Reddit reviews Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach (Eighth Edition)

Intermediate Microeconomics by Hal Varian was quite useful for a course I took.

You're very welcome. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. These would be a good start

Varian on Micro

Dixit on Optimization

Dixit on Game Theory
Romer on Macro e.g. Solow, ISLM, MF, RCK, etc


Schaum's Outline to Math


Mises on Human Action


Alchian on Micro


Hirshleifers on Price Theory

Learner on Macro

I assume you went through this?

In that case, you could just jump to the next Varian book which, if I remember correctly, is more advanced.

I reckon it beats going full MWG. Though, if you want to do that, be my guest.

Intermediate Microeconomics, 8e by Varian

I dug up the schedule from the syllabus. The content shouldn't change much from professor to professor.

To me, the most important was chapter 4. Everything before it built up to it, almost everything after it was a spin-off of the material.

Tests were 50% MC, 50% free response. The questions were 90% concept-based math and equations, 10% definition-based questions. I found this in my Econ 10A folder; unfortunately I didn't save any other practice sets. Your experience may vary.

I'll have to agree with /u/MistaPickle that quite a few econ majors struggle with the math concepts. I am a stats major, math minor and I found the calculus in this class pretty chill but the econ graduate TAs struggled with it, and even the professor toned down the math explanations. I found that this hurt the learning experience. If you have trouble with it, I'd suggest going to CLAS sessions with Ed.

Those wouldn't be recommend I'd say Varian would be a gratifying challenge. Completing all the exercises in this book will leave you with a great understanding of microeconomics. Knowing calculus, in particular, knowing how to find minima and maxima of a function, helps a lot.

http://www.amazon.com/Intermediate-Microeconomics-Modern-Approach-Edition/dp/0393934241

MWG is the bible of microeconomics, but it's almost entirely unreadable. If you want a step up from Mankiw I'd start with Blanchard's Macroeconomics and Varian's Intermediate Microeconomics. These are the books I use when I teach intermediate macro/micro. The math is straight-forward (nothing beyond calculus), but you're going to be swimming in MWG or Stockey and Lucas unless you have the fundamentals down first.

You'll probably get bored if you just try to 'learn' a textbook. If I were you I'd subscribe to the economist. If you read 3 or 4 issues comprehensively you should begin to understand how things work. Then you can decide if you're still interested enough to learn the theory.

p.s This assumes you're interested in macro, if it's micro then there's no substitute for a textbook. If you're maths is up to it and you don't get bored easily then http://www.amazon.com/Intermediate-Microeconomics-Modern-Approach-Eighth/dp/0393934241/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302690035&sr=1-1