For a complete multimedia book tour of Bade/Parkin, Foundations of Economics 6e,
Click Here A practice-oriented learning system that breaks the traditional textbook mold.
To help the student focus on the most important concepts—and effectively practice application of those concepts—Foundations of Microeconomics is structured around a Checklist/Checkpoint system. The result is a patient, confidence-building textbook that prepares the student to use economics in their everyday life, regardless of what their future career will be.
Chapter 1. Getting Started
Chapter 2. The U.S. and Global Economies
Chapter 3. The Economic Problem
Chapter 4. Demand and Supply
Chapter 5. Elasticities of Demand and Supply
Chapter 6. Efficiency and Fairness of Markets
Chapter 7. Government Actions in Markets
Chapter 8. Taxes
Chapter 9. Global Markets in Action
Chapter 10. Public Goods and Public Choices
Chapter 11. Externalities and the Environment
Chapter 12. Private Information
Chapter 13. Consumer Choice and Demand
Chapter 14. Production and Cost
Chapter 15. Perfect Competition
Chapter 16. Monopoly
Chapter 17. Monopolistic Competition
Chapter 18. Oligopoly
Chapter 19. Markets for Factors of Production
Chapter 20. Inequality and Poverty
Offer the latest content: New Features. - Simplified chapter openers grab student attention and provide instant focus for the chapter. Each chapter opens with a question about a central issue that the chapter addresses and is illustrated with a carefully selected photograph.
- An Eye On box addresses and discusses the chapter-opener and an end-of-chapter problem. This is also available in the MyEconLab Homework and Test Manager, making the issue available for assignment with automatic grading. This feature:
- Enables students to get the point of the chapter quickly.
- Ties the chapter together.
- Helps instructors focus on a core issue in class and for practice.
- The Chapter Checkpoints (the last three pages of each chapter) have been thoroughly revised.
- The first page contains problems and applications for students to work on, which are replicated in the MyEconLab Study Plan.
- The second page contains problems and applications for instructors to assign as a homework, quiz, or test. Many of these problems and applications are new to the sixth edition and include mini-case studies from recent news stories.
- The third page contains a short multiple-choice quiz. This quiz, also available in MyEconLab for student practice, hits the high points of the chapter and enables students to test themselves on the types of questions they are likely to encounter on tests and exams.
The Checkpoints at the end of each major section of a chapter have been reorganized to separate practice with basic analysis and “In the News” applications. Worked solutions are provided for both types of questions.
Major Content Changes in Introductory Chapters
Chapter 1 has been reworked in order to strengthen the explanation and illustration of the economic way of thinking by placing the student center stage and focusing on the decision to remain in school or get a full-time job. The goal is to engage students from the outset of the course, grabbing their attention and showing them the relevance of economics and its place in everyday life. The explanation of the scientific method in economics has also been revised and improved.
Chapter 3 has a more gradual and fully illustrated explanation of the mutual gains from trade arising from comparative advantage and a new Eye On box on the power of specialization and trade through the classic story of the production of the pencil.
Major Content Changes in Micro Chapters
The following are some of the motivating questions and features of Eye On boxes and end-of chapter problems in the sixteen micro chapters:
What do you do when the price of gasoline rises?
Should price gouging be illegal?
Can the President repeal the laws of supply and demand?
Does Congress decide who pays the taxes?
Who wins and who loses from globalization?
How can we limit climate change?
Should America build a high-speed rail network like Europe’s?
How do you avoid buying a lemon? How much would you pay for a song?
Which store has the lower costs: Wal-Mart or 7-Eleven?
Why did GM fail?
Are Microsoft’s prices too high?
Which cell phone?
Is two too few?
Why is a coach worth $6 million?
Who are the rich and the poor?
Reorganization of chapters dealing with externalties, public goods, and common resources:
- Chapter 10 explains all types of externalities. It explains negative externalities, illustrated with pollution, and positive externalities, illustrated with knowledge (education and research).
- Chapter 11 covers public goods and common resources and uses Obama’s wish to create a high-speed rail network similar to Europe’s to illustrate the efficient and inefficient provision of a public good. The analysis of common resources treats the tragedy of the commons as a type of externality problem.
New Chapter 12: Markets with Private Information explains the lemons problem and its solutions, and the problems that arise from asymmetric information in insurance and health-care markets. A section of this new chapter is devoted to health care and the challenges that arise from asymmetric information, missing insurance markets, and public health externalities. The U.S. health-care market is compared with those in other countries and Laurence Kotlikoff’s voucher-based “Medicare Part C for All” is described.