Foundations of Economics, 8th Edition

Personalize learning with MyLab Economics

MyLab™ Economics is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them better absorb course material and understand difficult concepts.

• End-of-chapter problems and exercises are developed as auto-graded questions in MyLab Economics. Instructors can assign end-of-chapter problems online--even problems with graphing, fill-in-the-blank, and numerical entries. All student grades are tracked in a gradebook for the instructor.
• All of the Checkpoint and Chapter Checkpoint Problems and Applications can be assigned for further student practice and are also automatically graded in MyLab Economics. These problems appear in study mode where students can work them using tutorial learning aids as needed. Checkpoint exercises are available in self-test mode so students are encouraged to work them independently before getting feedback.
• Economics in the News is updated every day during the school year by the authors themselves. Each entry provides a summary of the news, a link to the complete story, and discussion questions.
• Current News Exercises. Every week, current Microeconomic and Macroeconomic news stories, with accompanying exercises, are posted to MyLab Economics. Assignable and auto-graded, these multi-part exercises ask students to recognize and apply economic concepts to real-world events.
• Learning Aids. The MyLab Economics homework and practice questions are correlated to the textbook, regenerate algorithmically to give students unlimited opportunity for practice and mastery, and offer helpful feedback when students enter incorrect answers. Learning aids, such as Help Me Solve This, provide extra help for students at the point-of-use.
• The Enhanced eText keeps students engaged in learning on their own time, while helping them achieve greater conceptual understanding of course material. The worked examples, animations, and interactive tutorials bring learning to life, and algorithmic practice allows students to apply the very concepts they are reading about. Combining resources that illuminate content with accessible self-assessment, MyLab Economics with Enhanced eText provides students with a complete digital learning experience--all in one place.
• Big Picture videos summarize each chapter and provide an outline answer to the chapter’s motivating question.
• Snapshot videos illustrate and explain the key ideas in each section of a chapter. These also contain animations and explanations of each figure, which can be played separately.
• Solutions videos walk students through the solutions to the Practice Problems and Economics in the News exercises in each Checkpoint.
• Key Terms Quizzes enable students to check their knowledge of the definitions and use of the key terms.

• And with the Pearson eText 2.0 mobile app (available for select titles) students can now access the Enhanced eText and all of its functionality from their computer, tablet, or mobile phone. Because students’ progress is synced across all of their devices, they can stop what they’re doing on one device and pick up again later on another one--without breaking their stride.  
• Real-time Data Analysis Exercises. Easy to assign and automatically graded, Real-Time Data Analysis exercises use up-to-the-minute, real-time macroeconomic data. These exercises communicate directly with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED™ site, so every time FRED posts new data, students see new data. As a result, 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 macro course. Real-Time Data Analysis exercises are available in the latest Principles of Economics (all versions), Intermediate Macroeconomics, and Money & Banking courses. Just look for the Real-Time Data Analysis icon!
• UPDATED! Animated Graphs in MyLab Economics accompany many of the key graphs and figures in the text, and have been updated with real-time data from FRED. Students can display a pop-up graph that shows new data plotted in the graph, to better understand how to work with data and understand how including new data affects graphs. More dynamic than graphs on a printed page, these animated ones help students understand shifts in curves, movements along curves, and changes in equilibrium values.
• The online Gradebook automatically tracks students' results on tests, homework, and practice exercises and gives you control over managing results and calculating grades. The Gradebook provides a number of flexible grading options, including exporting grades to a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. And, it lets you measure and document your students' learning outcomes.
• NEW! Math Review Exercises. MyLab Economics now offers a rich array of assignable and auto-graded exercises covering fundamental math concepts geared specifically to principles and intermediate economics students. Aimed at increasing student confidence and success, our new math skills review Chapter R is accessible from the assignment manager and contains over 150 graphing, algebra, and calculus exercises for homework, quiz, and test use. Offering economics students warm-up math assignments, math remediation, or math exercises as part of any content assignment has never been easier!
• Experiments in MyLab Economics are a fun and engaging way to promote active learning and mastery of important economic concepts. Pearson’s Experiments program is flexible and easy for instructors and students to use. Single-player experiments allow your students to play against virtual players from anywhere at any time so long as they have an Internet connection. Multiplayer experiments allow you to assign and manage a real-time experiment with your class. Pre- and post-questions for each experiment are available for assignment in MyLab Economics.

• Digital Interactives. Economic principles are not static ideas, and learning them shouldn’t be either! Digital Interactives are dynamic and engaging assessment activities that promote critical thinking and application of key economic principles. Each Digital Interactive has 3-5 progressive levels and requires approximately 20 minutes to explore, apply, compare, and analyze each topic. Many Digital Interactives include real-time data from FRED allowing professors and students to display, in graph and table form, up-to-the-minute data on key macro variables. Digital Interactives can be assigned and graded within MyLab Economics, or used as a lecture tool to encourage engagement, classroom conversation, and group work.
• Learning Catalytics™ helps you generate class discussion, customize your lecture, and promote peer-to-peer learning with real-time analytics. As a student response tool, Learning Catalytics uses students’ smartphones, tablets, or laptops to engage them in more interactive tasks and thinking.
• NEW! Upload a full PowerPoint^® deck for easy creation of slide questions.
• NEW! Team names are no longer case sensitive.
• Help your students develop critical thinking skills.
• Monitor responses to find out where your students are struggling.
• Rely on real-time data to adjust your teaching strategy.
• Automatically group students for discussion, teamwork, and peer-to-peer learning.

• Personalized Learning. Not every student learns the same way or at the same rate. With the growing need for acceleration through many courses, it's more important than ever to meet students where they learn. Personalized learning in MyLab Economics gives you the flexibility to incorporate the approach that best suits of your course and your students.
• The Study Plan acts as a tutor, providing personalized recommendations for each of your students based on his or her ability to master the learning objectives in your course. This allows students to focus their study time by pinpointing the precise areas they need to review, and allowing them to use customized practice and learning aids--such as videos, eText, tutorials, and more--to get them back on track. Using the report available in the Gradebook, you can then tailor course lectures to prioritize the content where students need the most support--offering you better insight into classroom and individual performance.
• Dynamic Study Modules help students study effectively on their own by continuously assessing their activity and performance in real time. Here's how it works: students complete a set of questions with a unique answer format that also asks them to indicate their confidence level. Questions repeat until the student can answer them all correctly and confidently. Once completed, Dynamic Study Modules explain the concept using materials from the text. These are available as graded assignments prior to class, and accessible on smartphones, tablets, and computers. NEW! Instructors can now remove questions from Dynamic Study Modules to better fit their course.

• Reporting Dashboard. View, analyze, and report learning outcomes clearly and easily, and get the information you need to keep your students on track throughout the course, with the new Reporting Dashboard. Available via the Gradebook and fully mobile-ready, the Reporting Dashboard presents student performance data at the class, section, and program levels in an accessible, visual manner.
• Learning Management System (LMS) Integration. You can now link from Blackboard Learn, Brightspace by D2L, Canvas, or Moodle to MyLab Economics. Access assignments, rosters, and resources, and synchronize grades with your LMS Gradebook. For students, single sign-on provides access to all the personalized learning resources that make studying more efficient and effective.

About the book

Content has been fine-tuned to reflect the current economy

• NEW! The text reflects the dramatic economic history of today, including persistent slow economic growth, an increasing concentration of wealth, headwinds from the UK’s stagnant economy, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, China’s slowing expansion, and enhanced concern about climate change. In the US specifically, the text covers the increasing loss of jobs to offshore companies, the political popularity of trade protection, financial demands from an aging population, a dysfunctional congress with rising government debt and a slow, decade-long recovery from the financial crisis.
• UPDATED! Each chapter contains small changes to enhance clarity and currency, and every example reflects the most recent current events.

Notable content changes in micro

• NEW! Economics as a Life Skill section explains how economics can be used as a life tool, the scientific method the subject employs, and economics as an aid to critical thinking (Chapter 1).
• NEW! Eye on Your Life looks at the BLS data on student time allocation.
• NEW! Coverage on how the outward bowed production possibilities frontier arises from exploiting comparative advantage (Chapter 3).
• NEW! Section on production quotas, which explains why producers like them and illustrates how a quota expands producer surplus (Chapter 7).
• NEW! Explanation of the Flat Tax and Fair Tax proposals and compares their efficiency and equity properties with those of the existing tax code (Chapter 8).
• UPDATED! Expanded discussion of carbon emissions and the global challenge of achieving an efficient use of energy resources (Chapter 10).
• UPDATED! Efficient provision of transportation infrastructure is a motivating example and discussion of the underprovision that results from limited revenue sources is included (Chapter 11).
• NEW! and UPDATED! Coverage of the economics of healthcare insurance and services. It identifies the sources of healthcare market failure and describes and compares alternative solutions including Obamacare and the healthcare systems of Canada and Europe (Chapter 12).
• UPDATED! Broadened examination of inequality trends with a focus on the income share of the top one percent--the great compression through the mid-1970s and the great divergence of the past 40 years. Coverage of mobility up and down the income quintiles has also been expanded (Chapter 20).

Notable content changes in macro

• UPDATED! The text explores the question of whether we are back at full employment. In seeking an answer, the chapter adds to the standard list of job market indicators--the new Z-Pop measure of the percentage of the population that is fully occupied (Chapter 22).
• NEW! Data on the new Sticky Price CPI and its related Flexible Price CPI as an attempt to measure the underlying inflation rate (Chapter 23).
• NEW! Covers who gets the benefits of economic growth with a dramatic demonstration of the gains by the top one percent compared with the gains of the other 99 percent (Chapter 25).
• NEW! and UPDATED! Explains the concepts of fiscal imbalance and generational imbalance, and the magnitudes of these imbalances in the US today (Chapter 32).
• NEW! Discusses the rules versus discretion dichotomy and a description of both the Taylor interest rate rule and the McCallum monetary base growth rate rule (Chapter 33).

Outcome-driven teaching and learning

• REVISED! The text has been revised to provide an outcome-driven teaching and learning program to strengthen problem-solving, critical-thinking, and decision-making skills.

Focus on core concepts

• Each chapter concentrates on a manageable number of ideas, usually 3 to 4, with each reinforced several times throughout the text. This patient approach helps guide students through unfamiliar terrain and focus them on the most important concepts.  

Clear organization helps students embrace and understand the material

• The text leaves room for flexibility for professors who want to cover it in a different order.

Diagrams aid in learning difficult concepts

• Diagrams make consistent use of color to show the direction of shifts, and detailed, numbered captions guide students through actions step-by-step .
• Material is presented in graphs, words, and tables to appease students who are apprehensive about working with graphs.

Real-world connections bring theories to life

• Eye On boxes offer fresh examples that help students see that economics is everywhere. Each chapter opening box is answered by an Eye On box that helps students see the economic factors behind a key issue facing the world and highlights major aspects of the chapter.
• Eye on the US Economy relates examples to current and recent events.
• Eye on the Global Economy puts these events in global context.
• Eye on the Past offers historical economic perspectives.  
• Eye on Your Life shows students how to apply economic principles to their lives.