Microeconomics for Public Decisions is a revision of the Apgar/Brown Microeconomics for Public Policy text. It was revised after conducting interviews with students and former students (now practitioners), and asking them what economic concepts and methods they use most frequently in their jobs. Microeconomics for Public Decisions is designed to focus on essential principles and analytical techniques for making decision that affect the public interest. It blends theory with applications and discussions so students will understand how and why microeconomics is important, how to perform economic analyses, and how to evaluate economic analyses performed by others.

Fourth Edition

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.

The origin of this work is to be found in the cyclostyled course on 'The optimal allocation of resources in the firm and in the Nation' taught by Mr Boiteux at the Centre d'Etudes des Programmes Economiques (C. E. P. E. ), Paris from 1957 to 1960. Of course, several successive later rewritings and a great many additions have profoundly altered the initial version: starting from a remarkably clear and concise exposition of eco nomic theory, we have ended with a book that is several hundred pages long. It is not at all certain that Mr Boiteux would recognise this intellec tual sponsorship. Nor is it certain that the gain in information justifies such an increase in size. However that may be, the initial plan has survived. Without Mr Boiteux this book would never have been undertaken: it is a pleasant duty for us respectfully to acknowledge our debt to him here. Microeconomic analysis, that is to say that analysis which results from the study of the behaviour and activities of individual decision-units, was for a long time the main concern of the neo-classicists. Quite recently the introduction of macroeconomic theory, dealing with aggregate quan tities, seemed to relegate it to second place. But this is not where it belongs: we tend to agree with Mr Raymond Barre that there are "two different scales of analysis that complement rather than contrast with one another".

Micro economics is the study of individuals, households and firms' behavior in decision making and allocation of resources. It generally applies to markets of goods and services and deals with individual and economic issues. Micro economics stresses the relevance and application of microeconomic theory to decision making in both managerial and public policy. The book also provides a comprehensive treatment of Econometrics and Pricing Policies in Practice in its suit the needs of decision makers, whether associated with managerial decision making in the corporate world or pursuing management courses in various institutions. The coverage of the book also incorporates the dramatic changes that have occurred in this field in recent years, and the lucid exposition makes the text clear and accessible as well as lively and engaging. It is a student-friendly and teacher-friendly book.