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In recent years, innovative texts in mathematics, science, foreign languages, and other fields have achieved dramatic pedagogical gains by abandoning the traditional encyclopedic approach in favor of attempting to teach a short list of core principles in depth. Two well-respected writers and researchers, Bob Frank and Ben Bernanke, have shown that the less-is-more approach affords similar gains in introductory economics. Although a few other texts have paid lip service to this new approach, Frank/Bernanke is by far the best throughout, and the best executed principles text in this mold. Avoiding excessive reliance on formal mathematical derivations, it presents concepts intuitively through examples drawn from familiar contexts. The authors introduce a coherent short list of core principles and reinforce them by illustrating and applying each in numerous contexts. Students are periodically asked to apply these principles and to answer related questions and exercises.Frank/Bernanke also encourages students to become "Economic Naturalists," by employing basic economic principles to understand and explain what they observe in the world around them. An economic naturalist understands, for example, that infant safety seats are required in cars but not in airplanes because the marginal cost of space to accommodate these seats is typically zero in cars but often hundreds of dollars in airplanes. Such examples engage student interest while teaching them to see each feature of their economic landscape as the reflection of an implicit or explicit cost-benefit calculation.
List of contents
Part I IntroductionCh 1 Thinking Like an EconomistCh 2 Comparative AdvantageCh 3 Supply and DemandPart II Macroeconomics: Data and IssuesCh 4 Spending, Income, and GDPCh 5 Inflation and the Price LevelCh 6 Wages and UnemploymentPart III The Economy in the Long RunCh 7 Economic GrowthCh 8 Saving, Capital Formation, and Financial MarketsCh 9 The Financial System, Money, and PricesPart IV The Economy in the Short RunCh 10 Short-Term FluctuationsCh 11 Spending and Output in the Short RunCh 12 Stabilizing the Economy: The Role of the Federal ReserveCh 13 Aggregate Demand and Aggregate SupplyCh 14 Macroeconomic PolicyPart V The International EconomyCh 15 Exchange Rates and the Open EconomyCh 16 International Trade and Capital FlowsGlossary
About the author
Robert H. Frank received his M.A. in statistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and his Ph.D. in economics in 1972, also from U.C. Berkeley. He is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1972 and where he currently holds a joint appointment in the department of economics and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. He has published on a variety of subjects, including price and wage discrimination, public utility pricing, the measurement of unemployment spell lengths, and the distributional consequences of direct foreign investment. For the past several years, his research has focused on rivalry and cooperation in economic and social behaviour.
