For two-semester courses in Principles of Economics

Acemoglu, Laibson, List: An Evidence-based Approach to Economics

This fresh approach to the Principles of Economics course uses real data to tackle real issues, helping students to take economics beyond the classroom. The author team of Daron Acemoglu, David Laibson, and John List is committed to showing students how economic concepts are personally relevant to them. Through practical content, including Evidence-based Economics features in each chapter that explore real-world scenarios, the authors give students the knowledge they need to apply economic principles to guide the decisions they make in their own lives.

This program provides a better teaching and learning experience–for you and your students. It will help you to:

• Personalize learning with MyEconLab: This online homework, tutorial, and assessment program fosters learning and provides tools that help instructors to keep students on track.

• Explain economics through a unified conceptual framework: The text’s structure makes economics approachable, while demonstrating how course material is relevant to students.

• Enable students to think like economists: An applied approach engages students in course material and encourages them to use economic reasoning in their own lives.Features

Personalize learning with MyEconLab

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.

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.

Explain economics through a unified conceptual framework

The text explains economics by way of a framework that emphasizes three intuitive principles: optimization, equilibrium, and empiricism. This unified structure makes economics more approachable and easier to master, while demonstrating how course material applies directly to the real world, and to students’ own lives.

1. Optimization. The first principle—that people try to choose the best available option—is optimization. Economists believe that optimization explains most choices people make, including minor decisions like deciding whether to eat a cheeseburger, and major decisions like deciding whom to date or marry. When people fail to optimize perfectly, economic reasoning can be used to analyze the mistake and to suggest a better course of action.

2. Equilibrium. Economic systems tend toward equilibrium, wherein each economic actor feels that he or she cannot do any better by picking another course of action. This principle highlights the connections among economic actors and their choices. In a state of equilibrium, consumers and purveyors of goods and services are simultaneously optimizing, and their behaviors are consequently intertwined.

3. Empiricism. While the first two key principles are conceptual, the third is methodological. Empiricism is key to how economists develop and evaluate theories, using data from experiments or from real-world observation to test theories. Such data comprise the empirical evidence, which is a key pillar of economics. It enables us to evaluate economic theories, learn facts about the world, and speak to policymakers.

By examining economics through the lens of these three principles, students will comprehend key concepts and learn how to use economic analysis to make sense of the world around them.

Enable students to think like economists

Evidence-based Economics features in each chapter illustrate key concepts using actual economic data, helping students to see empiricism in action. These features tackle interesting and relevant topics, drawing students deeply into their study of economics. Questions addressed via these features include:

• Will free trade cause you to lose your job?

• Why is the average American so much richer than the average Indian?

• What is the (opportunity) cost of using Facebook?

• Why are you so much more prosperous than your great great-grandparents?

• What is the optimal size of government?

• What happens to employment and unemployment in a local labor market if some employers go out of business?

• Would a smoker quit the habit for $100 a month?

• What caused the recession of 2007-2009?

• Why do cars lose considerable value the minute they are driven off the lot?

• Are companies like Nike harming workers in the developing world? And are wealthy consumers in the U.S. and Europe to blame for buying the goods manufactured in these sweatshops?

The text shows students how to put economics to use, and helps them learn economics while also enjoying it. It provides a hands-on practical approach to topics such as:

• Intertemporal tradeoffs (e.g. How much extra should one be willing to pay to buy a “green” car that gets high gas mileage?)

• Concepts of risk and probability that help students improve decision-making (e.g. What is the value of insurance?)

• Financial decisions that households make (e.g. Why invest in many different stocks instead of just focusing on a few favorite companies?)

• Systematic mistakes, as well as tips to avoid making them (e.g. Why are “extended warranties” alluring, but often a very bad deal?)

Experiments built into the text facilitate a hands-on learning experience. Students find these in-class experiments enjoyable, remember what they’ve learned without any effort, and refer back to them frequently to guide their behavior. Key lessons—such as correlation versus causality and what it means to be a ‘free rider’—are aided by these experiments.

The text creates many opportunities for students to manipulate data. Students are prompted to calculate means and growth rates and learn how to display data and use it to support an argument. The authors show students how to read a graph and how to critique it if it conveys the wrong message. And, Letting the Data Speak features explore economic questions and events, using data as the base of the discussion.

Optimization Toolbox features explain tools, such as opportunity cost, that students can use to make optimal choices in their own lives.

Decision-Making Error features identify common mistakes, such as letting sunk costs drive a decision. The authors explain the error, provide several examples, and prompt students to consider additional situations in which this mistake might naturally arise.

How Would You Decide? features ask students to make their own economic decisions. The authors present all of the information that students need to make the choice before placing them in a decisionmaking position. After students have made their decisions, the authors explain how an economist would analyze the same situation and ultimately decide.