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Description

This is a microeconomic theory book designed for upper-division undergraduate students in economics and agricultural economics. This is a free pdf download of the entire book. As the author, I own the copyright. Amazon markets bound print copies of the book at amazon.com at a nominal price for classroom use. The book can also be ordered through college bookstores using the following ISBN numbers:

  • ISBN‐13: 978‐1475244342
  • ISBN-10: 1475244347

Basic introductory college courses in microeconomics and differential calculus are the assumed prerequisites. The last, tenth, chapter of the book reviews some mathematical principles basic to the other chapters. All of the chapters contain many numerical examples and graphs developed from the numerical examples. The ambitious student could recreate any of the charts and tables contained in the book using a computer and Excel spreadsheets. There are many numerical examples of the key elements of marginal analysis. In addition, many practical examples are taken from the real world to illustrate key points.

Most of the examples used in the book come from the food and agricultural industries, broadly defined. Examples in consumer choice and utility focus on consumer decisions to purchase hamburgers and French fries. Production examples involve choices farmers make in order to apply fertilizer to crops. Market models are employed that illustrate consumer choice between beef, pork and chicken at the grocery meat counter, and so on. A few of the examples do not employ agriculturally related goods, such as the examples dealing with the fate of the Polaroid corporation and its instant cameras, monopoly power of cable television providers and competition between the big three auto makers in the 1950s.

Publication Date

6-2012

Publisher

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

eISBN

978-1475244342

eISBN

1475244347

About the Author(s)

David L. Debertin is professor emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky and has been on the University of Kentucky agricultural economics faculty since 1974 with a specialization in agricultural production and community resource economics. He received a B.S. and an M.S. degree from North Dakota State University, and completed a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University in 1973. This book is not an introductory microeconomics text, but instead is designed to be used as a one-semester course in intermediate applied microeconomics. What makes this book different from other texts in intermediate microeconomic theory is the emphasis not only on the concept but also on applying the concept to find specific numerical solutions using math. Students are expected to have completed a course in basic undergraduate microeconomic theory and a course in differential calculus. The content is based on the author’s experience teaching applied microeconomics to upper-division undergraduate students. Examples used throughout the text begin with basic concepts familiar to students who have completed a basic microeconomics course, but build on these basic concepts in a host of new ways. Each concept is illustrated using a specific mathematical equation. Tables of data are created and graphs are drawn based on a specific mathematical function that illustrates each concept. The tables of data contained in the text can be recreated by the student using Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets. Most of the examples used to portray concepts within the book emphasize specific ideas from the food and agriculture industries.

Applied Microeconomics: Consumption, Production and Markets

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