People have different preferences for performing entrepreneurial activities. These differences can be influenced by actions of the state. Special attention is paid to examine the individual behavior in choosing employed work or entrepreneurial activities. Individual supply of entrepreneurial...

This paper discusses causal inference techniques for social scientists through the lens of applied microeconomics. We frame causal inference using the standard of the ideal experiment, emphasizing problems of omitted variable bias and reverse causality. We explore how laboratory and field...

I argue that there exists a coherent and relevant tradition in economic thought that I label "price theory". I define it as neoclassical microeconomic analysis that reduces rich and often incompletely-specified models into "prices" (approximately) sufficient to characterize solutions to simple...

It is now a commonplace to include a discussion of the Coase theorem in one's intermediate microeconomics textbook, generally in a chapter devoted to externalities or externalities and public goods. But this was not always the case. As the present paper demonstrates, it took nearly two decades...

Classroom experiments as a teaching tool increase understanding and especially motivation. Traditionally, experiments have been run using pen-and-paper or in a computer lab. Pen-and-paper is time and resource consuming. Experiments in the lab require appropriate installations and impede the...

Classes in microeconomics typically use cubic cost functions because they can exhibit marginal costs that fall as output increases to some efficient level, and then rise thereafter. Cubic cost functions embody economies of scale, making it easy to illustrate that concept with quadratic average...

This paper discusses the ways by which a certain type of behavioral deviation from expected utility theory has been handled by psychologists and economists. With respect to the historical background of decision theory in economics, it is argued that there are good reasons for more theoretical...

This paper takes up the matter of quality choice in undergraduate microeconomics and is divided into two sections. The first develops a conceptual framework underlying a linear demand structure for quality-differentiated goods. The second section incorporates a quality-differentiated demand...

This is the front matter from a book of interviews to be published by Blackwell. The book is coedited by W. A. Barnett and P. A. Samuelson. The front matter includes the Table of Contents, Coeditor Preface by W. A. Barnett, Coeditor Foreword by Paul A. Samuelson, and History of Thought...

William Vickrey, Nobel Laureate in 1996, made many significant contributions to economics. Paradoxically, his work can be considered both as the epitome of orthodoxy and as profoundly heterodox. This article reviews some of Vickrey’s major writings in fields as varied as the macroeconomics of...