Customer Reviews:
UNO student .......2005-05-18
This book is pretty easy to follow, if you can follow simple algebraic graphs and logic (emphasize logic). I thought at first that maybe this book may have been easy, so I looked around on amazon and inferrred from what I read that all the micro books that are making big sales to universities are the same. By that I mean not to math intensive, just schedules, graphs, and definitions. I got an A in the class and feel like I definitely learned something. I recommend this book for those who want to learn on own also.
A good survey.......2003-10-26
'Foundations of Microeconomics' by Robin Bade and Michael Parkin is an interesting text for an introductory course in Microeconomics. The primary academic division at the beginning level of economics is the Micro/Macro-economic divide; often it is taught as a two-semester sequence for students going into economics, political science, history, business or any other such discipline that requires a thorough grounding in economic theory and principles.
Bade and Parkin are aware from decades of teaching experience that students often get lost in a sea of detail, and that many introductory economics texts (as do the introductory texts of many fields) attempt to do too much too quickly in introducing their subjects. Bade and Parkin organise each chapter, therefore, around only a few core principles - three or four at most. They have also built into this text a very extensive set of charts and diagrams to demonstrate the points that are being explained in the text.
Each chapter begins with a checklist, and ends with checkpoints (which follow on from section checkpoints along the way). Included in this is a featured called the 'Eye on...' feature - these are small articles that highlight practical, real life situations in which the principles under discussion apply. They may be domestic or international in scope, and may be current or significant in history.
The book is adaptable to many different uses - the introductory pages highlight four alternative means of focus that the book can take: a traditional micro-economics course approach; a public policy emphasis; a business emphasis; or a shorter policy emphasis. Each of these build on core principles in the early chapters, and then expand from there depending upon the primary interests of the class or reader.
The layout of the book is visually interesting and lively. The use of colour, photographs, and charts and graphs adds tremendously to the feel of the text. The text is sharp and concise, without sacrificing clarity or content.
One very important section that I wish would have more detail and emphasis is the appendix to chapter 1 - Making and Using Graphs. Interpreting and drawing graphs seems to be the single largest problem area for students I tutor in microeconomics, so more emphasis on this part would be appreciated, particularly as the skills given in this section carry throughout the entire book. As a primary tool, the relegation of this to an appendix sends somewhat of a mixed message of the importance of graphs. Perhaps renaming this as a chapter in its own right would help somewhat, with more detail and examples (much like in mathematics, it is in the repetition of the exercises that the students gain mastery of the concepts). Students are indeed called upon to do many exercises during the course of this text (learning by doing, rather than just through reading), but the early grounding in graphical representation is critical.
Book Description
Exceptionally clear and accessible, Pat McKeague's best-selling texts offer all the review, drill, and practice students need to develop solid mathematical proficiency and confidence. McKeague's attention to detail, exceptional writing style, and organization of mathematical concepts make teaching enjoyable and learning accessible. Building on his reputation for student-friendly content and supportive pedagogy, Mckeague reaffirms his presence as a leader in developmental mathematics with the introduction of this new paperback title.
Customer Reviews:
Great Service.......2007-01-25
Great service and fast shipping. Will do business again and highly recommended
5 stars.......2006-11-07
Fast service, great refrences, and helpfull sudy guide to boost my grades. Overall rating 5 Stars
Average customer rating:
|
Rationality, Bounded Rationality and Microfoundations: Foundations of Theoretical Economics
Reza Salehnejad
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Macroeconomics
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Microeconomics
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Theory
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Behavioral Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Look Inside Business Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0230004806
Release Date: 2007-01-23 |
Book Description
New classical economics makes three assumptions to explain economic phenomena. Firstly, people solve their decision problems by following the prescriptions of the expected utility theory. Secondly, people behave like econometricians in learning the structure of the environment and predicting economic events. And thirdly, the general forms of the laws of economics are the same in case of the individual and the economy. This book challenges these hypotheses, explaining why the expected utility theory, even if it were true, fails to be of much help in solving economic controversies. It goes on to demonstrate why there can be no theory of statistical learning and why therefore the proposal that homo economicus behaves like a statistician falls a long way short of helping us understand the dynamics of the economy. Finally the book brings to the fore the complexities that behavioural heterogeneity and interaction create for the connection between the micro and macro levels in the economy. These complexities lend strong support to atheoretical macroeconomics.
Book Description
A scientific study of the political and economic factors influencing democratic decision making
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating book.......2007-04-28
This is truly a fascinating book. Few books have had a greater influence on my political thought. The initial assumptions have a libertarian bent, but the construction of the argument from there is brilliant. As for an overview of the book, I feel that Mr. Templeman's review below was just about perfect.
High praise with a grain of salt.......2007-01-07
The main contribution of this pathbreaking book is by providing a rationale for the "counter-majoritarian difficulty": Why does society tolerate the "dead hand" of the constitutional framers to limit the freedom of choice of living individuals who wish to undo the constitution? The authors muse that in some previous stage, where individuals cannot identify their future preferences, each individual is threatened by two kinds of risk: The first is that others will attempt to take something that belongs to her and achieve their purpose by popular vote. From this prespective each individual desires that such a popular vote will not be made effectual unless supported by the largest number of participants. The second concern is that individuals might wish, in the future, to appropriate something that belongs to others, and may be thwarted by a popular vote, inimical to their cause. From this second perspective they wish to institute a rule that allows the appropriation to take place with only a minimal number of supportets. Each one of these two perils can be represented by a cost function, where the cost is a function of the number of voters necessary to carry the proposed measure; adding up the two functions generates an aggregate cost schedule for all rational players. The minimum of the aggregate function indicates the optimal number of individuals, as a portion of the voting population, necessary for carrying the proposed measure. If this number is greater than 50% of the population, this fact justifies the entrenchment of entitlements in a constitution. The grain of salt that must be added to this analysis is that the authors do not provide an explanation why that number might be greater than 50% of the population, or what might be the conditions that must be satisfied for the generation of that number.
Foundation for Studying Political Economy.......2006-01-28
A few other reviews have dismissed this book somehow as sloppy and even halarious. I would like to just make sure that the credibility of the work put forth by Buchanan and Tullock is realized. This book, along with a number of other great accomplishments, won James Buchanan a Nobel Prize in economics. To view this work as a right wing rationalization is way off base, study the works of Buchanan and Tullock and you will realize that statement is completely ridiculous.
Classic work in economics and political organization.......2005-03-29
The Calculus of Consent, written by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, is one of the founding publications of what has since become known as the subdiscipline of public choice, which is the application of tools of economic analysis to the domain of political decision making. In theory, political decisions are made by elected officials in their pursuit of the "general interest" or the "common good", however defined. In reality, however, political decisions reflect the outcome of the workings of a number of interested parties, which includes voters, politicians, career government officials (bureaucrats), special-interest groups, lobbyists, etc., each of whom have their own agendas and interests. When someone appeals to the public interest while making a political argument, more often than not the underlying motive is a matter of self-interest (e.g. teachers' unions angling for larger teacher salaries under the pretext of improving public education). Public choice theory does not mean to be critical or cynical about this. Instead, it is merely intended to be descriptive: that's simply the way the political decision-making process works, and we need to understand this first before we try and improve the world through politics. For his central role in the development of public choice theory, professor Buchanan would go on to earn the 1986 Nobel prize in economics.
The book's main contribution lies in its development of the analysis of political behavior, particularly so-called logrolling (i.e. vote-trading, or political exchange). The Founding Fathers set up our political system in order for the general interest to be served rather than interests that only benefit specific groups at the expense of the rest of the population. But elected officials have learned to circumvent that intent by happily trading their vote on issues on which they don't care one way or the other in exchange for votes on issues about which they do care. All members of the legislature end up voting for each other's pet projects, which all get enacted at taxpayers' expense.
The authors propose that one solution would be to distinguish between legislative rules and constitutional rules. Legislative (statutory) rules may be adopted by simple majority coalitions pursuing their own interests. Constitutional rules, on the other hand, are supposed to be decided on without regard for short-term individual consequences ("what is right in the long run?" instead of "what's good for me today?"). Legislative rules are substantive, constitutional rules are procedural. Constitutional rules are meant to restrict abuse of the legislative process by majority coalitions. The difference between legislative and constitutional rules is perhaps somewhat idealistic. After all, what's to prevent people from voting for or against constitutional rules based on their short-term interest. In theory, people are thought to realize that "what's right" will also benefit them, as everyone else will be bound by the same rules, but in practice it doesn't always quite work that way (e.g. people may be aware that a constitutional balanced budget amendment is the morally right thing to do to prevent saddling their descendants with public debt, but as of yet no such amendment has been enacted). Still, the legislative-constitutional distinction is at least helpful as an analytical device.
As the authors acknowledge, in real life things aren't always quite as black-and-white as they have here been described. Sometimes people--yes, even some politicians--vote according to their conscience rather than according to their own self-interest. But the insights and analysis offered by the book and by public-choice theory more often than not do apply. The book is highly persuasive in demonstrating that democracy's simple-majority voting rule (50 percent plus one vote) does not inherently lead to superior decisions. For example, it offers a convincing explanation for why even in majoritarian democracy, taxes and government spending, whether on public services or on redistribution, are clearly "too large", i.e. larger than the vast majority of Americans would agree to if they were to redesign and rebuild government all over again from scratch today.
Stylistically, the book is light on math and the authors have an elegant writing style. But it is somewhat on the academic side and rather heavy on preliminaries. More comprehensive and more easily digestible treatments of issues of political decision making in a democratic context do exist, but even now, some four decades after its initial publication, the book is still considered a classic work in the history of economics and political organization. Its central section is "a simple logrolling model" (pp. 136-142 in the Buchanan Collected Works edition).
Mixed Feelings.......2005-02-14
The book contains exposition of important insights. Constitutional rules of decision produce political parties as a byproduct. Representative legislatures reduce the cost of collective decision processes. Logrolling is trade in the political context, and so the participants in logrolling benefit from it. When decision authority arises fundamentally from individuals, logrolling will occur. In liberal democracies, the government will tax all persons at a fairly high rate, and the tax law will stipulate numerous special exceptions granting lower rates or exemptions.
On the other hand, the book is difficult to read. The authors mercifully avoid the mathematics that frequently obscures economic thought and creates a facade of ersatz logic. However, wading through the prose is a hard slog, tending to make the concepts unreachable.
We can't be hard on the authors, though. That they articulated the ideas at all is more than the entirety of humanity did in the preceding millenia.
Still one hopes some determined disciple will lucidly render the ideas. Both opportunity and need exist for the story better told.
Book Description
This textbook brings together the main developments in non-cooperative game theory from the 1950s to the present. After opening with a number of lively examples, Ritzberger starts by considering the theory of decisions under uncertainty. He then turns to representations of games, first introducing extensive forms and then normal forms. The remainder of the text is devoted to solution theory, going from basic solution concepts like rationalizable strategies, Nash equilibrium, and correlated equilibrium to refinements of Nash equilibrium. Foundations of Non-Cooperative Game Theory covers all material relevant for a first graduate course in game theory, plus some issues only touched on by other texts. In particular, this book contains an in-depth discussion of perfect recall and related concepts, including a proof of Kuhn's theorem. It provides an introduction to the Thompson transformations for extensive forms, and a section on the reflection of extensive form structures in normal form games. In addition to the standard material on basic solution concepts, strategy subsets closed under rational behavior are covered, as well as fixed sets under the best-reply correspondence. Refinements of Nash equilibrium driven by backwards induction in the extensive form or by strategy trembles in the normal form are presented, and strategic stability, the geometry of the Nash equilibrium correspondence, and index theory for Nash equilibrium components are discussed in depth. Ritzberger provides numerous examples and exercises to aid the reader's understanding, most of which are motivated by applications of game theory in economics. While advanced mathematical machinery is used on occasions, an effort has been made to include as many explanations for formal concepts as possible, making this text an invaluable tool for teachers, students, and researchers of microeconomics and game theory.
Average customer rating:
|
Market-Augmenting Government: The Institutional Foundations for Prosperity (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Economic Conditions
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Economic Policy & Development
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Microeconomics
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Theory
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Economic Conditions
| International
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Law
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Political Science
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Law
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0472068172 |
Book Description
As recently as 1990 policymakers and academics believed widely that all that was needed for dramatic increases in prosperity in transitional economies was to roll back the state. The arguments in this book present an articulate antidote to that assertion: While the state must withdraw from many activities involving direct production and exchange, it must provide good laws and enforce them for economies to prosper. In one chapter, Robert Summers brilliantly exposes the complexity of this requirement, listing eighteen minimum conditions for the creation of the rule of law. Other chapters describe the benefits of good commercial law on economic growth, the political foundations of American commercial law, how poor governance led to the Asian financial crisis, the institutional requirements for environmental markets, and constitutional structures that lead to efficient government.
The contributors, renowned experts in their fields on the complex institutional requirements for prosperity, offer arguments from economic theory, economic history, legal theory, and political science. The chapters are simultaneously of high scholarly quality and intensely applicable. Indeed many of the ideas here are being used to design reform projects in developing countries.
Market-Augmenting Government will appeal to legal theorists, economists, and political scientists, and in particular to institutional economists. Its writing is friendly to the general reader, with only a few of the chapters requiring specialized knowledge. The book will also figure importantly in policy circles as governance moves center stage in the practice of reform and development.
Omar Azfar is Research Associate, IRIS Center, University of Maryland, College Park. Charles A. Cadwell is Director and Principle Investigator, IRIS Center, University of Maryland, College Park.
Book Description
America Unequal demonstrates how powerful economic forces have diminished the prospects of millions of Americans and why "a rising tide no longer lifts all boats." Changes in the economy, public policies, and family structure have contributed to slow growth in family incomes and rising economic inequality. Poverty remains high because of an erosion of employment opportunities for less-skilled workers, not because of an erosion of the work ethic; because of a failure of government to do more for the poor and the middle class, not because of social programs.
There is nothing about a market economy, the authors say, that ensures that a rising standard of living will reduce inequality. If a new technology, such as computerization, leads firms to hire more managers and fewer typists, then the wages of lower-paid secretaries will decline and the wages of more affluent managers will increase. Such technological changes as well as other economic changes, particularly the globalization of markets, have had precisely this effect on the distribution of income in the United States.
America Unequal challenges the view, emphasized in the Republicans' "Contract with America," that restraining government social spending and cutting welfare should be our top domestic priorities. Instead, it proposes a set of policies that would reduce poverty by supplementing the earnings of low-wage workers and increasing the employment prospects of the jobless. Such demand-side policies, Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk argue, are essential for correcting a labor market that has been increasingly unable to absorb less-skilled and less-experienced workers.
Books:
- Free Trade Under Fire: Second Edition
- Freedom from the Known
- From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967
- Game Theory with Economic Applications (2nd Edition)
- Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling (Princeton Studies in Complexity)
- George Soros on Globalization
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- Global Civil Society: An Answer to War
- Global Strategy (with World Map and InfoTrac )
- Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Black West: A Documentary and Pictoral History of the African American Role in the Westward Expa
- Plum Island
- David Adjaye: Houses; Recycling, Reconfiguring, Rebuilding
- History: Fiction or Science
- History: Fiction or Science
- Interest Rate Models - Theory and Practice: With Smile, Inflation and Credit
- Morality for Beautiful Girls
- Never Run Out of Cash
- Home Tree Home: Principles of Treehouse Construction and Other Tall Tales
- Hair Colour in the Horse
Foundations of Macroeconomics plus MyEconLab plus eBook 1-semester Student Access Kit (3rd Edition) (MyEconLab Series)
Foundations of Macroeconomics (3rd Edition)
Foundations of Microeconomics (3rd Edition)
Foundations of Microeconomics plus MyEconLab plus eBook 1-semester Student Access Kit (3rd Edition) (MyEconLab Series)
Management
