To coincide with the release of The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, I’m working on updates of a (free!) companion micro textbook. Here is the latest version (version 5.01) of the textbook: basic and with calculus.
Both versions have chapters that line up with the chapters of The Cartoon Introduction, with follow-up supplemental chapters on inflation, sequential-move-games, etc. Compared to previous versions of this textbook, I’ve also improved the Q&A at the end of each chapter, e.g., you can now easily click back and forth between each Q and the corresponding A.
Please let me know if you’re using the book, and definitely let me know if you find any mistakes!
I’m in PB AF 516!!
On Pg. 17 of the basic book it states: “Comparing the items in the various payoff boxes, we can see that some are in all the payoff boxes and some are not.” However, there appear to be no “items” in figure 2.1′s boxes. Is this referring to a separate diagram or is this figure possibly missing some detail?
I love your website – and started reading the micro textbook – had a question early on – one of the concepts that I found most insightful when I was working towards my degree in econ some 40 years ago was Simon’s idea of “satisficing” vs. “optimizing”. I have felt for years that economists would be wise to incorporate this idea into their work – along with more agency and game theory concepts. Your thoughts?
Agreed, but the question is how. This is what behavioral economists are busy working on. And it’s worth noting that the optimizing model works quite well in a large number of situations. You might also enjoy the discussion of this in the last chapter of my forthcoming cartoon book. (Sorry for the shameless plug, but it’s true :)
OK – I will pre-order :-)
My gut is that the optimizing model works fine – unless the buyer decides he will “settle” for a satisficing outcome – and the problem is he/she does so without telling us in advance which “behavior” he/she prefers.
I am a marketing PhD student and have read a good bit of agency theory stuff – some game theory – any suggestions on how to get better grounded in behavioral economics?