Hardback
Microeconomics for Business and Marketing
Lectures, Cases and Worked Essays
9781852788612 Edward Elgar Publishing
Microeconomics for Business and Marketing is a wide-ranging, innovative textbook which will stimulate students and teachers alike. It will be of particular relevance to students of marketing, commerce and business strategy. Specifically designed with today’s larger class sizes in mind, the book encourages students to question and to develop both analytical and written skills, as well as to use economics as a tool for problem solving.
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Critical Acclaim
Contents
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Microeconomics for Business and Marketing is an innovative new text for intermediate-level students of microeconomics which offers a series of alternative approaches to economic analysis.
‘“And now for something completely different”. So starts the preface to Peter Earl’s new book. And he is right. He has put together a superbly interesting, intellectually challenging book. It is a book that covers not only the basics of intermediate microeconomics, but also relates microeconomics both to real world business decisions and to the literature wherein the ideas developed. An intermediate micro student who masters this book will be a well trained student.
Earl’s book will be useful not only to intermediate students, but, perhaps even more so, to graduate students and to faculty teaching intermediate micro and managerial economics. It gives microeconomics both an intellectual context and institutional context for microeconomics. It also contains a wealth of real world examples and discussions of how microeconomic reasoning applies to business. The wealth of essays and problems in the book will be challenging to everyone.
This textbook is especially relevant to students of business and commerce since it emphasises practical problem solving and helps readers develop skills in choosing appropriate theoretical ‘tools’ to deal with particular types of ‘real world’ problems. While other microeconomics texts focus on mainstream technical set pieces, this book explores, compares and contrasts the tools of both mainstream microeconomic analysis and the behavioural/new institutionalist approaches associated with recent Nobel Laureates Herbert Simon and Ronald Coase. This wider theoretical coverage enables a broader range of practical topics to be addressed, including policy implications of consumer decision processes, and the economics of corporate strategy.
Key features of this book include:
• Worked essays and case study questions within the chapters, as well as post-mortem’ reports on examination questions that have been set to classes using this material.
• Overview chapters on theories of decision-making and consumer choice and theories of business behaviour.
• Extensive coverage of the economics of uncertainty, including scenario planning, bargaining and competitive games.
• Emphasizes and analyses on the significance of technological change, and the variety of methods used to organize modern business activities, such as franchising, joint ventures and multinational enterprises.
Microeconomics for Business and Marketing is a wide-ranging, innovative textbook which will stimulate students and teachers alike. It will be of particular relevance to students of marketing, commerce and business strategy. Specifically designed with today’s larger class sizes in mind, the book encourages students to question and to develop both analytical and written skills, as well as to use economics as a tool for problem solving.
‘“And now for something completely different”. So starts the preface to Peter Earl’s new book. And he is right. He has put together a superbly interesting, intellectually challenging book. It is a book that covers not only the basics of intermediate microeconomics, but also relates microeconomics both to real world business decisions and to the literature wherein the ideas developed. An intermediate micro student who masters this book will be a well trained student.
Earl’s book will be useful not only to intermediate students, but, perhaps even more so, to graduate students and to faculty teaching intermediate micro and managerial economics. It gives microeconomics both an intellectual context and institutional context for microeconomics. It also contains a wealth of real world examples and discussions of how microeconomic reasoning applies to business. The wealth of essays and problems in the book will be challenging to everyone.
This textbook is especially relevant to students of business and commerce since it emphasises practical problem solving and helps readers develop skills in choosing appropriate theoretical ‘tools’ to deal with particular types of ‘real world’ problems. While other microeconomics texts focus on mainstream technical set pieces, this book explores, compares and contrasts the tools of both mainstream microeconomic analysis and the behavioural/new institutionalist approaches associated with recent Nobel Laureates Herbert Simon and Ronald Coase. This wider theoretical coverage enables a broader range of practical topics to be addressed, including policy implications of consumer decision processes, and the economics of corporate strategy.
Key features of this book include:
• Worked essays and case study questions within the chapters, as well as post-mortem’ reports on examination questions that have been set to classes using this material.
• Overview chapters on theories of decision-making and consumer choice and theories of business behaviour.
• Extensive coverage of the economics of uncertainty, including scenario planning, bargaining and competitive games.
• Emphasizes and analyses on the significance of technological change, and the variety of methods used to organize modern business activities, such as franchising, joint ventures and multinational enterprises.
Microeconomics for Business and Marketing is a wide-ranging, innovative textbook which will stimulate students and teachers alike. It will be of particular relevance to students of marketing, commerce and business strategy. Specifically designed with today’s larger class sizes in mind, the book encourages students to question and to develop both analytical and written skills, as well as to use economics as a tool for problem solving.
Critical Acclaim
‘Microeconomics for Business and Marketing is an extremely impressive piece of work. I would go so far as to say that it is without any doubt the best textbook on microeconomics which is available, both in terms of the range of material covered and in the way in which it is presented so clearly. It will be useful for non-specialist economics students, because it shows them that economics, when done properly, can say some interesting things without making ridiculous assumptions. And specialists will benefit from having such a wide range of material made accessible in a single text. I would recommend it without hesitation.’
– Paul Ormerod, author of The Death of Economics and Consultant, Henley Centre for Forecasting
‘The book’s most remarkable property is the combination of traditional neoclassical micoreconomics with alternative approaches such as the behavioural theory and elements of post Keynesian theory. Therefore the book is especially useful for students who want to go beyond mainstream economics and who want to make acquaintance with minority views.’
–Thorsten Posselt, Kyklos
‘If you are looking for a book with which to teach microeconomics as truth embodied in two dimensional graphs, this book is not for you. If you are looking for a book that will help you teach microeconomics as a reasoning process – an an engine of analysis with which to consider real world problems – you will want to look at this book. It is a superb addition to the literature.’
– David C. Colander, Middlebury College, US
‘How refreshing to encounter a textbook that interweaves, in balanced fashion, the sharp tools of neoclassical price theory with an empirically based account of the real world of economic decision making. Professor Earl shows how neoclassical and behavioural theory, used in careful combination, yield much more than the sum of their separate parts. Although the book is stated to be “for business and marketing”, it provides a distinctly superior alternative to the narrow neoclassical treatments of general microeconomics that now dominate instruction in that subject.’
– Herbert A. Simon, Carnegie Mellon University, US
‘This is an extremely interesting book which incorporates behavioural material with the standard theory. Peter Earl has written a textbook that stands alone. It is unique. It is an important book for education in economics and business and contributes to a greater understanding of basic economic theory.’
– Richard M. Cyert, Carnegie Mellon University, US
‘A first-class and unique textbook which presents a wide range of material whilst encouraging students to question, to develop analytical and written skill and to use economics as a tool for problem solving.’
– Aslib Book Guide
‘. . . Earl is definitely one for the lecturer’s collection . . . It undoubtely deserves a wide audience as it combines precision with innovation.’
– R. Woodfield, British Review of Economic Issues
‘This is one of the most challenging, exciting and interesting microeconomics textbooks I have come across for a long time. I will adopt it for my Honours Applied Microeconomics course as essential reading.’
– A. Antoniou, The Philips College, Cyprus
– Paul Ormerod, author of The Death of Economics and Consultant, Henley Centre for Forecasting
‘The book’s most remarkable property is the combination of traditional neoclassical micoreconomics with alternative approaches such as the behavioural theory and elements of post Keynesian theory. Therefore the book is especially useful for students who want to go beyond mainstream economics and who want to make acquaintance with minority views.’
–Thorsten Posselt, Kyklos
‘If you are looking for a book with which to teach microeconomics as truth embodied in two dimensional graphs, this book is not for you. If you are looking for a book that will help you teach microeconomics as a reasoning process – an an engine of analysis with which to consider real world problems – you will want to look at this book. It is a superb addition to the literature.’
– David C. Colander, Middlebury College, US
‘How refreshing to encounter a textbook that interweaves, in balanced fashion, the sharp tools of neoclassical price theory with an empirically based account of the real world of economic decision making. Professor Earl shows how neoclassical and behavioural theory, used in careful combination, yield much more than the sum of their separate parts. Although the book is stated to be “for business and marketing”, it provides a distinctly superior alternative to the narrow neoclassical treatments of general microeconomics that now dominate instruction in that subject.’
– Herbert A. Simon, Carnegie Mellon University, US
‘This is an extremely interesting book which incorporates behavioural material with the standard theory. Peter Earl has written a textbook that stands alone. It is unique. It is an important book for education in economics and business and contributes to a greater understanding of basic economic theory.’
– Richard M. Cyert, Carnegie Mellon University, US
‘A first-class and unique textbook which presents a wide range of material whilst encouraging students to question, to develop analytical and written skill and to use economics as a tool for problem solving.’
– Aslib Book Guide
‘. . . Earl is definitely one for the lecturer’s collection . . . It undoubtely deserves a wide audience as it combines precision with innovation.’
– R. Woodfield, British Review of Economic Issues
‘This is one of the most challenging, exciting and interesting microeconomics textbooks I have come across for a long time. I will adopt it for my Honours Applied Microeconomics course as essential reading.’
– A. Antoniou, The Philips College, Cyprus
Contents
Contents: 1. Introduction: Alternative Ways of Learning about Microeconomics 2. Theories of Choice: An Overview 3. The Neoclassical Theory of Consumer Behaviour 4. Behavioural Perspectives on Decision-Making 5. Risk and Uncertainty 6. Theories of Firms and Markets: An Overview 7. Production Methods and Productivity 8. Price and Output Decisions (1): From Marshall to Marginalism 9. Price Theory (2): Modern Variations on Marshall and Marginalism 10. The Coordination of Economic Activities 11. Economics of Corporate Strategy and Structure Bibliography Index
