Microeconomics for Business and Marketing: Lectures, Cases and Worked Essays

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 behavioral/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 behavior.

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.