About

The most accessible Krugman/Wells text -- brief, modular, and better than ever in Achieve.

When it comes to learning fundamental economic principles, there are no better guides than Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and co-author, Robin Wells. Instead of typical chapters, this version of their text covers the basics of the course through a series of brief “modules,” each focused on a single topic and designed to be read comfortably in one sitting. Whether you’re taking economics as part of your major, as a general education requirement, or as an elective, this text (and it’s online component, SaplingPlus) will help you master the material and integrate economic understanding into your own life.

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Section 1: Basic Economic Concepts
Module 1: The Study of Economics
Module 2: Models and the Production Possibility Frontier
Module 3: Comparative Advantage and Trade
Module 4: The Circular Flow Diagram
Section 1A: Graphing Appendix

Section 2: Supply and Demand
Module 5: Demand
Module 6: Supply and Equilibrium
Module 7: Changes in Equilibrium

Section 3: Market Efficiency and Government Policy
Module 8: Consumer and Producer Surplus
Module 9: Efficiency and Markets
Module 10: Price Controls (Ceilings and Floors)

Section 4: Elasticity and Law of Demand
Module 11: Defining and Measuring Elasticity
Module 12: Interpreting Price Elasticity of Demand
Module 13: Other Elasticities
Module 14: The Benefits and Costs of Taxation

Section 5: International Trade
Module 15: Gains from Trade
Module 16: Supply, Demand, and International Trade

Section 6: Economics and Decision Making
Module 17: Making Decisions
Module 18: Behavioral Economics
Module 19: Maximizing Utility

Section 7: Production and Costs
Module 20: The Production Function
Module 21: Firm Costs
Module 22: Long-Run Costs and Economies of Scale

Section 8: Market Structure and Perfect Competition
Module 23: Introduction to Market Structure
Module 24: Perfect Competition
Module 25: Graphing Perfect Competition
Module 26: Long-Run Outcomes in Perfect Competition

Section 9: Monopoly
Module 27: Monopoly in Practice
Module 28: Monopoly and Public Policy
Module 29: Price Discrimination

Section 10: Oligopoly and Monopolistic Competition
Module 30: Oligopoly
Module 31: Game Theory
Module 32: Monopolistic Competition
Module 33: Product Differentiation and Advertising

Section 11: Market Failure and the Role of Government
Module 34: Externalities
Module 35: Externalities and Public Policy
Module 36: Public Goods and Common Resources

Section 12: Factor Markets and the Distribution of Income
Module 37: Factor Markets
Module 38: Marginal Productivity Theory
Module 39: The Market for Labor
Module 40: The Economics of the Welfare State

Authors

Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman, recipient of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, taught at Princeton University for 14 years. In 2015, he joined the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, associated with the Luxembourg Income Study, which tracks and analyzes income inequality around the world. He received his BA from Yale and his PhD from MIT. Before Princeton, he taught at Yale, Stanford, and MIT. He also spent a year on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers in 1982–1983. His research has included trailblazing work on international trade, economic geography, and currency crises. In 1991, Krugman received the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark medal. In addition to his teaching and academic research, Krugman writes extensively for nontechnical audiences. He is a regular op-ed columnist for the New York Times. His best-selling trade books include End This Depression Now!, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, a history of recent economic troubles and their implications for economic policy, and The Conscience of a Liberal, a study of the political economy of economic inequality and its relationship with political polarization from the Gilded Age to the present. His earlier books, Peddling Prosperity and The Age of Diminished Expectations, have become modern classics.

Robin Wells

Robin Wells was a lecturer and researcher in Economics at Princeton University, where she has taught undergraduate courses. She received her BA from the University of Chicago and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley; she then did her postdoctoral work at MIT. She has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), Stanford, and MIT.

The most accessible Krugman/Wells text, now in Achieve.