No comments about Microeconomics: Problems and Solutions.

No comments about Informal Finance: Some Findings from Asia (Asian Development Bank Book).

No comments about Fundamentals of Labor Economics.

No comments about Microeconomics: Neoclassical and Institutional Perspectives on Economic Behaviour.

5 comments about Fundamentals of Managerial Economics with InfoTrac College Edition.

1. I am using this text for a managerial economics class for MBA students. I selected this text because it includes chapters on statistics, linear programming and risk, which I am covering in the class. Unfortunately, it is filled with errors - typos, incorrect formulas, and misrepresentation of basic economic concepts, such as derived demand. Some of the typos and other mistakes make concepts very confusing for the students. I am extremely disappointed. I expected much better from a book that is the eighth edition. I do not understand how it went to print with so many mistakes. I have contacted the publisher. I will not be using this text again.



2. As an instructor of economics, I give high marks to Mark Hirschey in his compilation of a textbook designed for studying a subject integral for any student of business or administrative sciences. It is designed primarily for those who may not necessarily have a strong quantitative background but need to understand the fundamentals of decision making and its application of economic concepts. The study of management comes from economics in that a manager makes decisions to maximize the objectives of an organization by efficiently allocating limited resources given limited choices or alternatives. The means of efficiently utilizing resources form the basis for making sound economic decisions whether an individual is running a small business operation or directing the workings of a major corporation.
   
   Hirschey provides excellent examples to support the concepts that he presents in each chapter. There are a total of 18 chapters along with appendices. Each chapter tries to relate both management and economic principles to the workings of a business entity and show what real world problems may impede the applications of theoretical concepts. The manager is both a decision maker and a risk taker, and each decision he/she makes has both short-run and long-run results. One need not have an extensive quantitative background to attempt to solve the problems that Hirschey presents at the end of each chapter.
   
   Mark Hirschey has provided a clear and concise text for understanding the economic applications to decision making in the business world. It is not surprising that a number of academic institutions use this book as the standard text for their managerial economics classes both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Teachers should find it suitable to use for enhancing the learning processes of future business and professional leaders with its numerous illustrations and examples of important concepts and its continuous references to contemporary issues.



3. When buying this book at amazon I thought might be it will not cover everything including chapters and problems but trust me I could locate everything that this book should cover.
   
   Thanx to Amazon.



4. This is one of those textbooks that you're forced to buy for the class, but after struggling through 2-3 chapters you resolve to ditch the book and just rely on class lectures. Following this textbook is like following the tenured professor who may be a star academic in his/her field, but when it comes to teaching their own subject their presentation skills are abysmal at best.
   
   The chapters of this book are very difficult to follow. The language is very dry. The equations are squeezed between paragraphs, they're poorly displayed, and in some cases they're just flat out incorrect. If you're forced to use this book, buy the cliff's notes and any other study aids you can get your hands on. Maybe even find some older editions of some econ books that cover the same subjects and use them as supplements.
   
   When you truly apply yourself, textbooks are supposed to help you understand the subject matter and help supplement what you don't pick up in lectures. This textbook just makes me want to cut my losses and drop the class (hoping I can retake it with an different prof who uses a different textbook).



5. Managerial Economics, a good book for the management student with a simple theory and less numerical's.For knowledge this book is good ,only for the theory purpose but not for the one's who want to practise mathematical analysis.

No comments about Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and Extensions/Study Guide.

5 comments about Microeconomics (4th Edition).

1. I had to purchase this book for an economics course. It does have some good examples and applications, but other times the book just bogs down and is impossible to read. Lastly, the price tag is ridiculious... Teachers, don't make your students waste their money on this.



2. This book was used for my microeconomics class. It helped me learn the material, but there's still room for improvement.

   Having the textbook be so focused on specific examples was not such a good idea, because it made it difficult to understand what do to in a more general problem, or in any problem that deviates from this example. The discussions of concepts, however, were excellent.

   I wish the derivations were more integrated into the text instead of in an appendix in the back, and that they were better explained - it's frustrating to spend an hour trying to figure out which steps were left out. The problems in the textbook were challenging but good, however, unless you're at least a econ grad student or some kind of genius, you're probably not going to be able to do many of them just by reading the textbook...which brings me to my last point...if you're taking a class in which this book is mandatory, by all means, get it, it's useful...but if you are trying to learn or brush up on micro without the aid of a class, look for another book




3. I was required to buy this book when I took a course taught by the author, Jeff Perloff. This book is the absolute worst micro text I've ever come across. It's confusing and unorganized much like the author himself. If you're looking for a good intro micro text, I suggest you look elsewhere. I highly recommend Nicholson's Microeconomic Theory.



4. very confusing, non-focusing writing style plus author's splurge of mathematical demonstrations everywhere in the book makes this text book very hard to understand and offers no help for people to grasp the beauty of the economic theory.



5. This book helped me understand concepts that were not clear from the class alone. The book also helped me with the class assignments. I however, did not read the book cover to cover so I can't say whether it is a good book from which to learn Microeconomics.

3 comments about COST AND CHOICE (Collected Works of James M Buchanan).

1. Cost and Choice is a short, easy, and informative read on opportunity cost. Some of the classical economists hinted at the idea of opportunity cost. Opportunity cost thinking can be seen in the work of Ricardo and Bastiat. Yet the labor cost doctrine held its sway over economic thinking until Carl Menger demolished it. Menger's student Weiser developed the idea of alternative costs, but how did this idea get to England?
   
   Buchanan describes the development of the `London tradition' at the LSE. Thirlby, Coase, Hayek, and Robbins were all involved in developing the modern opportunity cost doctrine. Buchanan also inquires into the idea of social costs and public choice. The idea of opportunity cost is, of course, at the center of the socialist calculation debate. The opportunity cost concept raises a number of issues as far as the Coase theorem and public goods theory are concerned. Who chooses over what alternatives in the public sector?
   
   Cost and Choice is a great book to use in undergraduate microeconomics. Some grad students should read it too: especially those who majored in engineering or one of the physical sciences as undergrads. It is also a worthwhile read for the educated public.



2. The word "cost" means something different in a context of making a choice than it does in a context of budgeting or in a context of accounting. Buchanan argues that within the context of making a choice, orthodox economics employs an inaccurate meaning of the word cost. This book is an attempt to develop the correct meaning of the concept of cost within a context of choice.
   
   Buchanan defines cost as "that which the decision-taker sacrifices or gives up when he makes a choice. It consists in his own evaluation of the enjoyment or utility that he anticipates having to forego as a result of selection among alternative courses of action" (p. 41).
   
   Buchanan's notion of cost within a setting of choice is one of opportunity cost. His argument builds on the concept of cost developed in Austrian economics (Carl Menger, E. Böhm-Bawerk, F. von Wieser), and even more so by scholars at the London School of Economics (Lionel Robbins, Friedrich A. von Hayek, Ronald Coase during the 1930s, G.F. Thirlby and Jack Wiseman during the 1950s). It differs from the notion of cost of classical economists (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus) in two main ways.
   * In classical and neoclassical economics, cost is based on units of resource input during the production process (ch. 1). The value of goods in exchange is then determined by the relative costs of their production (Adam Smith' famous example that a beaver should fetch twice as much in the market as a deer, because it costs twice as much labor to kill a beaver as it costs to kill a deer). Buchanan, on the other hand, defines cost as that given up when making a choice. He prefers marginal-utility economics (cf. William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, Leon Walras), according to which exchange value is determined by marginal utility, or demand.
   * In classical economics, cost can be objectively measured. Under the Austrian-London-Buchanan concept of cost, on the other hand, cost is subjective, in that it is different for each decision maker (p. 23). "In an unchanging economic environment populated by purely economic men, the two approaches become identical in a superficial sense. In a universe where all behavior is not purely economic, where genuine choice takes place, the important differences emerge with clarity." (p. 25)
   Thus, "[i]n a theory of choice, cost must be reckoned in a utility dimension. In the orthodox predictive theory, however, cost is reckoned in a commodity dimension." (p. 41)
   
   Short as the book is, it could have been even shorter. Lots of the second half is barely interesting (ch. 4-6, which are applications of Buchanan's cost theory to, respectively, public finance, Pigovian welfare norms, and nonmarket decision-making; sounds promising but it simply gets too tedious). This would have worked better in a shorter, long paper-length version.



3. The notion of opportunity cost has now been tacitly accepted among mainstream economists and even included in conventional textbooks. I stress the word "tacit" because mainstream economists are quick to contrast this conception of cost with the more familiar one of direct outlay cost --- that is, the actual resources expended in production. I myself grappled with this dilemma for quite some time, and could see little way around it before encountering this book.
   
   Buchanan accomplishes a lot in this book. Not only does he give a clear presentation of subjectivist cost theory, but he also explores the historical development of this intellectual tradition. The Austrian school is correctly credited for both coining and developing this concept. The tradition then settled and thrived under the aegis of Lionel Robbins and the London School of Economics (LSE).
   
   It is best to grapple with the notion of cost as a consequence of planning. To try to tackle the problem of cost at the resource expenditure stage is to miss the point. A decision must be made for purposes of production (or human action generally). One is confronted with a variety of choices in this respect. The appraisal of these many alternatives is a subjective phenomenon. The weight one attaches to opportunities forgone cannot be measured, examined or compared. It would be difficult even to know what alternatives the planner was aware of. Cost then must be understood as an act of choosing. The cost in the act of decision making represents the plan one wishes to pursue at the expense of other alternatives. In short, if one wishes to understand what led to "direct outlay cost", one must understand the plan which gave rise to this expenditure and the setting in which that decision was made.
   
   
   Let me also recommend another book (much better in my opinion, but entirely neglected) is L.S.E. Essays on Cost, edited by James M. Buchanan and G. F. Thirlby. There are some extraordinary essays contained in this volume, especially those of Thirlby and Wiseman.

No comments about Stochastic Dominance: Investment Decision Making under Uncertainty (Studies in Risk and Uncertainty).

5 comments about World Boom Ahead: Why Business and Consumers Will Prosper.

1. As a teacher of economics in high school I teach the kids about personal finance. Personal finance includes investing. In order to invest one must do the research on not only the companies. One must understand where the world is headed and Mr. Kiplinger does that. He offers views that are visionary and achievable. Examples include the coming changes in transportation, the evolution of satellite services. The growth of the internet and how a rising world population does not have to be a bad thing and can be an engine for economic growth. I can use this information to show my students how a rising population will lead to increases in demand for new homes and other services. I can use it to show them what kinds of jobs will be important to the new era that we are embarking upon at the end of the millenium in 2001. The future of America and the world is brighter then could have been predicted ten or twenty years ago. This book has helped me to do the research on the various fields and the companies that are involved in them. By explaining how each sector of the economy will grow I have been able to identify the sectors that I feel will grow the best over the long term. World Boom Ahead is an integral part of my strategy of investing in companies for thelong term. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a copy of it for my father.



2. kiplinger puts the entire world into perspective inserting today into a factual and historical mix that graphs where we have been, where we are, and exactly where we are headed...sheer greatness.



3. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone. I have great respect for Kiplinger, and I say this because I used to subscribe to the newsletter and more importantly, I read their 1989 book, America in the Global 90s. At that time, America had high inflation and interest rates, Japan was booming, and it was viewed that America was declining. Kiplinger took exception to this view. Among other things, they said were that Amercia would adjust because it is open and adaptable, that technology and telecommunications would be hot (they said that telecommunications is what railroads and rivers were in the past to cities). They also said that inflation and interest rates would decline significantly (remember 20% inflation and rates?) and stocks would boom (his forecast was for 6000, up from about 1800-2000 then). Also, gold and silver would lag other investments.

   An important and controversial belief was that the US has an edge on Japan because it is a more open society and economy.

   Of course not all predictions can true (for example, he didn't expect Asian tigers to crash), but anyone paying attention to his forecast who have made a bundle in the 90s.

   In fact, some of his predictions in this new book already are happening - he says unbelievable fortunes will be created as companies go public, soar in value and then are bought out by bigger companies. Look at what has happened in 1999 year with Internet and Liniux companies (his book came out 1998)...




4. I had high expecations for this book, since I have always enjoyed the Kiplinger Newsletter and often read the magazine. What I found in this book was allot of dated information, there are many others books that have current data that would be much more worth your time.



5. Just go to page 379 and look at the rogues gallery of criminal operations he was suggesting investing in. Gee if only I got this book new and not at a yard sale I could have thrown a lotta money down on say ENRON. By the way if you do want to buy this you can contact me directly. I am selling this little bridge named Brooklyn.
   It would be a great investment for that great "World Boom Ahead"!