Macroeconomics, 5th Edition

Personalize learning with MyEconLab

NEW! An enhanced Pearson e-text meets tech-savvy students halfway for a better learning experience.

• All of the text’s content is available to students whenever they want, wherever they are via an iPad app.
• Instructors and students can highlight, bookmark, search the glossary, and take notes–all directly within the eText.
• A series of 100+ author mini-lectures accompany the analytic graphs in the text. Accessible with just a click, these mini-lectures serve as invaluable study tools for students who typically learn better when they see and hear economic analysis than when they read it.

NEW! MyEconLab includes a number of tools that enable real-time data analysis .

• Many of the in-text figures allow students to see the latest data by way of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED database.
• In addition, new real-time data analysis problems prompt students to download data from the FRED website, and then use it to answer questions about current issues.

Because MyEconLab communicates directly with the FRED site, students see new data every time it is posted to FRED. As a result, these real-time data analysis exercises offer a no-fuss solution for instructors who want to make the most recent data a central part of their macroeconomics course.

An online homework and tutorial system puts students in control of their own learning. Within MyEconLab’s structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and then pursue a study plan that MyEconLab generates for them based on their performance on practice tests.

Flexible tools allow instructors to easily and effectively customize online course materials to suit their needs. Instructors can create and assign tests, quizzes, or homework assignments. MyEconLab saves time by automatically grading questions and tracking results in an online grade book. After registering for MyEconLab, instructors also access downloadable supplements.

Communication tools in MyEconLab foster collaboration, class participation, and group work.

• Instructors can send emails to their entire class, to individual students or to instructors who has access to their course.
• Discussion boards provides students with a space to respond and react to the discussions you create. These posts can also be separated out into specific topics where students can share their opinions/answers and respond to their fellow classmates’ posts.
• ClassLive is an interactive chat tool that allows instructors and students to communicate in real time. It can be used with a group of students or one-on-one to share images or PowerPoint presentations, draw or write objects on a whiteboard, or send and receive graphed or plotted equations. ClassLive also has additional classroom management tools, including polling and hand raising.

NEW! Videos accompanying the text’s Making the Connection features provide real-world reinforcement of key concepts. Approximately two minutes long, each video depicts one of the authors explaining the key point of the Making the Connection feature and includes engaging visuals, such as new photos or graphs, that are not included in the main book. These videos summarize key content and bring applications of concepts to life.

NEW! Online Concept Checks at the end of each chapter act as “speed bumps” that encourage students to stop and check their understanding of fundamental terms and concepts before moving on to the next section. Consisting of a few multiple-choice, true/false, or fill-in questions, they help students assess their progress on a section-by-section basis, so they can better prepare for homework, quizzes, and exams.

NEW! Animated graphs on MyEconLab accompany the numbered figures in the text, helping students better understand how to analyze and work with graphs. More dynamic than graphs on a printed page, they help students understand shifts in curves, movements along curves, and changes in equilibrium values.

NEW! Interactive Solved Problems serve as models of how to solve economic problems by breaking them down step by step. Each Solved Problem in the text is accompanied by a similar problem online, so students can practice and build their problem-solving skills. These interactive tutorials help students learn to think like economists and apply basic problem-solving skills to homework, quizzes, and exams. The goal is for students to build skills they can use to analyze real-world economic issues they hear and read about in the news.


Show students how economics is relevant

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. Additional articles and analysis are updated weekly on MyEconLab.

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.


Foster thorough understanding via a flexible, student-focused approach

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. The text includes a layered, full-color acetate for the Dynamic AD-AS Model and basic AD-AS graphs that make it possible to omit Dynamic AD-AS altogether.