MBA Students and Math

27 September 2006 at 11:17 am Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

My friend and former colleague Dwight Lee, along with Richard McKenzie, has produced a new textbook, Microeconomics for MBAs: The Economic Way of Thinking for Managers (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Lee and McKenzie have written more books than I’ve read (or colored) and, like all their books, Microeconomics for Managers is a delight — lively and engaging while also systematic, learned, and useful. I’ve been using Brickley, Smith, and Zimmerman’s Managerial Economics and Organizational Architecture for several years and have been quite satisfied, but am considering switching to McKenzie and Lee.

I noticed this plug in the dust-jacket blurb: “This is the first textbook in microeconomics written exclusively for MBA students. McKenzie/Lee minimizes attention to mathematics and maximizes attention to intuitive economic thinking.” I’ve taught undergraduates, MBAs, and PhD students, and haven’t noticed MBA students being more troubled by math than anyone else. Clearly many managerial economics texts, at any level, overemphasize technique over intuition and application. But many MBAs — especially those with an engineering background, which seems to be an increasing number — may actually prefer more math to less. Just a thought.