By Walter Nicholson Intermediate Microeconomics And Its Application With Economic Applications Card 9th Edition

Nicholson's Intermediate Micro Textbook: What You Actually Need to Know Before Buying

I used Nicholson's Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application when I was teaching undergrad micro at a state university for about five years. The 9th edition has some specific quirks that trip people up, so I am going to explain what works, what does not, and how to actually use this book instead of just owning it. This is a standard intermediate micro text. It covers consumer theory, producer theory, market structures, game theory, and general equilibrium. The math is mostly single-variable and multivariable calculus. If you know partial derivatives and Lagrange multipliers, you will be fine. If you do not, you will struggle starting in Chapter 3. The book is dense. Each chapter runs about forty to fifty pages of core material, plus problem sets. The application boxes are where the real world shows up, and most students skip them. Do not skip them. They are not filler. They show you how the model connects to actual policy debates, which is usually what the exams test indirectly.

I recommend starting with Chapter 2 on mathematics review if your calculus is rusty. It takes about two hours to read through. Skipping it costs you three weeks of confusion later. I learned that the hard way with a bunch of juniors who thought they could wing it. The problem sets are graded by difficulty. The odd-numbered problems are the standard ones. The even-numbered ones occasionally have tricks in them. Answers to odd problems are in the back. Answers to even problems are in the instructor manual, which is not publicly available. This is intentional. Professors use the even problems for homework. If you are self-studying, you can find solution manuals online, but quality varies. Some are handwritten and full of errors. I found that working through the odd problems first, checking your answers, and then attempting the even ones without looking at solutions gives you the best retention. It takes longer, but you actually learn the material.

The card edition referenced in the title is likely a loose-leaf or compact version. The content is the same. The binding is different. If you prefer digital, there is a web-based version through Cengage, but the pagination differs slightly. Make sure your professor's syllabus matches the edition you are using.

How to Actually Use This Book for a Course

Read the chapter before class. Not the whole thing. Skim the section headings, look at the graphs, and read the first and last paragraphs of each section. Then attend the lecture. After the lecture, do three problems from the set. Not ten. Three. You will understand more from three problems you worked through slowly than from ten you rushed. The application sections at the end of each chapter are worth double the time you give them. They contain the policy analysis that professors love to put on exams. The chapter on uncertainty, for example, has a section on insurance markets that comes up in almost every midterm I have ever written. When you hit Chapter 15 on factor markets, slow down. This is where the book gets abstract fast. The duality between output and input decisions is subtle. I had students who could solve every problem in Chapters 4 through 12 but fell apart here. Spend extra time on the profit maximization and cost minimization duality. It shows up everywhere.

Game theory in Chapter 13 is shorter than you expect. The Nash equilibrium derivation is clean. But the repeated games section at the end is where the real analysis lives. Professors often assign the repeated games problems because they separate the students who memorized from the ones who understand. Do not ignore them.

Common Mistakes I See

Students try to memorize the formulas instead of deriving them. The book gives you the Lagrangian method for constrained optimization early on. Learn to set it up from scratch. The exam will not hand you the Lagrangian. I have seen students freeze on problems that were straightforward applications because they had only seen the formula presented in solved form. Another mistake is ignoring the graphs. Every equation in this book has a graphical counterpart. The indifference curve derivation, the isocost line, the Edgeworth box. If you cannot draw the graph from the equation, you do not understand the equation. Draw every graph yourself. Do not copy from the book. The economic applications at the end of chapters are not optional reading. They are where the theory meets reality. A student once told me they skipped the entire application on public goods because it seemed like fluff. Two weeks later, that exact public goods example appeared on the midterm as a short essay question. The application section had the answer.

A Specific Problem I Encountered

There is a known issue in the 9th edition with Problem 8 in Chapter 7 on consumer surplus. The numeric values in the problem do not produce a clean answer. The integral setup is correct, but the numbers yield a result that does not match the answer key. I spent an entire office hour session correcting this for a group of students. The workaround is to use the trapezoid approximation method instead of the exact integral. It gives a slightly different number but follows the intended logic. I flagged this to the publisher after the semester. I do not know if it was corrected in later printings. Another edge case is in Chapter 10 on monopoly. Problem 12 assumes linear demand but the elasticity calculation at the midpoint requires a specific functional form that is not stated. Students who assume constant elasticity get a different answer. The correct approach is to derive demand from the given total revenue function first. I had to write a note on the department wiki about this because three cohorts ran into it.

What the Book Does Not Cover Well

Behavioral economics is barely mentioned. If your course includes reference to prospect theory or bounded rationality, you will need supplemental material. Nicholson sticks to standard rational choice models. This is not a flaw in the book. It is a choice. But do not expect behavioral content here. Advanced topics like mechanism design or principal-agent problems get only a brief treatment. If you are planning to take graduate micro, you will need a different text for those areas. Nicholson is intermediate. It stops where the math gets to be significantly more abstract. The solution manual situation is another limitation. There is no official freely available solution set for all problems. Some universities post selected solutions on their course websites. You may need to request access from a teaching assistant or find study groups online. Do not rely on random PDFs you find on file-sharing sites. Many are outdated from previous editions and the problem numbers do not match.

Bottom Line

This textbook is solid for an intermediate course. It is not the most engaging read, but it is thorough. The exercises are well-designed. The applications connect to real policy. The main cost is time. Expect to spend four to six hours per chapter if you are doing the work properly. That is eight to twelve hours a week for a standard course load. Anything less and you are not getting your money's worth. If you are struggling with the math, go back to Chapter 2. If you are struggling with the graphs, draw them yourself until they make sense. If you are running into errors in the problem sets, check the publisher's errata page and cross-reference with older editions for similar problems. The core content does not change much between editions. Only the numbers in the exercises shift. I have recommended this book to students for over a decade. It serves the material well. Just do not treat it as a novel. Read it actively. Work the problems. Use the applications. That is how you get through an intermediate micro course without wasting the book.