Supply and Demand

Economics for Business and Management by Alec Chrystal and Richard Lipsey is a concise introductory economics textbook which has been carefully crafted to meet the needs of business studies and management students. Developed using the authors' highly successful Introduction to Positive Economics as a starting point, the authors have carefully selected essential material, added new coverage, and taken the opportunity to make the text even clearer. The text draws upon Alec Chrystal's extensive experience of teaching economics to management students at City University Business School, London. With the intended readership in mind, the greater part of the text focuses upon microeconomics, including the theory of the firm, consumers and markets, market structures, and the economics of business organizations. Business and management students will also find the text's coverage of the economics of employment and investment particularly helpful. The macroeconomics included has also been chosen to be of maximum benefit to management students, focusing on business cycles and the macroeconomic factors which affect firms (such as inflation and employment), and the balance of payments and exchange rates. Economics for Business and Management includes case studies and case examples which are essential for understanding the business context of economics. Other learning aids include chapter introductions, chapter summaries, topics for review, and end of chapter questions.

Kirchhoff blends economics, business, and governemnt policy to demonstrate that entrepreneurship's role in business formation and growth energizes and maintains the viability of capitalism. Entrepreneurs convert new ideas into marketable products and services and use these to grab market shares from older, established firms. This process not only produces economic growth, but also redistributes resources so as to assure equitable distribution within society. Acknowledging that this perception is descriptive but lacks predictive power, Kirchhoff offers a typology to assist in predictive theory building and to guide government policy development.

Here at last is a citizen's guide to economics -- a book for those who want to understand how their country's economy works but have no interest in graphs, jargon, or equations. Thomas Sowell reveals the general principles behind any kind of economy -- capitalist, socialist, feudal, or otherwise. In readable language, he helps the reader critique economic policies in terms of the incentives they create rather than the goals they proclaim. With clear explanations of the entire field, from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments, this is the first book for anyone who wishes to understand how the economy really functions.

Medicine and business management share certain similarities, writes John Kay. For centuries, the theories behind medical practice were mostly nonsense. Doctors simply applied fashionable nostrums, bleeding one patient, starving another, and sometimes the patient got better, sometimes not. The prestige of a doctor rested more on the social rank of his patients and the confidence of his assertions than on the evidence of his cures. Much the same can be said of present-day management gurus. But there is one difference between medicine and management, Kay adds. In the last 100 years, medicine has been transformed by science. Management has not. In The Business of Economics, Kay argues that it is economics that can provide the science that management presently lacks, that economics is the natural backbone of business management. In the many insightful and lively pieces collected here, Kay looks at the application of economics to the central strategic issues facing firms--their choice of activities and markets. He is particularly interested in microeconomics, the study of markets, industries, and firms, and is on the other hand highly critical of macroeconomics, economic modeling, and economic forecasting (which he says is inevitably wrong). He is especially illuminating on the recently developed resource-based theory of strategy, which attempts to explain the success or failure of a firm in terms of its "distinctive capabilities" (the factors which differentiate them from others in the same market and which cannot be easily reproduced by competitors even when recognized.) For instance, BMW's highly skilled work force, due to Germany's high level of general education, is hard to reproduce by competitors in other countries. Kay shows how BMW exploited its highly skilled labor force (opposed to low-wage foreign workers or robots found in many other auto plants) to get a large share of the market for up-scale, high-performance cars. Among the many other topics discussed in this idea-rich book are Saatchi & Saatchi's dismal attempt to globalize in the 1980s, Honda's great success selling low-end motorcycles in the U.S., the fare of the Eurotunnel, and the reason why race-car driver Nigel Mansell makes seventy-five times as much money a year as Britain's Prime Minister, John Major. Described in Business Age as the "most important business analyst in Britain bar none," John Kay is renowned for his incisive, entertaining, and controversial columns in the Financial Times of London. In addition, he is a regular commentator on radio and TV, and is in much demand as a speaker and consultant. In The Business of Economics, he shares his thoughts on a wide range of issues facing businesses today. His clear and down-to-earth writing style informs, challenges, and entertains, and his rigorous and clever analysis of the corporate world offers insights into the business problems and decisions faced by executives and managers every day.

Noted economist Douglas Vickers reexamines the relationship between economics and moral philosophy. That relationship, once very strong, is again the subject of increasing attention and discussion both within and beyond the academy. Vickers reestablishes the substantial bridges between ethical philosophy and economics. He addresses three main issues: first, the historical means by which economics has consciously surrendered its original association with ethical categories and criteria; second, the need to articulate the appropriate thoughtforms and vocabulary of ethical theory; and third, the illustration of areas in economics where ethical awareness is desirable and should be allowed to exert influence. This work is a major analysis which will be of considerable interest to economists, the business community, government regulators, and all concerned with economic decisionmaking in modern society.

Historians of economic thought traditionally summarize, critique, and trace the development of existing theory. History of thought literature provides information about the authors, chronology, and relative importance of influential works. Generally missing from the literature, however, are answers to questions about why economic theory exists in its current form: Why have economists chosen the theories they have to represent the discipline's formal content? What are the criteria that determine the value of a theory, or of research in general; and, how have these criteria changed over time? In this insightful and well-written work, Christopher Mackie analyzes how ideas and theories are accepted in economics, from the pre-publication phase to the point at which, once written, a theory enters the accepted body of professional literature. Drawing from economics, the history of science, and philosophy, Mackie shows how both empirical and non-empirical criteria determine how theory will actually evolve.

The theory of antimarket behavior proposes that economic behavior to escape or control market competition is a normal part of free enterprise. The most common state of economic competition in the modern economy reflects both market and antimarket forces. A better general economic model must include these dynamics, and normative economics must recognize the welfare implications of innovation and variety engendered by the ability to escape market forces. The theory of antimarket economics is supported with evidence from current events, expectations and information theory, public choice, and institutional, environmental and other economic fields.