"For decades, the ""principles of economics"" book has been expected to codify the entire discipline of economics. In recent years, this has become at once more difficult and more imperative. The explosion of echiomic knowledge has made it impossible to put all of economics between the covers. But at the same time, more and more public policy issues either are basically economic in nature of involve important economic considerations. Intelligent citizens can no longer afford to be innocent of economics.
The preparation of this Fourth Edition continued to be guided by this di lemma. We have studiously avoided the encyclopedic approach and abandoned the fiction, so popular among textbook writers, that literally everything is of the utmost importance. Since students are sufficiently intelligent to see through this ruse in any event, we have tried to highlight those important ideas that are likely to be of lasting significance-principles that you will want to remember long after the course is over because they offer insights that are far from obvious, because they are of practical importance, and because they are widely misunderstood by intelligent laymen. A dozen of the most important of these ideas have been selected as 12 Ideas for Beyond the Final Exam and are called to your attention when they occur through the use of the book's logo."