We wanted to provide more materials for professors who wanted them without bogging down those that didn’t. In-text "Web Buttons" allow for more instructor flexibility. These small icons appear throughout the text, indicating additional information on a related subject can be found at our Web site auth.mhhe.com/economics/mcconnellmacro15e/. Instructors can choose to assign all or none of the materials. Types of Web Buttons include:

• The symbol directs students to Analogies, Anecdotes, and Insights. These 50 short pieces, written by Stan Brue, help students understand and remember economic ideas by connecting them to other better-known ideas or easy-to-remember stories and examples.
• The symbol directs students to Origins of the Idea. These brief histories were written by Randy Grant of Linfield College and examine the origins of 68 major ideas identified in the book. Students can learn about the person who first developed such ideas as opportunity costs, equilibrium price, the multiplier, comparative advantage, and elasticity.
• The symbol directs students to Interactive Graphs. Developed under the supervision of Norris Peterson of Pacific Lutheran University, these Java applets depict major graphs and instruct students to shift the curves, observe the outcomes, and derive relevant generalizations.

Although most students in the principles course have only modest math skills, a few have taken advanced high school or college courses in mathematics. For the latter group, seeing the algebra and, in a few cases, the calculus behind the economics is highly revealing and useful. Professor Norris Peterson of Pacific Lutheran University has created a Web feature called Do You Want to See the Math? There are 50 math notes that are keyed to the page numbers in the book. They are creative, concise, and will enhance the economics experience for math-minded students.

About one-fourth of the Last Words are new and others have been revised and updated. The new topics include the remarkable organizational ability of markets (Chapter 4); the sources of the data used to construct the GDP accounts (Chapter 7); Say’s Law, the Great Depression, and Keynes (Chapter 9); the diminished impact of oil prices (Chapter 16); some pleasant side-effects of the New Economy (Chapter 17); debt reduction and the U.S. trade deficit (Chapter 18); the Taylor monetary rule (Chapter 19).

The completely updated and revised chapter "Economies in Transition: Russia and China" is available for free use at our Web site. It contains all the features of regular chapters, is readable in Adobe format, and can be printed or read on-screen. Moreover, those who assign this bonus chapter will have a full complement of book supplements to aid in study and testing.

A majority of chapter openers were rewritten for a quicker jump into topics and the entire book was edited with an eye toward cutting extraneous words. Our efforts resulted not only in a shorter book, but in more efficient organization and greater clarity in many places. An example is Chapter 4, which is both shorter and better organized than before. You will find similar kinds of improvements throughout the fifteenth edition. Where needed, of course, the "extra sentence of explanation" remains a distinguishing characteristic of Macroeconomics. Brevity at the expense of clarity is a false economy.

• Part 1. Chapter 1: Changed terminology from material wants to economic wants; revised discussion of economic methodology, focusing on the scientific method. Chapter 2: Reorganized section on applications; greatly consolidated section on economic systems. Chapter 3: Several new examples including increased demand for coffee drinks, soy-enhanced hamburger as an inferior good, increased supply of Internet service provision. Chapter 4: New chapter title and introduction; revised section on competition to generalize beyond pure competition; consolidation of the Five Fundamental Questions to Four, with discussion explicitly organized around each; briefer chapter. Chapter 5: New chapter title; new terminology: "horizontally organized firms," "vertically integrated firms," and "conglomerates"; new Figure 5-7 on government spending; Chapter 6: New Figure 6-3 showing the types of international flows (trade flows, resource flows, information and technology flows, and money flows); new discussion of the euro; expanded discussion of the WTO.

• Part 2. Chapter 7: briefer introduction; improved explanation of inventory changes as investment; revised discussion of government purchases to reflect the consumption and gross investment portions as now accounted for in GDP. Chapter 8: Revised Global Perspective 8-1 to show comparable growth rates since 1990, as well as since 1950; reorganized discussion of the unemployment section; Table 8-3 now includes unemployment rates for Hispanics; new Figure 8-4 shows inflation rates over the years rather than tracing out the CPI; revised discussion of redistribution and output effects of inflation. Chapter 9: Moved the section on the historical backdrop to the aggregate expenditures model to a new Last Word (Say’s Law, the Great Depression, and Keynes); simplified terminology and discussion of the role of inventory changes in achieving equilibrium; fuller discussion of the wealth effect. Chapter 10: Consolidated the application on the Great Depression and added a new application on recession in Japan during the late 1990s. Chapter 11: Discussion of changes in AD and AS are now organized around specific macro outcomes; new section on simultaneous full employment, strong growth, and price stability; deleted discussion of the ratchet effect. Chapter 12: New Figure 12-4 and a greatly revised and simplified discussion of the full employment budget and the method of evaluating whether fiscal policy is neutral, contractionary, or expansionary.

• Part 3. Chapter 13: The section on "Recent Developments" now stresses consolidation among banks, the convergence of services among financial institutions, and electronic transactions. Chapter 14: Changed terminology from demand deposits to checkable deposits. Chapter 15: Deleted peripheral content; demand-deposit multiplier is now checkable deposit multiplier; new discussion of the ineffectiveness of expansionary monetary policy in Japan.

• Part 4. Chapter 16: Significantly revised and condensed section on the inflation-unemployment relationship; consolidated discussion of supply-side economics. Chapter 17: New Figure 17-3 links shifts in the production possibilities curve and the long-run AS curve; replaced the discussion of the productivity slowdown with a new section on productivity growth and the New Economy; new Figure 17-7 compares trend productivity growth between 1973-1995 and 1995-2000; new Global Perspective 17-2 shows growth competitiveness rankings of countries; brought the material on "Is growth desirable?" from the Last Word of the prior edition to the body in this edition. Chapter 18: New discussion of budget surpluses and policy options for using them; new Figure 18-4 shows the rising percentage of the U. S. population over 65. Chapter 19: New discussion of the Taylor monetary rule.

• Part 5. Chapter 20: Shortened this chapter; replaced the discussion of U. S. trade policy with a section on the WTO. Chapter 21: Eliminated the balance sheets in explaining the financing of export and import transactions; updated the discussion of the managed floating system in view of significant bailouts by the IMF and currency interventions by major countries; updated discussion of U.S. trade deficits. Chapter 22: New Figure 22-2 on projected population growth; new Global Perspective 22-1 showing data from Transparency International’s corruption index; new discussion on debt forgiveness.