level of formality is very appropriate even for those who do not have a first year calculus (the tough stuff is in the appendix). I regret not having known this book before.

This book is well written, clear, and positively enlightening. The seller has delivered on the high quality and excellent condition of the book.