Economics [antikvár]

REFACE To change the way students see the world: this is our aim in teaching economics and in writing this book. Nothing gives a teacher of economics more satisfaction than to share the joy of students who begin to think like economists. But eco-noniics is not easy to master, and every day we remember the challenges facing those who seek to gain the insights we call the economist's way of thinking, and we remember our ovm early struggles with the discipline. In preparing this edition, we have drawn on our own experience and also on the experiences of instructors and students who have used the first edition. Three assumptions guided the choices we faced in writing tliis book. First, students are eager to leam but have many claims on their time. They want to see the relevance of what they are studying to their own everyday experiences. Second, students want straightforward and logical explanations. Tliird, students want to be equipped for tomorrow's world. They want to learn the economics of the 1990s and the relevant lessons of the past so that they vrill be able to understand the world of the twenty-first century. Approach T he core economic principles have been around for more than one himdred years and other important elements, especially parts of the theory of the firm and Keynesian macroeconomics, have been with us for more than fifty years. However, economics has also been developing and changing rapidly during the past few decades. AU texts on economics principles pay some attention to these more recent developments, but they have not succeeded in integrating the new and the traditional. Our aim has been to incorporate new ideas - such as game theory, the modem theory of the firm, information, public choice, and the real business cycle -into the body of timeless principles. The presence of modern topics does not translate into 'itigh level' or into 'bias'. We make recent developments in economics thoroughly accessible to beginning students. Where modern theories are controversial, alternative approaches are presented,