Essentials of Economics, Global Edition, 4th edition

Published by Pearson (September 22, 2014) © 2015
  • Glenn Hubbard
  • Anthony Patrick O'Brien

Title overview

For one-semester Principles of Economics courses at two- and four-year colleges and universities

Reveal the relevance of economics through real-world business examples

One of the challenges of teaching Principles of Economics is fostering interest in concepts that may not seem applicable to students’ lives. Essentials of Economics, Fourth Edition makes economics relevant by demonstrating how real businesses use economics to make decisions every day. Regardless of their future career path—opening an art studio, trading on Wall Street, or bartending at the local pub—students will benefit from understanding the economic forces behind their work.

Key features

  • Real-world business chapter-opening cases set a context for learning, spark students' interest, and provide a unifying theme for the chapter by showing how the economic concepts presented impact a real business. Many of the companies included are new to this edition, and all those featured in previous editions have been updated with current information.
  • A Personal Dimension: Economics in Your Life feature in each chapter opener helps students relate to the material. Students are prompted to think about questions posed in this feature as they work through the chapter. At the end of the chapter, the authors provide answers to these questions.
  • An Inside Look features at the end of each chapter help students apply economic thinking to current events and policy debates. These features consist of newspaper articles that illustrate how key principles have been used by the company featured in the chapter-opening case to make a business decision. The authors provide an analysis of the article, corresponding graph(s), and Thinking Critically exercises. Chapters 1-4 include new An Inside Look features that help students apply economic thinking to current events and policy debates.
  • Making the Connection features help students tie economic concepts to current events and policy issues by revealing how the information they are learning has been used in actual situations. The fifth edition incorporates 27 new, contemporary Making the Connection features designed to help students see the relevance of course material.
  • An accessible writing style brings concepts to life. 94% of 1,500 students from different colleges and universities across the country who reviewed Hubbard/O'Brien rated the writing style an 'A' or 'B' compared to their current Principles of Economics textbook in use.
  • Solved problems throughout the text provide models of how to solve an economic problem by breaking it down step-by-step. Each solved problem includes a problem statement, delineated steps to solve the problem, a graph, and a Your Turn feature that directs students to related end-of-chapter problems for immediate practice. This keeps students focused on the main ideas of each chapter, and prevents them from getting bogged down due to a lack of basic math or word-problem skills.
  • A flexible presentation of aggregate demand and aggregate supply (AD-AS) enables instructors to teach the course in a fashion that suits their goals.

Table of contents

I. Introduction

  1. 1. Economics: Foundations and Models
  2. 2. Trade-offs, Comparative Advantage, and the Market System
  3. 3. Where Prices Come From: The Interaction of Demand and Supply

II. Markets in Action

  1. 4. Market Efficiency and Market Failure
  2. 5. The Economics of Healthcare

III. Microeconomic Foundations: Consumers and Firms

  1. 6. Firms, the Stock Market, and Corporate Governance
  2. 7. Consumer Choice and Elasticity
  3. 8. Technology, Production, and Costs

IV. Market Structure and Firm Strategy

  1. 9. Firms in Perfectly Competitive Markets
  2. 10. Monopoly and Antitrust
  3. 11. Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly

V. Market Structure and Firm Strategy

  1. 12. GDP: Measuring Total Production and Income
  2. 13. Unemployment and Inflation

VI. Long-Run and Short-Run Fluctuations

  1. 14. Economic Growth, the Financial System and Business Cycles
  2. 15. Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply Analysis

VII. Monetary and Fiscal Policy

  1. 16. Money, Banks, and the Federal Reserve System
  2. 17. Monetary Policy
  3. 18. Fiscal Policy
  4. 19. Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Exchange Rates

Author bios

Glenn Hubbard is Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics in the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University and Professor of Economics in Columbia's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a director of Automatic Data Processing, Black Rock Fixed-Income Funds, KKR Financial Corporation and MetLife. From 2001 to 2003 he served as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and chair of the OECD Economy Policy Committee, and from 1991 to 1993 he was deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury Department. He currently serves as co-chair of the non-partisan Committee on Capital Markets Regulation. Glenn's fields of specialisation are public economics, financial markets and institutions, corporate finance, macroeconomics, industrial organisation and public policy. He is the author of more than 100 articles in leading journals.

Anthony Patrick (Tony) O'Brien is a Professor of Economics at Lehigh University. He has taught principles of economics for more than 20 years and has received the Lehigh University Award for Distinguished Teaching. He was formerly the director of the Diamond Center for Economic Education and was named a Dana Foundation Faculty Fellow and Lehigh Class of 1961 Professor of Economics. Tony has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University. His research has dealt with such issues as the evolution of the US car industry, sources of US economic competitiveness, the development of US trade policy, the causes of the Great Depression and the causes of black–white income differences. His research has been published in leading journals.

Loading...Loading...Loading...