Preface

Welcome to Principles of Microeconomics . Aaron Swoboda and Lauren Feiler, in consultation with the Economics Department, have customized the OpenStax Microeconomics book specifically for use in ECON 111 at Carleton College. We have kept the content that we find most important to cover in a ten week term and reordered it to suit the organization of this course.

Throughout the book, you will find references to other sections of the text. If you click one of these links, you may be taken to the original text and may see a section that does not exist in our version of the book. This can give you a chance to explore topics that we will not cover or give you background information, but you should make sure to get back to our original chapter before continuing your assigned reading. We also encourage you to look at the original textbook, available at openstaxcollege.org to read about areas that we will not be able to cover this term.

About openstax college

OpenStax College is a non-profit organization committed to improving student access to quality learning materials. Our free textbooks go through a rigorous editorial publishing process. Our texts are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of today’s college courses. Unlike traditional textbooks, OpenStax College resources live online and are owned by the community of educators using them. Through our partnerships with companies and foundations committed to reducing costs for students, OpenStax College is working to improve access to higher education for all. OpenStax College is an initiative of Rice University and is made possible through the generous support of several philanthropic foundations.

About our team

Senior contributing author

Timothy Taylor, Macalester College
Timothy Taylor has been writing and teaching about economics for 30 years, and is the Managing Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives , a post he’s held since 1986. He has been a lecturer for The Teaching Company, the University of Minnesota, and the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, where students voted him Teacher of the Year in 1997. His writings include numerous pieces for journals such as the Milken Institute Review and The Public Interest , and he has been an editor on many projects, most notably for the Brookings Institution and the World Bank, where he was Chief Outside Editor for the World Development Report 1999/2000, Entering the 21st Century: The Changing Development Landscape . He also blogs four to five times per week at http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com. Timothy Taylor lives near Minneapolis with his wife Kimberley and their three children.

Senior content expert

Steven A. Greenlaw, University of Mary Washington
Steven Greenlaw has been teaching principles of economics for more than 30 years. In 1999, he received the Grellet C. Simpson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Mary Washington. He is the author of Doing Economics: A Guide to Doing and Understanding Economic Research , as well as a variety of articles on economics pedagogy and instructional technology, published in the Journal of Economic Education , the International Review of Economic Education , and other outlets. He wrote the module on Quantitative Writing for Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics , the web portal on best practices in teaching economics. Steven Greenlaw lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife Kathy and their three children.

Senior contributors

Reviewers

A note about the open source nature of this text

This textbook stems from an open source project to increase the affordability of college courses. Although it has been reviewed by all of the people above (as well as your professors), this book is a work in progress. You have the ability to improve the text by offering suggestions and pointing out errors. Please tell your professor about any problems you notice or suggestions for clarifying the text.

Ancillaries

OpenStax projects offer an array of ancillaries for students and instructors. Please visit http://openstaxcollege.org and view the learning resources for this title.