This book shows, from start to finish, how microeconomics can and should be used in the analysis of public policy problems. It is an exciting new way to learn microeconomics, motivated by its application to important, real-world issues. Lee Friedman's modern replacement for his influential 1984 work not only brings the issues addressed into the present but develops all intermediate microeconomic theory to make this book accessible to a much wider audience. Friedman offers the microeconomic tools necessary to understand policy analysis of a wide range of matters of public concern--including the recent California electricity crisis, welfare reform, public school finance, global warming, health insurance, day care, tax policies, college loans, and mass transit pricing. These issues are scrutinized through microeconomic models that identify policy strengths, weaknesses, and ideas for improvements. Each chapter begins with explanations of several fundamental microeconomic principles and then develops models that use and probe them in analyzing specific public policies. The book has two primary and complementary goals. One is to develop skills of economic policy analysis: to design, predict the effects of, and evaluate public policies. The other is to develop a deep understanding of microeconomics as an analytic tool for application--its strengths and extensions into such advanced techniques as general equilibrium models and pricing methods for natural monopolies and its weaknesses, such as behavioral inconsistencies with utility-maximization models and its limits in comparing institutional alternatives. The result is an invaluable professional and academic reference, one whose clear explanation of principles and analytic techniques, and wealth of constructive applications, will ensure it a prominent place not only on the bookshelves but also on the desks of students and professionals alike.

Evaluation Research and Decision Guidance is designed to help people make better judgments and decisions when trying to reform, cure, or instruct anyone whose behavior or ignorance is a problem to themselves or to others. It will help those who work with delinquents, criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill persons, or the educationally deficient, to help them become more capable, self-controlled, and law-abiding individuals. It is a "how to" book, a guide for anyone concerned with evaluating the effectiveness of programs, predicting case outcomes, or allocating resources.Glaser analyzes all types of evaluations. He shows how to define goals, measure the extent of their attainment, and assess costs in relation to benefits. He distinguishes routine from non-routine decision, tells how to predict outcomes more accurately in routine case prognoses, and how to estimate the probable consequences of alternative choices in unusual situations that occur infrequently. A chapter by Edna Erez discusses ethical and legal issues in program evaluation. Glaser's concluding chapter deals with how to institutionalize more rational policymaking.The author offers numerous examples of evaluations and decision analyses in criminal justice, addiction treatment, mental health, and educational agencies to show how scientific evaluation methods have been successfully employed. Written without technical jargon, this guidebook will be essential to the policymaker and the practitioner, the student and the teacher.