Microeconomics

This little book is a fantastic introduction to some of the powerful ideas introduced by Coase. Coase initiated two different ideas that today govern or inform much of the work of economists. The first was his introduction of the idea of "transaction costs", from an article suggesting an investigation into the root causes for industrial organization. The second is now known as the Coase Theorem, and stems from his insightful refutation of the Pigouvian view of social cost. There is also an article investigating the actual history of lighthouses in England, something which has usually been cited as a pure public good, and therefore requiring government provision. The history shows that most lighthouses - in some periods, all lighthouses - were privately provided. Coase's writing is lucid, his ideas profound, and his influence widespread. This collection is very important to anyone wanting to understand externalities, transaction costs, and social welfare.

Ronald Coase, though not an economist, in this book develops the rationale for the existence of firms (the reduction of transactions costs), an insight that has revolutionized the field of microeconomics since its publication (the original essay was published in the 1930s). He also touches on arguments related to monopolies (and when they should and should not be curbed by regulation). Despite the deep implications, it is written in an easily readable format.

This collection of seven of economist Ronald Coase's essays provides important understanding of the workings of market economies, the boundary between private and public, and what determines the size and structure of a firm. Coase distinguished his work from other economists by focusing on the role of transaction costs-now a common theme in discussions of the new economy. If you read only one of the chapters, it should be "The Nature of the Firm". Here Coase provides the intellectual foundations for strategic thinking about business architectures, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, and collaborative commerce. Some of this work was later elaborated on by Oliver Williamson (see his 1985 book, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism.) Like Joseph Schumpeter, Ronald Coase is an economist whose works from decades ago are now more relevant than ever. While Schumpeter's phrase "creative destruction" may be more memorable, in the end it is Coase's views on transaction costs and the nature of the firm that may be the more significant (and certainly more readable).

Run, don't walk, to order your copy of this book. Ron Baker does for pricing our services what Montgomery did for Auditing.
What a novel idea, to get paid for the value of the services that we provide to our clients.
Ron Baker's goal, as he so aptly describes it, is "to trash time sheets forever". Keeping track of time is the biggest waste of time ever perpetrated on professionals. Accountants have become slaves to the concept of "the almighty hour". We are not selling hours but intellectual capital.
Ron takes you through every step necessary to start your trip to successful value pricing. You will learn exactly how to present this to your existing clients. You will also learn how to use a change order when there turns out to be hidden surprises that no one anticipated. He will explain the concept of service guarantees as an excellent way of gaining new clients and show you in detail how to draft service agreements to use. The book comes with a CD-Rom that has many forms and agreements referred to in the book.
I don't know too many people who are thrilled about the idea of having any work done for them without knowing exactly what the cost will be. It's like boarding an airplane in Los Angeles, flying to New York, and being told your fare will depend on how many minutes you're in the air.
Ron Baker is truly one of the very few original thinkers in the accounting profession. Listen to him; learn from him, and I promise you that you will improve your professional life and most important, your bottom line as well.

I bought this book on a trial basis, due to its cost. It came on a Friday, and I scanned it that night. I wrote the check next morning.
This book changed my attitude about my profession. I was ready to quit. Burned out, tired, frustrated, and angry.
Within one month, I had identified 5 major clients and had more than doubled the revenue from those clients. My staff is happier because they feel they are being treated as professionals and generating fees more in line with their abilities. We have "dismissed" several non-productive clients, and haven't missed the revenue. We work fewer hours at more enjoyable work and actually make more profits. It has positively affected my home life as well.

Having read the previous edition of this book for just 20 minutes I e-mailed the author to tell him that "I have seen this book described as the most important book in the profession. Without a shadow of a doubt, it will change my life."

The new chapters make this latest edition even better. Read the chapter on Total Quality Service to understand how to compete in the future. Ron Baker will completely change your views on pricing professional services. You will start to charge what you are worth with a consequent improvement in both income and self esteem.

Recently I was in a group of 70 accountants who listened to the author speak on Value Pricing for just ten minutes. At the end he received a standing ovation. In my 30 years in the profession I have never seen accountants show such enthusiasm for a speaker and his subject.

If you want to change your professional (and personal) life for the better buy this book.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Anyone who is just beginning with microeconomics, should start with this book. It is very simple and goes right to the point.

This is an excellent textbook for any intermediate level price theory or microeconomics course. The author is right when he says beginning students should find it easy to grasp and advanced students will find the material challenging and thought provoking. The portion devoted to a review of elementary topics is small, and I would not recommend this book as an introduction to economics. Any undergraduate who encounters this book should breathe a sigh of relief - it is definitely one of the better texts in the subject. Instructors looking for a good textbook would do well to choose this one.

The "study guide" that is sometimes packaged with the textbook is not entirely useful; the number of problems actually in the textbook should be more than sufficient. Overall, this is a great survey of price theory with Landsburg's signature examples and interesting applications.

I recommend this book for some undergraduate student to take an intermediate microeconomics! Lucid explanation and some pictures are the finest.His another work, Armchair economist,is also nice. Randsburg did many good jobs!

Full of real-life examples that provide some intuitive insight about the issues that may arise when modelling time series and forecasting. Requires some initial knowledge in statistics and algebra but if you're involved in time series modelling, it should be your first book. All the data thats used is available in the authors webbsite for downloading, very nice.

To make this review short, I will say that I agree with all seven points made by the reviewer from New York, NY, whomever he or she may be. Franses is clear, concise, authoritative and up-to-date on all the advances.

I particularly like the nice coverage of GARCH models that are new to me. It is a great introductory text especially for economics majors. For more advanced books and other treatments of time series consider Kennedy's fourth edition of "A Guide to Econometrics" or the suggestion from reviewer "New York, NY". Also my listmania list on time series will give you several sources to look at.

Recently, I reread Franses book and expanded my review, which now includes 10 benefits.
(1) Organization by key features of economic time series (trends, seasonality, outliers, conditional heteroskedasticity, non-linearity), rather than by methods, which provides a practical foundation for the various methodologies. The order in which chapters are presented reflects the order of difficulty in modeling trends, seasonality, etc. Even if there were no other benefits, this organization makes it worthwhile.
(2) Appropriate level for first book on time series models as applied to economic time series, explaining more difficult concepts GARCH and VAR without excess detail. Box and Jenksins book is more a textbook; Brockwell and Davis is also more advanced; Hamilton is comprehensive and technical, but not as friendly. This book is very approachable even if you have had only 1 or 2 statistics courses. In economics, many people are interested in forecasting, and Franeses here is a good start. If you are looking for a more advanced forecasting book, try the recent books by Clements and Hendry from Cambridge U Press.
(3) Clear distinction of the steps of model identification, estimation, diagnostics, and selection; something which other time series analysis books do not seem to do early or easily. (4) Delineates stochastic and deterministic models in the second chapter, providing a framework for when to take differences (eg. ARMA vs ARIMA). His timing is excellent. Many people I have interviewed on time series do not understand why they need to difference (eg use prices instead of returns) or why to transform the series (eg use logs instead of actual values).
(5) Generous use of examples with real not simulated data with a website to download all the data, making it possible to import, graph, and analyze on your own.
(6) A website containing printing corrections. Techincal books are likely to have some errors, but very few keep websites to list what those are.
(7) Revealing graphics, especially for conditional heteroskedasticity, the 'CH' in GARCH. Figures 7.1-7.3 illustrate the concept that large returns tend to follow large returns very cleanly.
(8) His notation is clear and consistent, yet not overwhelming: conventional Greek letters, only 1 level of subscripting, matrix noation where appropriate; even the results are neatly presented, as standard errors appear in () below their point estimates. Finally, Franses uses the same notation from chapter to chapter where the term is the same--not so common when chapters written by different authors.
(9) Great appendices: extensive and updated references, a thorough subject index, and an author index. My only suggestion for improvement is that a second edition or the website should contain some exercises. Highly recommended.
(10) The price! There are books published under Wiley at 3 to 4 times the price! under Springer Verlag for 2 to 3 times the price. Certain books are worth the money, but Cambridge University Press paperback publications, when written well, are exeptional values. I encourage the ambitious time series student to look at other time series books, including one written this year by Franses including Quantitative Models in Market Research.

This book is a masterpiece. In practice, it deserves to become the "Holy Bible" of Microeconometrics applied to (but not only to) Development Economics. It is beautifully written by an amazingly knowledgeble economist, who has actually worked for years (and still does) on most of the issues this book deals with. It is no easy reading, and it would be worth spending a day for every single page, but it's excellent even if you don't want to go through the details, and you just need an intuition about the issues covered. The first chapter introduces the reader to many important aspects of the contruction and use of household surveys. The second chapter masterfully reviews many concepts of applied econometrics. Chapter 3 is about poverty and inequality measurement. Chapter 4 is about "Nutrition, children, and intrahousehold allocation", Chapter 5 deals with prices and tax reforms, and Chapter 6 with saving and consumption smoothing. The book also contains many useful Stata codes the author wrote and used for his many papers. Again, this is not a trivial reading, but if you are interested in applied economics you will find reading this book extremely rewarding, and often almost entertaining, because Deaton is one of the very few economists around able to write about technical stuff in a brilliant and intuitive way.

It is a great book, and I would have not canceled the order if you would have shipped as your website said it would.

This book is a masterpiece. In practice, it deserves to become the "Holy Bible" of Microeconometrics applied to (but not only to) Development Economics. It is beautifully written by an amazingly knowledgeble economist, who has actually worked for years (and still does) on most of the issues this book deals with. It is no easy reading, and it would be worth spending a day for every single page, but it's excellent even if you don't want to go through the details, and you just need an intuition about the issues covered. The first chapter introduces the reader to many important aspects of the contruction and use of household surveys. The second chapter masterfully reviews many concepts of applied econometrics. Chapter 3 is about poverty and inequality measurement. Chapter 4 is about "Nutrition, children, and intrahousehold allocation", Chapter 5 deals with prices and tax reforms, and Chapter 6 with saving and consumption smoothing. The book also contains many useful Stata codes the author wrote and used for his many papers. Again, this is not a trivial reading, but if you are interested in applied economics you will find reading this book extremely rewarding, and often almost entertaining, because Deaton is one of the very few economists around able to write about technical stuff in a brilliant and intuitive way.

Contrary to conventional belief, the authors propose that roots of a financial crisis lie in microeconomic rather than macroeconomic factors. Their evidence is convincing.

This is a good book for anyone who wants to know why the past financial crises happened and how to cope with them from both the public and the private perspectives. The authors also present the "ten warning signs of a financial crisis" based on macroeconomic data that can be used as a guideline to predict a crisis in certain economy. But the problem is they cannot predict when it will happen.

The authors' objective to "offer some unique perspectives, case examples, and practical solutions, and an actionable, strategic blueprint that our clients can tailor to meet their specific needs" is well presented.

If you have no other book on financial crisis management, you must have this one.

The authors succinctly and clearly explain why economies in crisis do not behave the way economies normally do. They then identify key weaknesses in the financial sectors of crisis economies, and explain why they occur.

The book then goes on to provide a thorough and clear exposition on how crisis economies can be turned around, and what needs to be done, both politically and financially.

At this point the book turns to consider bank restructuring (a very specialised subject) and recovery of NPL portfolios in crisis economies. It concludes with recommendations for strengthening the international financial system to limit early economic collapse and prevent international financial contagion.

I really like this book, both as a guide for students, and a "how to" for CEO's and the financial sector. It is brilliantly clear and practical.

If you want to protect yourself and your organisation from financial crisis, or understand what happens when the economy you're operating in suffers collapse, get this book.

If you are interested in financial crises in emerging markets, or have to manage a company during one, you will learn from this book.

Two features make the book unique in the financial-crisis literature. First is real-world experience. While the authors are up on their economic theory, the book's real contribution is the fruit of years of practice. From poring over the innards of banks' loan books to working out a national re-structuring plan, these guys have actually done it, and done it in multiple nations. Until now, the theoretical works of academia and the IMF/World Bank have had the field pretty much to themselves. This book is a refreshing break, and a vital complement.

Second is that the book speaks not just to policymakers, but to the private sector. There's plenty of advice out there for central bankers and finance ministers for crisis-management; there hasn't been anything for corporate executives and bankers. This book fills that void. If I were a CEO managing during a crisis, I'd want this book on my nighttable.

If you are frustrated with the presentation in Greene and other econometric textbooks, then you may want to take a look at this book. It's the anti-Greene, full of clear, well-motivated presentations. What I love about this book is that the author clearly intended for it to be used by students -- even though you can find all the formal results that you would expect from an advanced econometrics text, there is so much intuition that can't be found anywhere else (at least in one book). If you plan on doing applied research, get this book!

Wooldridge fills an enormous gap in the market between applied manuals (which do not deliver enough theory for an academically serious audience), and theory books (that leave you scratching your head as to how one is supposed to implement their results). This is a wonderful book for economic practitioners who want enough theoretical knowledge to support their applied work, but who don't want the theory obscuring the practical issues. An econometric theoretician might find another work more satisfying.

I have bought this book to have a comprehensive intermediate-advanced text on panel data and other approaches. The book is good, but no tables, no datasets, no figures!
Compared to other books on the topic, it is a very understandable book, but only COMPARED to those books. You do not have to be a Mathematician to understand it, but you must be at least intermediate in econometrics (after Gujarati or an intermediate course).

Gregory Mankiw's book is the best source I found for understanding Macroeconomics. He uses the Solow model for the long run, and then moves on to neo-Keynesian models for the short run. Its style is simple, direct, and conversational. The case studies, the examples, the stories and the graphics are extremely useful and even fun to read. If you feel afraid or lazy about Macroeconomics, this is the best book you'll find. You will end up actually liking the subject, a very important one to understand not only if you want to be an economist, but also if you want to understand the most important events going on in the world.

This is easily one of the best textbooks I have ever read. Uncluttered and elegant, it keeps you focused on what's important. The long run macro section is simply unsurpassed, and a pleasure to read. However, the book's exceptional clarity also has the (perhaps intended) effect of exposing the weaknesses of Keynesian short run macroeconomics which is what is taught to most undergraduates, and which is what is covered in this book. Teaching Keynesian macroeconomics to undergraduates, especially at the level that it is usually taught (mindless, unintuitive curve pushing) is unpardonable. I think a better approach to short run macro would be the less popular, slightly harder, but in the end clearer and more accurate market-clearing approach of Barro's "Macroeconomics". That said, let me repeat again that Mankiw is a FABULOUS book, and quite simply the best book for the standard material covered in most undergraduate macroeconomics classes.

The text is excellent and is suitable for any type of introductary Ecnonomics class. It can be used in a tough course or an easy course, as it provides a great level of organization so that the instructor may choose the material at his discretion depending on his course lay out.

Thank you.
This seller was very fast as far as delivery and the book was in great condition.

The book was pretty much cleaner than I expected!! All the deals went very smoothly, and I really like purchasing through Amazon.com already! Thanks for all the good deal!

The authors provide an understandable presentation of the dynamics of demand/supply, the price structure, equilibrium and concepts of elasticity. The data employed is current & this version is supported by the publisher in various prior versions , as well as, this successive version. The work has considerable technological support in the form of the CD Rom and various instructional materials.The authors provide a useful "News Analysis" to integrate current events into the text. This is very useful in providing background information for students. The problem sets are topical and challenging. There is a considerable discussion of international economics and transitional economies. Overall, the text can satisfy a wide range of student interests. i.e. Those students having a quantitative orientation will appreciate the considerable graphs throughout the text. Students having a more visual learning experience will enjoy the various news items throughout the text & the extensive discussion of basic definitions. The chapter summaries and WEB exercises are helpful in integrating the material & applying the various concepts using current technologies. This text should be employed for intensive renditions of introductory economics at the collegiate level.There is an appropriate amount of microeconomic coverage in the Principles of Macroeconomics, as well as, the more comprehensive Principles of Economics work. After having read this book, students should have a firm grasp of economics and the various data employed by industry. In addition, students will become more knowledgable on current events applicable to studies in this field. This work would provide very helpful background for further studies in Price Analysis and Econometrics (Mathematical Economics).

Wherever buyers and sellers get together, there is a market. In the absence of currency, trades have been consummated by assigning relative value to items (e.g. livestock, weapons, clothing) or services (e.g. plowing, medical care, harvesting). Throughout human history, there have been markets in one form or another at which people exchanged or purchased goods of various kinds, usually in a centrally located area such as a crossroads, harborside, village center, or town square. Buyers and sellers (or traders) gravitated to markets where and when there would be the most people. At least to some extent, all that remains true today even with the emergence of cybermarkets. Effective marketing in the 21st century creates or increases demand first by attracting interest. Hence the importance of visibility. It must also provide a convincing argument as to why a given product or service is preferable to other options, including not purchasing anything. Supply and demand often come into play. Pricing is frequently a decisive issue. For centuries, be it in an ancient bazaar or modern market, buying/selling/trading is among the most dynamic of human activities.

In this lively as well as informative book, McMillan offers "a natural history of markets" which helps us to gain a better understanding of how markets work as well as of what they can and can't do. "Markets do what they are supposed to do, however, only if they are we structured. Any successful economy has an array of devices and procedures to enable markets to work smoothly. A workable platform has five elements: information flows smoothly; property rights are protected; people can be trusted to live up to their promises; side effects are curtailed; and competition is fostered." I agree with McMillan that, as a result of innovations made by participants, "spontaneous evolution is the main driver of [private sector] markets" if and when provided with assistance from the public sector (i.e. government).

Because throughout history the strength of markets has been their adaptability and their "restless reinvention," McMillan argues, shaping new markets is both a task for governments and an opportunity for entrepreneurs. Appropriate involvement by the former ensures, for example, the protection of intellectual property; appropriate involvement by the latter ensures that the process of adaptability and reinvention is sustained. There are so many excellent books now in print which discuss the most effective marketing strategies and tactics.

Secondarily, McMillan examines several of them but his primary purpose, as I understand it, is to explain how and why the market economy ("...the worst form of economy, except for all the others which have been tried from time to time") "solves some all but intractable problems...[because] it admits variety and permits criticism" This book will be of greatest interest and value to decision-makers with responsibility for marketing within organizations which either have no "workable platform" or one which may soon collapse from the weight of external competition or internal inadequacy.

I also highly recommend this book to those who have a keen interest in cultural anthropology. As suggested earlier, the bazaar or market has always been and always will be among the most dynamic of human activities. Why? Because it must constantly be reinvented to accommodate ever-changing human needs and interests. McMillan's comprehensive analysis of that volatile process is a unique and brilliant achievement.

Reinventing the Bazaar used real-life examples to make markets understandable to any reader. From pharmaceutical companies to the Tokyo fish market, McMillan brings markets alive right in front of the readers' eyes. He attempts to demystify the mystery behind markets, and in my opinion, he succeeds. Each chapter presents a new market setting which McMillan uses to illustrate his various points. While the book has an economic undertone, the level of writing is not above the understanding of even a high school student. All terminology is explained not only with words, but with examples, as well. The book was enjoyable, especially if you have little familiarity with various market settings. However, I would encourage anyone to read this book because even the experts on markets will have their knowledge enriched by this book.

This book provides the reader with essential background information on the history of markets, how they work, and some of the controversies behind them. Crucial for a well-rounded understanding of our economic system.