Foundations of Microeconomics (6th Edition)

Book Preface

Students know that throughout their lives they will makeeconomic decisions and be influenced by economic forces. They want to understand the economic principles that can help them navigate these forces and guide their decisions. Foundations of Microeconomics is our attempt to satisfy this want.

The response to our earlier editions from hundreds of colleagues across the United States and throughout the world tells us that most of you agree with our view that to achieve its goals, the principles course must do four things well. It must

• Motivate with compelling issues and questions
• Focus on core ideas
• Steer a path between an overload of detail and too much left unsaid
• Encourage and aid learning by doing

The Foundations icon with its four blocks (on the cover and throughout the book) symbolizes this four-point approach that has guided all our choices in writing this text and creating its comprehensive teaching and learning supplements.

WHAT’S NEW IN THE SIXTH EDITION

The extraordinary events in the U.S. and global economies provide a rich display of economic forces in action through which students can be motivated to discover the economic way of thinking. The global financial crisis, slump, and faltering recovery; headwinds from the European debt crisis; ongoing tensions that result from globalization and international outsourcing; the continued spectacular expansion of China and India in the information-age economy; enhanced concern about the depletion of the world’s rainforests and fish stocks; climate change; and the relentless pressure on the federal budget from the demands of an aging population and increased defense and homeland security expenditures; are just a few of these interest-arousing events. All of them feature at the appropriate points in our new edition, and the text and examples are all thoroughly updated to reflect the most recently available data and events.

Every chapter contains many small changes, all designed to enhance clarity and currency. We have also made a few carefully selected major changes that we describe below.