Coverage and Scope

AP^® Microeconomics was developed through a strong collaboration among expert high school faculty, experienced editors, and higher education instructors and researchers in economics. Specifically, high school faculty and curriculum experts interpreted and applied the College Board’s AP^® Microeconomics framework, while content accuracy and pedagogy was verified by expert high school teachers and reviewers in higher education. The outcome is a balanced approach to microeconomics, to both Keynesian and classical views, and to the theory and application of economics concepts.

This book is intended to cover the entire breadth of economics topics at a depth that ensures manageability for instructors and students alike. In addition, many current topics have been incorporated to make the content applicable to modern times. New 2015 data are incorporated, such as the average U.S. household consumption in Chapter 2. For example, we hope students will be interested to know just how far-reaching the recent recession was (and still is), and why there is so much controversy even among economists over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The Keystone Pipeline, Occupy Wall Street, and minimum wage debates are just a few of the other important topics covered.

The book is organized into five main parts:

• What is Economics? The first two chapters introduce students to the study of economics with a focus on making choices in a world of scarce resources.
• Supply and Demand, Chapters 3 and 4, introduces and explains the first analytical model in economics: supply, demand, and equilibrium. It then shows applications in the markets for labor and finance.
• The Fundamentals of Microeconomic Theory, Chapters 5 through 10, begins the microeconomics portion of the text, presenting the theories of consumer behavior, production and costs, and the different models of market structure, including some simple game theory.
• Microeconomic Policy Issues, Chapters 11 through 18, covers the range of topics in applied microeconomics framed around the concepts of public goods and positive and negative externalities. Students explore competition and antitrust policies, environmental problems, poverty, income inequality, and other labor market issues. The text also covers information, risk and financial markets, and public economy.
• International Economics, Chapters 19 and 20, is the final part of the text and introduces the international dimensions of economics including international trade and protectionism.

Pedagogical Foundation

Throughout AP^® Microeconomics, you will find new features that engage the students in economic inquiry and take selected topics a step further beyond their traditional textbook explanation. Our features include the following:

• Bring It Home: This added feature is a brief case study, specific to each chapter, which connects the chapter’s main topic to the real word. It is broken up into two parts: the first at the beginning of the chapter (in the Intro module) and the second at chapter’s end, when students have learned what’s necessary to fully understand the case. In this way, these features “bring home” the chapter’s core concepts.
• Work It Out: This feature asks students to work through a generally analytical or computational problem and guides them step-by-step to find out how its solution is derived.
• Clear It Up: This boxed feature addresses common student misconceptions about the content. Clear It Ups are usually deeper explanations of something in the main body of the text. Each CIU starts with a question. The rest of the feature explains the answer.
• Link It Up: This feature is a very brief introduction to a website that is pertinent to students’ understanding and enjoyment of the topic at hand.

Questions for Each Level of Learning

AP^® Microeconomics offers four types of end-of-module questions for students.

• Review Questions: Designed for students to check their understanding, these are mostly recall or moderately rigorous analysis questions. The answers are included in the text.
• Self-Checks: Self-Check questions push the student to think a bit beyond what is said in the text. However, Self-Check questions are designed for formative (rather than summative) assessments, as the answers walk students through the approach and solution to the problem.
• Critical Thinking Questions: These higher-level, conceptual questions ask students to demonstrate their understanding by applying what they have learned in different contexts. They require reasoning about the concepts using outside-the-box thinking.
• Problems: These exercises give students additional practice working with the analytic and computational concepts in the module.

Scott Harris, Ronald Reagan High School, Northeast ISD

Scott Harris earned a Bachelor of Arts from Texas State University in 1990 and a M.Ed. from Lamar University. Mr. Harris has been nominated for the Trinity Distinguished Educator Award and for the Disney American Teacher Award. He has received the Mirabeau B. Lamar Award for Teaching Excellence and is the first in Texas and the third in the Nation to receive the Quality School Teacher award.

Charles Brownson, Austin High School, Fort Bend ISD

Charles Brownson teaches AP^® Macroeconomics and AP^® Microeconomics. He began teaching at Austin High School in 2004 and has been teaching in Fort Bend ISD since 1998. He has a Master's Degree in Education from Lamar University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Houston.

Rebecca Campbell, Spring Woods High School, Spring Branch ISD

Rebecca Campbell graduated from University of Mary Hardin Baylor with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Religion. She has been teaching for eight years, and her courses include Economics and AP^® Macroeconomics. Rebecca also coaches volleyball for the Spring Woods Tigers.

Disclaimer

This textbook may include links to news organizations or other websites that, in addition to the targeted article, also contain articles on a variety of topics, such as politics, medicine, entertainment, or religion.  Examples include Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Science Daily.  The sites are reputable and are widely used in educational settings.   The direct references and suggested readings are valuable to the educational goals of the course material.  However, some instructors, students, and parents/guardians may find such additional content objectionable; use of the materials is at the discretion of the instructor or district.