Book Description

A brief introduction to business statistics that balances a conceptual understanding of statistics with the real-world application of statistical methodology.This essentials version features selected core topics from the authors' market-leading Statistics for Business and Economics, 8th, presented in 13 chapters. It includes the highly-regarded strengths of the longer text, including the problem-scenario approach that uses real-world examples to introduce statistical techniques.Methods, Applications, and Self-Test exercises include hundreds of problems based on real data.Examples and exercises throughout focus on ways that statistics contribute to improving the quality of products and services. This text can also be computer integrated at the discretion of the instructor. Instruction for data analysis based on Microsoft Excel and Minitab is included in appendices of appropriate chapters. Case problems are also provided with the text, with data sets available on disk for both Minitab and Excel formats. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Great Text!!
The information in this book is clear-cut, concise, and easy to read. Easily understandable examples are given for the various statistical formulas, and extras like z-score value charts and the like help a lot. If you have a talented instructor leading your Stats class (like I did) in addition to this text, you will be sure to ace this course (like I did)!

P.S.: If you happen to be an Information Systems/Information Technology major (such as myself) DO NOT RE-SELL THIS BOOK! You will need the information in this book in your future Info Systems courses, and you will definitely realize the TRUE value of this text!

A useful book. . .
. . .by authors who remember that they are writing for persons who are NOT professional mathematicians.

In today's world, frequently persons enter the business profession from a background in something other than what in the past might have been considered traditional avenues. Not all business textbooks recognize this (see my review for "Mathematical Applications")! However, this book seems to be an exception.

The material is presented in a logical format; key formulae are highlighted and set off from the rest of the text; and in-depth business examples are given in each chapter, demonstrating the particular statistical tools to be taught.

A useful and recommended volume. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A very interesting textbook about labor economics
I was a teaching assistant in a labor economics undergraduate course in Northwestern University that used this book. I found it very interesting and full of real-world examples and discussions. The mathematical level is simple and therefore the book is accessible also to students with only little background in mathematics or economics. The exposition is clear. About half of the problems and the review questions are solved at the end of the book, making it possible for the reader to practice and test her understanding of the material. I believe that most students can understand most of the material in the book even without taking a formal course in labor economics, and therefore I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the functioning of labor markets.

A helpful and informative book
I bought this book to use for my Labor Economics class at Cornell University. My professor, Professor Smith, is a contributor to this book and it was a wonderful supplement to the lectures. The book is filled with useful information and practical applications, so its appeal is not limited to economics students, but anyone who wishes to know more about payroll taxes, policy applications, work incentives and the like. This easy-to-understand book benefited me a lot and I would recommend its use to other courses in labor economics at other colleges and universities.

This book is too wordy, puts you to sleep
I bought this book for my economics class at Dartmouth College, but it was a horrible book. The text is wordy, verbose, too long. A lot of times, there are unnecessarily explains simple things too long. I hope all of you will find better labor economics text book. ... Read more

Reviews (11)

Mediocre learning tool
Olivier Blanchard (M.I.T.) clearly knows his macro stuff, but he has a hard time articulating some of the more basic - and thus fundamental - elements of macro theory. Blanchard's explanation of the key IS-LM relation is very weak, very confusing- Mankiw does a much neater job. This book is full of complicated algebra and thus will be a huge headache for anyone who doesn't love the more tedious realms of math. Reading through the text, the content frequently waffles between inane digressions and examples, and equally useless mathematical derivations. I do give this book credit, 2 stars that is, for being comprehensive; it covers more than any comparable book.

Fine *textbook* but.....
This publication is obviously a quite thought-out textbook and is well-organized in its content. However, I do _not_ recommend it as a review text for those somewhat weak in mathematics. The book is loaded with graphs and equations that might thwart those former students wishing to review their macroeconomics or just desiring a good home reference for same.

For neophytes or those long out of college (30-years-plus in my case), I suggest a good basic "principles of economics" text (and maybe some remedial algebra books and/or classes) before taking on more (relatively) advanced works such as this.

However, the book is nevertheless interesting and actually has quite a few graphs, etc easily understandable by any reasonably intelligent person.

undergrad macro text full of intuitions
Unlike the graduate textbook (Lectures on Macroeconomics), this undergraduate textbook is full of economic intuitions, comparable to microeconomic textbooks of Varian's.
Especially, if you have an interest in Macroeconometic practices (books such as Ray Fair's...), Blanchard's is much better than Mankiw's, I believe.
First edition contained the exciting (but short...) section on identification problem and differentiation between causality and correlation. Those issues are of much more importance than they look when you actually "do" something with the macroeconmic issues.

Good Intermediate Macro Book
This book is an appropriate tool for an intermediate macroeconomics course-guess where I used it! The "Core" of the book is broken up into three sections: the short run (IS/LM), the medium run (IS/LM-AD/AS), and long run (Solow). This is very helpful and provides a natural progression.

Blanchard does skim over some of the more basic stuff, especially, as somebody mentioned, with the IS/LM model. For this reason I think it is very appropriate for an intermediate course where somebody probably has already learned some of the fundamentals in an introductory course. Unfortunately I felt that the Solow model was not in the depth that I would like, especially with respect to mathematics.

On that note, the book doesn't use a high level of mathematics, but the equations are there, and your algebra should definitely be up to par. This also provides a nice transition to those looking to take an advanced micro or macro course, as things tend to involve more and more mathematics as one goes on.

Overall, a good book, lacking in a spot or two, but a good textbook overall.

Look at Mankiw's text
The content of Blanchard (3rd edition) may be all very well, but the layout and typography are such a hodgepodge as to be quite distracting and intimidating. The CD is only Windows-compatible, and judging from the description strikes me as rather more a nuisance than an asset (it might have been put in a pocket iside the cover, but no such luck). For a clearer and altogether more pleasant presentation, take a look at Gregory Mankiw's Macroeconomics, 5th edition. A quick check indicated it was perhaps a bit less thorough (Mankiw doesn't mention the problems with non-performing loans in the Japanese banking system; Blanchard does), but one has to draw the line somewhere, and there is something to be said for allowing the instructor a bit more flexibility to introduce examples. ... Read more

Book Description

First course in Econometrics in Economics Departments at better schools, also Economic/Business Forecasting. Statistics prerequisite but nocalculus. Slightly higher level and more comprehensive than Gujarati (M-H, 1996) . P-R covers more time series and forecasting. P-R coverage is notch below Johnston-DiNardo (M-H, 97) and requires no matrix algebra.Includes data disk. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Great equations, bad explanations
The subject of econometrics is difficult for the beginner. I have yet to encounter a text that does a great job at explaining both the concepts and the math required to be proficient in this field. I completed three courses, two undergraduate and one graduate level, for which this book was the required text. Like most of my classmates I was never able to fully comprehend the concepts behind the numbers using this text alone. Now that I have a better grasp of econometrics I will vehemently suggest that this text provides a poor verbal description of what a student is actually doing when analyzing data. I found myself reading the chapters 2 or 3 times and still felt unsure of what was going on. Where this book is strong is in its presentation of equations. I highly recommend supplementing this text with Peter Kennedy's, "A Guide to Econometrics," which gives excellent verbal explanations but de-emphasizes the math. These two texts together make a great study for a difficult subject.

It's not that bad
I'm giving this book 5 stars largely to balance out the somewhat unfair reviews that were given. For what it is -- an econometrics textbook that tries to present overview of neginning to intermediate econometrics and forecasting WITHOUT a lot of linear algebra -- it's a pretty good book. While it has its rough spots, the book has many good features. One of the really good features of this book is presenting the material with an emphasis on model building ... a very important emphasis that is too often ignored in other econometrics texts. In an ideal world, this book deserves at least an average of 4 stars and would deserve more if the readers made things more readable and better incorporated advances in econometrics since previous editions.

Hardly readable
This is one of the not so good econometric textbooks I've ever read. The mathematical notations appear to be very confusing and untidy, the text is excessively lengthy. But one who writes actuarial exams has to read it because it is the official textbook.

econometrics for the statistically literate
This is a very good text for an undergraduate student taking a first course in regression analysis and modelling. It is very comprehensive and has some very good examples for a beginner. The only problem is that the field of stochastic modelling is very dynamic so some of the material covered in the book has become outdated.

A very good starter's textbook.
This was my first econometrics textbook 7 years ago. Not difficult at all, but covers the most important material for econometrics students at the beginner's level. Good structure and good examples.You may not be able to find everything there, because it is not "advanced" version. A little bit outdated. Newly developed ideas and technichs are not covered. ... Read more

Book Description

This text remains a proven leader in the world of economics. Since introducing the aggregate supply/ aggregate demand model as a fundamental tool for learning economics over two decades ago, in this edition William J. Baumol and Alan S. Blinder continue their long tradition of equipping students with the knowledge and tools they need to apply modern economics to their world.Hallmark features include one of the strongest policy treatments on the market and a careful and in-depth focus on the most important economic tools students should retain after the course is over. ... Read more

Book Description

Mankiw now provides an excellent resource for readers who are seeing economics for the first time. His two-semester version of the text has received such praise as "perhaps the best ever" textbook in economic principles. It's no wonder Mankiw?s prize project has quickly become one of the most successful books ever to be published in the college marketplace. The author?s conversational writing style is superb for presenting the politics and science of economic theories to tomorrow?s decision-makers. Because Mankiw wrote it for learners, the book stands out among all other texts by encouraging learners to apply an economic way of thinking to their daily lives. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Lots of info
I used this book for a college intro to economics class.It has a lot of information for someone who doesn't know a lot about economics and the economy...maybe too much.

I found myself pushing to get through chapters because they were boring and many of the diagrams were confusing.Some of the concepts aren't very clear.

The CD that came with mine was a huge help.I would print off the study guides before I read the chapter, so I would pay the most attention to those parts because those are the ones the author thought were important.

This book had a lot of econ math in it that I was unable to understand.The CD didn't address that very well.Consequently, those are the questions that I missed on the tests. ... Read more

Book Description

The ideal companion volume to the acclaimed Basic Economics--a guide to how our economic decisions turn out in practical terms.

The application of economics to major contemporary real world problems--housing, medical care, discrimination, the economic development of nations--is the theme of this new book that tackles these and other issues head on in plain language, as distinguished from the usual jargon of economists. It examines economic policies not simply in terms of their immediate effects but also in terms of their later repercussions, which are often very different and longer lasting. The interplay of politics with economics is another theme of Applied Economics, whose examples are drawn from experiences around the world, showing how similar incentives and constraints tend to produce similar outcomes among very disparate peoples and cultures. ... Read more

Reviews (16)

A Great Book (Even for Environmentalists)
Thomas Sowell describes economics as thinking beyond Stage One-considering the later consequences of present policies. This is a great message, and one I wish our national leaders understood. I am a biochemist and a patent attorney, and I consider myself an environmentalist. Most environmentalists, unfortunately, need to think much more about Stage Two and beyond. This book is a good way to start this process and correct some of the naivete that surrounds environmental policy proposals. Mr. Sowell's analysis of recycling, for example, is a much-needed insertion of reality into this area.
I enjoyed the analyses of medical care and risk-taking. Mr. Sowell makes the excellent point that drug prices convey an underlying reality that is not nearly as easily changed as the prices are; drug price controls are therefore self-defeating. I felt Mr. Sowell did not go far enough on this, however. Life insurance works because it is reasonably easy to tell whether someone is dead or not, and because successfully killing someone for the insurance money is difficult and risky. Health insurance works poorly because there simply is no way to define "good" health care, much less tell whether or not someone else's child is receiving it. The demand for medical care is essentially infinite; nearly everyone would like themselves and their families to have better health than they presently do. As soon as a third party payer enters the picture, the necessary connection between demand for health care and the available resources of the patient or his family becomes a fog filled with conflicts of interest.
Mr. Sowell's analysis of zoning laws is basically good. I agree that we need much more consideration of the role of zoning laws in creating urban sprawl. I think Mr. Sowell puts too much emphasis on the role of "open space" in this, though. The main problem is not that we don't allow people to build in the remaining open space, but that thanks to too-restrictive zoning, housing density is far too low in the locations (such as near jobs, shopping, schools, parks, and subway stations) where people want to live. In my own neighborhood (Falls Church, Virginia), demand for housing is intense and home prices are soaring, but thanks to zoning and local politics, the few remaining lots are mostly having single-family houses built on them. Ridiculous!
Mr. Sowell's analysis is faulty in some areas. He too easily dismisses overpopulation as a serious problem. The difficulty is that if people are not required to pay the full costs of raising their own children, they will raise more children than they or their society can afford. If we are going to have such "pro-child" policies as universal free education, therefore, we must balance that with taking steps to control population.
Mr. Sowell admits that there is a limit to the earth's capacity to sustain human life, but says this is not a problem because we are still far from the limit. I am not convinced that we are as far from the limit as he thinks. The earth's resources (and its waste sinks) are being used at a rate which is simply not sustainable even over a time span of decades, never mind centuries. Mr. Sowell's analysis would be correct if there were no externalities. The fact is, though, that resource use is in effect very heavily subsidized. Users of crude oil, for example, do not now have to pay the costs of air pollution, roads, auto accidents, wars to protect the oil flow, climate change, and the like, but instead shove these costs off onto others. As long as this continues, crude oil will continue to be overused and the economy will be less efficient as a result. I would like to see Mr. Sowell's formidable abilities applied to the problem of solving the "Stage Two" problem of externalities, rather than simply sweeping it under the rug.

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
This new book is a spirited and controversial examination of how economic choices in public policy often result in unforeseen consequences. Sowell, a professor of public policy at Stanford and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, examines labor, medical care, housing, and other areas of economic activity. He says that in stage-one thinking, making housing affordable by setting rent controls would seem to be self-evident but that such rent controls both reduce the stock of low-rent housing and cause that stock to deteriorate in condition. He explains that many landlords don't bother to offer properties when rents are low and that those who do find very little incentive to maintain them. On the institution of slavery in the American South, Sowell says slaves were usually better cared for than other laborers because of the slave owners' economic self-interest. He defends the existence of slums as low-cost housing that in the past allowed the residents who chose to live in them to use their funds for other purposes. His predictably laissez faire approach to economics will grate on many readers, but his reasoning is clear and thoughtful. Every library covering economics or public administration will require a copy.-

Sowell Urges us to Think Ahead
Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics" ought to be required reading in every high school and college economics, politics, and English courses. While Mr. Sowell is Ph.D economist and fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, his ideas are useful even to the non-economist. As a society, we tend to be taken in too easily by people who make irrational arguments that sound good at first glance but produce miserable results since no one thought about the next step. Often times, too many words are politically popular but are actually quite harmful. Such words include: "living wage," "consumer protection," "rent control," etcetera. When these ideas are actually applied in practice, the results rarely meet the rhetoric over the long-run. Politicians only tend to care about what will get them re-elected, and as a result, few of them have an incentive to think about what will happen 10 years from now. As a result, many often escape the blame since the poor results will be far removed from their disasterous policies. This, of course, could easily be construed as a problem with democracy, but instead, my feeling is that it is a problem with our educational system. If our educational system actually educated citizens to think deeply about what would be the consequences of certain policies, perhaps the heated irrational logic emanating from certain politicians would cease. Perhaps such rhetoric would continue to work in irrational hotspots such as Berkeley, but rare for it to work elsewhere. One could only hope. This book is a must read for everyone -- regardless of who you are.

Michael Gordon

What Comes After the Bold and Noble Ideas
This book is a much-needed antidote for those who measure the value of their policy prescriptions for their surface qualities. Are you for cheap medicine? Then you will want to regulate the prices set by pharmaceutical companies and limit the length of their patents. Are you for cheap housing? Impose rent control. How about fixing the so-called "north-south" inequalities in wealth that you believe are a result of globalization and discrimination? That's simple: increase foreign aid.

To these solutions, and many others like them, Thomas Sowell asks a very basic but often neglected question: What happens next? Once you have imposed rent control in a city, for example, what happens to its housing market? By providing preliminary answers to these questions based on empirical evidence, Sowell undercuts the surface moralism of those who promote these ideas.

Sowell looks at labor markets, the economics of medical care, housing and discrimination, how risk affects business, and finally provides a chapter on why various countries and regions show such different patterns of development. As with all his work, his writing is crystal-clear and enjoyable. This is a wonderful book, but I gave it four stars because Sowell has written many better.

Doesn't add up
The arguments in the books for a FREE market doesn't add up to the conculsions. It cited many failures in government interventions as the basis for a complete free market, however there are no hard evidence that a completely free markets in the sectors covered in the book will work. In particular, it advocate a practical appraoch in that it emphasis what is important is actual experience in the past that matters, not the idealistic socialism. It is however, recent experiences that pointed to the fact that markets are never perfected. The public is misinformed about the safety of automobiles, the pubic is misinformed about the consequences of rent control. In a perfect information market, how can the public be misinformed.

The zoning of land use is against free market. On this topic, I invite Mr. Sowell to come to Hong Kong (where I live) to see how developers (not checked by a competent government) can damage one of the most beautiful natural harbour in the world.

Mr. Sowell's arguments are only valid if very one in the market are thinking about stage 4, otherwise it won't work. He is as idealistic as the communist.

In the real world, we are have to balance between the two exterme and I don't think Mr. Sowell's ideal world exist in any place in the world today. ... Read more

Book Description

The Fifth Edition of Managerial Economics heralds a new era for this classic text. Carrying on the tradition established by Edwin Mansfield in the book's earlier editions, Bruce Allen, Neil Doherty, and Keith Weigelt—all of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School—have prepared an exciting revision that capitalizes on proven strengths while embracing new developments in the field. Retaining a hallmark of Managerial Economics, the authors include a wealth of cases and applications that consistently anchor the exposition in the real world of business decision making. New to the Fifth Edition is a greater focus on applied microeconomics, with two new chapters, one on auctions and another on the principal-agent problems of firms. These new chapters, numerous new cases and applications throughout the book, and an exciting new package of electronic ancillaries promise to make the Fifth Edition of Managerial Economics the best yet. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Too little game theory and too expensive
I had heard good things about this book but was left frustrated. Given the march of game theory over the past 15 years or so, I would have expected this to underpin the book's very word - but not a bit of it! Despite a nice section on auctions, the author tries to emulate existing texts (including previous editions of his own book) and does not take into account current developments in microeconomic theory. My other gripe is the price of the book. I am still hunting for a suitable text.

Managerial Economics
This book has undergone a major revision since the 4th edition. The authors have done a good job of explaining basic economic principles and then applying them to the business world. New chapters on auctions and incentive schemes are both informative and timely. This is a must reading for those who think economic principles are just for the classroom. Not only do the authors show how the principles are applied (through examples from the business press), they also concisely explain them.

A valuable book for both practitioners and students.

Communication??
This book is not easy reading. Do economists live in another world? I read a paragraph to my wife, an English school teacher, and she said that it was very poor English. The author and the school were he teaches, is very prestigious. ... Read more

Book Description

Macroeconomics: Principles and Policy remains a proven leader in the world of economics.Since introducing the aggregate supply/aggregate demand model as a fundamental tool for learning economics over two decades ago, William J. Baumol and Alan S. Blinder continue to equip students with the knowledge and tools they need to apply modern economics to their world--now and in the future. This is all the more true today, as the U.S. economy enters its first recession in more than a decade. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A good introduction to macroeconomics
"Increasing demand leads to rising interest rates which leads to reduced investment spending and appreciating currency exchange rates..." The authors of "Macroeconomics" effortlessly provide the economic reasoning that underlie events like these such that they really make common sense - and without the need for rote memorization on the part of the reader. A previous reviewer from Los Angeles did an excellent job in praising Baumol and Blinder for their clear and concise teaching, and I strongly agree with his comments. Instead of going into abstract theories and ideas, Baumol and Blinder focus on making the reader understand the "real world" implications of macroeconomics. For example, each chapter in their book introduces a different contemporary economic issue as a way to illustrate the ideas being described in the text. Additionally, the authors outlined eight take-home messages that they believe the reader should remember after finishing the book. Although the authors label these take-home messages as "Ideas for Beyond the Final Exam", these ideas are equally relevant for student and non-student alike.

It should be kept in mind that the eighth edition of this textbook was published in 1999, so most of the "contemporary" issues that are discussed within are now out of date. In one chapter, for example, the authors' upbeat commentary on America's 1998 budget surplus seems sadly ironic considering the large budget deficit that we are currently dealing with in financing the War on Terror in 2003. Additionally, I thought many of the examples in the book were a bit "pro-Clinton", and depending on one's own political orientation, that may or may not be welcome. I have not looked at the ninth (and latest) edition of "Macroeconomics", but assuming that the fundamental principles remain the same, I would encourage the reader to pick up that copy in order to have a more current and up-to-date illustration of ideas.

Readers looking for mathematical models and equations to play with will be sorely disappointed, as the only foray into mathematical analysis involves deriving the demand-side equilibrium condition of the Keynesian economic model (a simple algebraic equation). But considering that the slant of this book is towards "real world" understanding, I think the authors were probably justified in keeping the mathematical equations to a minimum.

All in all, I think "Macroeconomics" by Baumol and Blinder would be an excellent introduction for the economically-illiterate person (as I was before reading this book). Although many of the examples in the eighth edition are a bit out of date, it is true that the fundamental economic principles that are discussed endure throughout all of the editions of this textbook.

macro class textbook
this is a good straight forward text that does not get bogged down in the unecessary details for an introduction to the subject. It is simplified, and straightforward, while trying to be enjoyable reading.

Very fast shipping. Excellent book condition
Very fast transaction. Happy with the transaction

Perfect for Intro-level course
Baumol and Blinder explain all the important concepts of macroeconomics with tremendous clarity. Students with little or no knowledge of economics will find this book most straight-forward. Interesting real world examples are given to reinforce key ideas. For example, the authors describe the Asian crisis of 1998 to illustrate the shortcomings of a fixed exchange rate system. Secondly, unlike other econ. textbooks, this one is filled with colorful graphs and even photographs. I wouldn't be too surprised if this book succeeds in piquing the interest of those students, who are averse to econ. Finally, the attempts at humor are generally unsuccessful but provide a refreshing change from the unceasing monotony of most college textbooks.

the authors clearly know how to teach
I think this introductory econ book is exceptionally good as a text book; a book that truely deserves 5 stars. If a book explains things clearly, I usually give it 4 stars, but this book goes beyond that. The authors made a concious effort to make learning easy and meaningful.

Right at the beginning, the authors will tell you that they don't expect you to be a econ fanatic and remember every little detail - in fact, the authors seem to completely understand why we students forget most details soon after the final exam. So, right a way they list out the main ideas - in their own words: "ideas for beyond the final exam". Not only did the authors filtered out the most important material, they also truly believed that the material will be improtant beyond the final exam - in life that is. It is the first text book I saw that has such a candit and honest attitude because so many books and so many people talks down to me rather than at me.

Also, for each chapter, the authors always begin with some kind of "bait question", something that the reader understands but usually can't answer right a way. This is a great way to focus the chapter and entice people to read. And all the examples the authors use are either famous or recent (or both). One effect is to make you think what you are learning is truly useful because you can use it to analyze so many things from the news. A more subtle impression is that the authors really did update the book every few years to reflect important events that just occurred. As a computer science engineering major, I have seen countless "8th editions" that's just like the prior ones - but I seriously doubt the prior editions of this econ book talked about Asian economic crisis or the booming economy of the 1998 / 99

clear book + impressive effort = 5 stars ... Read more

Reviews (2)

UNO student
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
'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. ... Read more

Book Description

Basic Marketing is the market leading principles text domestically.Basic Marketing offers a very thorough integration of the latest marketing themes, topics, and examples woven throughout the body of the text.This integration of themes, topics, and examples is carefully blended with the text’s traditional strengths of clear, accessible communication, a focus on management decision-making in marketing, and completely integrated coverage of special topics such as technology, ethics, international perspectives, relationship marketing, and services. This is the first book to develop and present the 4 P’s framework when describing the components of the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion).Where most principles of marketing texts have separate supplement authors, Bill Perreault is the creator of every item in the package.This unique involvement ensures quality, accuracy, and reliability.ity. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

BE CAREFUL WHEN ORDERING THIS BOOK
There are various editions of this book being listed under the same ISBN.Make sure to contact the seller of the book if you buy it used to make sure the ISBN of their copy is the same as the one you are looking for!I had to order this book 2 times to get the right book!Sellers should list the ISBN of the BOOK (not the CD or whatever is included) so that buyers of this text know which one they are getting!

Good marketing book
This book was very easy to follow.

Horrible to read
This book is horrid to read, the chapters drag on and there simply too much information crammed into one chapter. Its hard to differentiate the points in the chapters, and many of the important points are not emphasized.

well duh
You know this book could have been nothing more than a glossary of definitions, a few summarys and outlines of the 4 this or 8 thats and it would have been much more interesting.The material in here is so basic and simple that I do the reading and don't feel that I have actually learned anything that wasn't fairly obvious to begin with.The examples are relevent if you happen to be a really slow learner and need 3 page explainations of 2 sentence definitions.

Comprehensive Book for Principles of Marketing Course
This is a fairly comprehensive fundamentals of marketing book.It is laid out well.It begins with an elementary explanation of the marketing discipline and its relationship to society.This is followed by anexplanation of the ingredients in marketing strategy planning.Followingthis section, the author addresses the external factors that affectmarketing decisions.This is followed by a discussion of demographic andbehavioral deminisons of the customer.Then, the author catergoriesdifferent type of customers.The next chapter presents an elementaryreview of marketing research.The most of the remainder of the textfocuses on the 4 Ps--Product, Place, Promotion, and Price.This isprobably the strongest part of the text.Throughout the text the authorincorporates global and ethical issues that relate to the subject matter ofeach chapter.This is an excellent text for a principles or fundamentalsof marketing course. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Solid Introduction to Law and Economics
In a sense, this book is quite curious. Because law and economics is a discipline in its infancy, a book of this nature has to tread the fine line between serving as a distanced text and engaging in the dialogue of current research. And in both respects, Cooter and Ulen do a magnificent job of doing just that.

Law and economics is a branch of jurisprudence that aims to frame legal questions in terms of economic efficiency. While some maintain that legal questions can purely be reduced to economic ones, Cooter and Ulen take - rightly, in my view - the more conservative stance that economics can describe at least part of the legal question. It turns out, however, that the methodologies presented in this book are useful in reducing most legal problems to ones of economic efficiency.

This is a textbook for beginners. It presupposes virtually no knowledge on economics or law -- a brief synopsis of microeconomics and English common law system is presented at the outset. The rest of the book utilizes economic methodologies in analyzing legal problems of property, contract, torts, common law and criminal law.

However, there is a caveat. As law and economics is a burgeoning and diverse field, many important details are omitted. Most notably, the distinction between different schools of law and economics is saliently missing. This book adopts the "Posnerian" or "Chicago" school of law and economics; that is, analyzing legal questions using the framework of wealth maximization. This scaffold is one of many schools of law and economics, including the "Virginia School" and the "Rochester School."

Taking this into note, however, does not mitigate this book's clarity or exposition. This is a solid although incomplete introduction to law and economics. Recommended.

Fast delivery and excellent quality...
The book arrived really fast. It is brand new as promised. I am very satisfied.

Expensive, but a good investment
This is a nice textbook. If you're looking for a good introduction to the field of law and economics intermediate between Mercuro/Medema's _Economics and the Law_ (low brainstrain) and Thomas Miceli's _Economics of the Law_ (high brainstrain), this one is a good choice.

One of the things I especially like about Cooter and Ulen's approach is that they are careful _not_ to reduce law to economics (or vice versa, for that matter). Their claim is simply that law and economics have a lot to learn from one another. And this claim is hard to argue with, no matter what other criticisms I might make about some parts of the law-and-economics movement.

For example, people who work with the law may tend to think of law as a means (solely) of securing justice, unaware that law also provides a complex structure of what economists would call "incentives" which promote what economists would call "efficiency". On the other hand, economists may tend to take for granted the existence of such institutions as property rights and contracts, and the meaning of such terms as "voluntary." These things are not as simple as they appear (as any first-year law student could tell you, although lots of "pop libertarians" probably couldn't), and legal scholarship has developed a lot of machinery for dealing with them.

So this textbook, after a short opening chapter, devotes two not-overlong and altogether mainstream summary-and-overview chapters to, respectively, microeconomic theory and law. This means that a reader from either discipline can learn the basics of the other before proceeding to the meat of the analysis.

Then the real work starts. Cooter and Ulen do a thorough job of presenting, in a readable and accessible manner, the basics of the economic analysis of the law of property, torts, contracts, legal procedure, crime, and all the other neat stuff on which the law-and-economics movement has based its reputation -- i.e., the application of economic theory to the study of law beyond the traditional bounds of, e.g., antitrust and other areas of law directly concerned with economics.

It's designed to be eminently readable. Judgments like the one I'm about to render are notoriously subjective, but overall, the text strikes me as a good mix of clear expository prose, a well-chosen range of helpful examples, sound theory, and audience-appropriate mathematics (algebra and graphing). More advanced texts -- e.g. the aforementioned Miceli, and _Introduction to Law and Economics by A. Mitchell Polinsky -- are harder to read than this one unless you've got some math background. (Polinsky doesn't actually _use_ all that much math, but I think readers without some mathematical experience will find his book more difficult reading than this one.)

References abound; every chapter closes with at least a handful of them. So the text also doubles as a bibliography and introduction to what is rapidly becoming a vast literature.

If you're introducing yourself to the field, this book is a good investment. If you have a sufficiently strong background in mathematics, you _may_ be able to start with either Miceli or Polinsky (or both) and give this one a pass. But you'll miss a lot of helpful introductory discussion.

Besides, this book has been something of a classic in the field ever since it was first published. If you have any interest in this field at all, you'll probably want to pick up a copy eventually.

(It will probably _not_ help you much in law school, by the way, at least in the beginning. If you're just looking for an introduction to law and economics sufficient to get you started as a law student, I recommend Mercuro/Medema. You can go on to Posner and Landes and Shavell and Calabresi and the rest of them later.)

A Great Book On A Great Topic
Originally, I bought this for a class in college and it remains one of the few texts that I kept. I was studying economics and had always imagined that I would go to law school some day so I took this class. The result was I went back sooner and fell in love with concept of looking at law through an economic lens. To this day, I will pull this book down from the shelf to rethink about a question using the tools this book provides.

The best part about this book is that is not overly complex or attempting to over simplify. Rather, its beauty is found in Cooter & Ulen's use of a well-timed example, beautifully simple diagrams, and realizing that this book is only an introduction to a controversial and complex subject matter. If you want to read Judge Posner's treatise I highly recommend it, but if you want to begin to understand why Posner and those like myself argue for this type of analysis-start here.

This book is expensive, but I would buy it again. If you're even remotely interested in this beautiful hybrid of human though, I strongly recommend you buy this. If you have to buy it for a class as I did, I would hold on to it and read it again without an eye toward the exam. I know it will be a good beer resale at the end of the semester, but I think in the long-run you'll be glad you kept it.

Good intro to Law & Econ
As one who both read this book and studied under Professor Ulen, I found this book to be an excellent introduction to the field. No, this is not a huge treatise on the subject, nor is it meant to be. It is designed to reach people familiar with either law or economics and broaden their understanding of the other field. In this, it succeeds quite well. ... Read more

Book Description

Dave Ramsey knows what it's like to have it all. By age twenty-six, he had established a four-million-dollar real estate portfolio, only to lose it by age thirty. He has since rebuilt his financial life and, through his workshops and his New York Times business bestsellers Financial Peace and More than Enough, he has helped hundreds of thousands of people to understand the forces behind their financial distress and how to set things right-financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

In this new edition of Financial Peace, Ramsey has updated his tactics and philosophy to show even more readers:

* how to get out of debt and stay out
* the KISS rule of investing-"Keep It Simple, Stupid"
* how to use the principle of contentment to guide financial decision making
* how the flow of money can revolutionize relationships

With practical and easy to follow methods and personal anecdotes, Financial Peace is the road map to personal control, financial security, a new, vital family dynamic, and lifetime peace. ... Read more

Reviews (18)

Awesome book! Get it. Read it. Do it.
In Dave's Financial Peace Revisited, he tells the story of how he got rich then went broke and what he learned from it. Then, Dave tells how he took a long, hard look at our society and how totally "stupid" he was (and most Americans still are) in terms of how he viewed debt and money. Dave then relates how he re-started his own climb to financial independence in a totally different way than he did the first time. This book doesn't have a bunch of conceptual, theoretical junk. It gives you PRACTICAL, immediately implementable steps that anyone can take to get their financial house in order and tells you exactly how to go about it. If you are handling your money well, this book will help you get better. If you're struggling with your money or your relationship with your spouse due to money troubles, this book may change your life. Learn how to manage your money instead of having it manage you. I've been buying copies of this book online and giving them to the people in my life that I care about most. I couldn't recommend it higher. Good luck and may God bless you.

Awesome
No matter your financial situation this book will help you improve your finances. This book shows the dangers of all debt period. Dave provides 7 easy "Baby Steps" to follow to get out of debt and acquire wealth. Following his 7 baby steps will change your family tree. He stresses the importance of having a written budget each month before the month starts, but I really think this should have been the first baby step due to how important it is.
Baby Steps:
1.) ...emergency fund
2.) Debt Snowball
3.) Fully Funded Emergency Fund (3-6 months of expenses)
4.) 15% income towards retirement
5.) College Fund for children
6.) Pay off the mortgage
7.) Acquire wealth and give
I would highly recommend one of his live events if you ever get the opportunity.

Mutual funds do not guarantee financial peace
One of the authors failed at a real estate business (even though he came from a real estate family). He is living proof that not everyone can be Donald Trump. And that is a good thing for people to be aware of.

The essence of the advice this book is offering can be found on page 133: "Disciplined savings will outpace any investment scheme." Next the question is, what do you do with your savings? Their answer is mainly mutual funds. The risk in buying individual stocks, they claim, is astronomical. If the stock market continues to be relatively stable, "financial peace," I think, can be achieved by following the authors' formula, but not if there is an extraordinary financial crisis. If an unusually large stock market crash did occur, a lot of mutual funds would start to look like "investment schemes." Financial peace for many people would be shattered.

I deduct one star because the authors place too much faith in mutual funds. Mutual funds, after all, do invest in individual stocks that are traded on the stock market.

very accessible, to the point reading
Financial Peace is above all common sense--something most of us could use a lot more of, or at least I can, when it comes to money. I had confidence that Ramsey was hitting the topics I should think about, regardless of where I am at in my journey with finances. The Christian aspect of his teachings was a challenge now and then, but basically I decided: if that faith or any faith helps people live more peaceful, productive and happy lives, this is a good thing. The very last chapter gets a little proselytizing but I got the feeling the husband and wife Ramsey team were just doing what they felt they should. All in all, a good read, simple yet contemplative.

Life Changing Advice
Sometimes the obvious is right in front of you, but it takes someone else to point it out. Dave Ramsey does just that in this great book. His advice is sound and doable. By following his baby steps and starting my own debt snowball, I have changed the way my family and I look at our finaces and provided for a much better future. ... Read more

Book Description

This book will appeal to both graduate students and practitioners. Students will value the Excel spreadsheets allowing them to develop their knowledge of modelling in finance, using a step-by-step approach accompanied by explanations using elementary mathematical statistics and probability. Practitioners will value the VBA functions as a source of up-to-date and efficient programs that can be easily used from Excel.

Standard material covered includes:

• portfolio theory and efficient frontiers
• the Capital Asset Pricing Model, beta and variance-covariance matrices
• performance measurement
• the Black-Scholes option pricing formula
• binomial trees for options on equities and bonds
• Monte Carlo simulation
• bond yield-to-maturity, duration and convexity
• term structure models from Vasicek and Cox, Ingersoll and Ross

Book Description

"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph" writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is central to one of the most crucial problems the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail?

In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal ownership to a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is what also allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book revolutionizes our understanding of capital and points the way to a major transformation of the world economy. ... Read more

Reviews (87)

Profound!!!
De Soto and Tom Friedman (The Lexus and the Olive Tree) are the two authors that make economics accessible. I have just graduated high school, and after basic economics, I understand what de Soto is saying. De Soto is one of the rare economists that has ditched the books and "gotten his hands dirty." He doesn't only forumlates theories, but also applies them in the real world. His research team is spread across the world - in nations such as Egypt, Haiti, Peru, and the Phillipines.

After reading this book, I have become cinvinced that the major problem in the developing and former communist world is the lack of property rights- de Soto's theory. He not only defends his theory, but explains how these thrid world countries can tap into the 9.3 trillion dollars worth of dead capital in their slums, shantys and "suburbs." The proposal is to adopt the society informal property laws into the national formal law in order to allow the poor to claim legal rights to their assets, and therefore allowing them to use their assets as collatoral for loans from banks. He is not idealistic -- he recognizes the problems and the obstacles that have to be met.

This book is fantastic. I read it in four days, and I am not a fast reader, especially econ books I HIGHLY recommend it.

-Joe

de Sota supplies one component for economic growth
The Mystery of Capital attempts to "reopen the exploration of the source of capital and thus explain how to correct the economic failures of poor countries." I believe the author makes an interesting argument within the book concerning the failure of capitalism to catch on in developing and post-communist countries. His argument deals with institutions we here in the West take for granted-property rights and other legal institutions. The connection between these legal institutions and economic growth is clear-and de Sota is clear on this point as well.

He states that an individual living outside the West faces an impenetrable wall of rules that bar them from legally established social and economic activities-such as deleterious bureaucracies that retard growth by wielding red-tape. De Sota sent teams to Peru, the Philippines, Egypt, and Haiti and they experienced firsthand how it takes several years to obtain legal verification of assets-years compared to days here in the West. Under these burdens, individuals create new laws-extralegal laws. These social contracts have created a vibrant but undercapitalized sector. This sector is known in economic layman's terms as the underground or informal economy. The author estimates that over half on the inhabitants in developing countries engage in this sector-using Dead Capital. The value of the assets in the informal markets are huge-surpassing the assets of rich countries sometimes. De Sota has brought attention to the core of the problem-he then states that the solution can be found at the heart of the countries.

He supplies the formula to fix the backwardness of the nascent capitalist nations. The first objective is to unify the many social contracts already existing in the extralegal sector into one, all encompassing social contract-by listening to the "barking dogs", or the people. Past attempts with this aim have failed because they have lacked the legitimacy and support from the current extralegal world. De Sota creates a bridge to fix this dilemma-a bridge that integrates old social property customs into a new all encompassing social contract. By working with their people, government leaders can forge a new regulatory framework. The second task is a task of a political nature because the plan outlined above requires the support of the poor, the elite, and the lawyers. The poor will gain the most because they will greatly increase their economic lifestyles with a more unified social property system that will enable them to use their assets as full functioning capital. The elite will harvest gains as well; they will benefit from an expanded market and growing capitalist economy. The lawyers must not use the current law, but instead fine-tune the law and change it to make it work for all.

De Sota's real world studies and solutions make sense in my mind. He identified a problem and supplied the solution. He may fall short though in his solution because a complex capitalist economy requires much more infrastructure than only property rights-of course I mean other forms of capital, such as human capital. By De Sota is on the right tract; a capitalist economy demands strict and discrete property laws that enable individuals to utilize their assets. His premise is right-under capitalism, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. In the third world, the poor don't have access to their assets, and they thus flounder in the extralegal sector.

One of the single best books on Economics I've read
Many of the other reviewers have given excellent in depth summaries of DeSoto's book, and I will not regurgitate what others have already done a good job of saying. I will just say this: if you want to know why 3rd world countries are 3rd world countries, and what Gov'ts around the world can do to create prosperity for their people, read this book. Nations are poor because of ill-guarded private property rights. It's that simple. They aren't poor because of lack of socialism (quite the opposite), they aren't poor because of lack of resources, it's because "It's the property rights, stupid!"

Books like this can give hope to the pessimist, that it is possible to end serious poverty in the world. Relative poverty will always exist, but the civilization-destabilizing poverty that exists in the Arab world, in Latin America, *can* be cured if Gov'ts would just put in place a system that allows capital (ie entreprenuers) to grow from the natural resources within the country. Replace Socialism w/ Rule of Law. I hope every member of the Iraqi CPA has read this book and heeded its lessons...

Packed With Knowledge!
Hernando de Soto's ideas cannot and should not be ignored. This book will open many eyes to the nature of capital. The author suggests a radically simple yet enormously challenging way of bringing the world's impoverished billions onto the track of capitalism and development: give them legal property rights to what they "own." The author's intriguing case is that a lack of property rights - not a lack of entrepreneurial zeal or competence - stymies development in the former East Bloc and Third World countries. This seemed to be a shockingly original notion when the author first propounded it in his bestseller The Other Patch, and it still does. If the book has a flaw, we warn, it is that the author's undisguised missionary ardor sometimes makes one wonder whether he is merely a zealot. Even if he were one, the book would merit reading.

Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world...
Other reviewers have commented on De Soto's originality in relation to prevailing economic tradition. They have also praised his style - very clear prose, interspersed by passages of honest elegance. Yet, for me, at least, what stands out most about De Soto is his interest in discovery, in reawakening a long forgotten question.

Who asks oneself seriously what capital is today? Is one even generally capable of understanding the question of what capital is? I