Distinguishing Features and Third Edition Changes
Essentials of Economics includes several features that we think add up to a unique whole.

• State-of-the-Art Design and Pedagogy
  
  Essentials incorporates a single-column design with a host of pedagogical aids, including a strategically placed "To the Student" statement, chapter opening objectives, definitions in the margins, combined tables and graphs, complete chapter summaries, lists of key terms, carefully constructed study questions, connections to our Web site, a Web appendix on graphs and a Web appendix on additional examples of demand and supply, an extensive glossary, and historical statistics on the inside covers.


• Focus on Core Models


Essentials of Economics shortens and simplifies explanations where appropriate but stresses the importance of the economic perspective, including explaining and applying core economic models. Our strategy is to develop a limited set of essential models, illustrate them with analogies or anecdotes, explain them thoroughly, and apply them to real-world situations. Eliminating unnecessary graphs and elaborations makes perfect sense in the one-semester course, but cutting explanations of the truly essential graphs does not. In dealing with the basics, brevity at the expense of clarity is false economy.

We created a student-oriented one-semester textbook that draws on the methodological strengths of the discipline and helps students improve their analytical reasoning skills. Regardless of students' eventual majors, they will discover that such skills are highly valuable in their workplaces.

• Illustrating the Idea

We include numerous analogies, examples, and anecdotes to help drive home central economic ideas in a lively, colorful, and easy-to-remember way. For instance, elastic versus inelastic demand is illustrated by comparing the stretch of an Ace bandage and that of a rubber tie-down. Student exam scores help demonstrate the difference between marginal product and average product. Public goods and the free-rider problem are illustrated by public art, while a pizza analogy walks students through the equity-efficiency trade-off. Inflation as a hidden tax is illustrated by a story of the prince of the realm clipping coins. These brief vignettes flow directly from the preceding content and segue to the content that follows, rather than being "boxed off" away from the flow and therefore easily overlooked.

New to this edition is an Illustrating the Idea about beekeepers that is used to explain the Coase Theorem.

• Applying the Analysis

A glance through this book's pages will demonstrate that this is an application-oriented textbook. Applying the Analysis pieces immediately follow the development of economic analysis and are part of the flow of the chapters, rather than segregated from the main-body discussion in a traditional boxed format. For example, the basics of the economic perspective are applied to why customers tend to try to wait in the shortest checkout lines. The book illustrates inelasticity of demand (with changing supply) with an explanation of fluctuating farm income. Differences in elasticity of supply are contrasted by the changing prices of antiques versus reproductions. Hidden car-retrieval systems (such as Lojack) explain the concept of positive externalities. The book describes the principal-agent problem via the problems of corporate accounting and financial fraud. The idea of minimum efficient scale is applied to ready-mix concrete plants and assembly plants for large commercial airplanes. The difference in adult and child pricing for tickets to a ballgame compared to the pricing at the concession stands illustrates the concept of price discrimination. The aggregate demand model is applied to specific periods of inflation and recession, while the trade theory discussion touches on the issue of the offshoring of U.S. jobs. These and many other applications clearly demonstrate to beginning students the relevance and usefulness of mastering the basic economic principles and models.

Applications covering rising gasoline prices, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, and the financial crisis have been added to this edition.

• Photo Ops

Photo sets called Photo Ops are included throughout the book to add visual interest, break up the density, and highlight important distinctions. Just a few of the many examples are sets of photos on complements versus substitutes in consumption, homogeneous versus differentiated products, economic stocks versus economic flows, substitute resources versus complementary resources, consumer durables versus nondurables versus services, and intermediate versus final goods.

Photo Ops on traffic congestion and holiday lighting contrast negative and positive externalities, large and small-scale production activities illustrate economies and diseconomies of scale, and Social Security checks and food stamps highlight the differences between social insurance and public assistance.

• Web Buttons
  
  We link the book directly to our Web site, www.brue3e.com, via icons that appear throughout the book to indicate that additional content on a subject can be found online. There are three Button types:
• The teal rectangle directs students to Interactive Graphs. Developed under the supervision of Norris Peterson of Pacific Lutheran University, this interactive feature depicts major graphs and instructs students to shift the curves, observe the outcomes, and derive relevant generalizations. This hands-on graph work will greatly reinforce the main graphs and their meaning.
• The green rectangle directs students to Origins of the Idea. These brief histories, written by Randy Grant of Linfield College (OR), examine the origins of scores of major ideas identified in the book. Students will find it interesting to learn about the economists who first developed such ideas as opportunity costs, equilibrium price, creative destruction, comparative advantage, and elasticity.
• The blue rectangle is our Web button that directs students to Worked Problems. Written by Norris Peterson, these pieces consist of side-by-side computational questions and computational procedures used to derive the answers. From a student perspective, they provide "cookbook" help for problem solving.



• Global Snapshots




Global Snapshot pieces show bar charts and line graphs that compare data for a particular year or other time period among selected nations. Examples of lists and comparisons include income per capita, the world's 10 largest corporations, the world's top brand names, standardized budget deficits or surpluses, the index of economic freedom, sizes of underground economies, rates of economic growth, exports as percentages of GDP, and so forth. These Global Snapshots join other significant international content to help convey that the United States operates in a global economy.