Francesc Trillas is an Assistant Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He’s currently working with the economics department of the Catalan government. He also runs a blog on politics and economics, where he has frequently praised the CORE initiative and edited a unit of CORE’s latest Spanish language ebook La economía 2.0: microeconomía. We caught up with Francesc for a chat about his work and his views on CORE.
Hi Francesc, thank you for joining us. I understand you have been teaching economics in Spain for many years and have recently moved into a government role. Please tell us a little about your background and your role with the government.
I had been teaching economics for 22 years, most recently at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Prior to this, I was a research fellow at the London Business School and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. One year ago, I started a new role as Secretary of Economic Affairs and European Funds at the Ministry of Economics and Finance in the Catalan Government. When I finish here, I will go back to teaching.
My role here mainly is to provide ideas, and a lot of my work is about connecting the executive role of the regional government with academic research to support evidence-based policy creation.
How did you originally discover the CORE project?
I knew Sam Bowles. When I heard that he was involved in a big project to renew the teaching of economics at the introductory level, I was very excited. I introduced it in my courses around five or six years ago. I have been a big promoter of CORE in Spain ever since.
What do you like about CORE’s The Economy?
Since CORE is built around online materials, it’s easy to update. I remember during the COVID pandemic, very quickly materials about contagion and pandemics were developed, which was great. CORE’s focus on issues like inequality and climate change makes it relevant today, and it addresses critics of economics without pandering to them.
You have argued that economics education needs to be improved. Why do you think this is?
It needs improving at least for two reasons. First, because traditional textbooks do not provide tools with sufficient depth to explain important phenomena that students experience, such as severe economic shocks (the global financial crisis or COVID), inequality or climate change. Second, because, probably due to inertia, teaching materials and curricula do not sufficiently reflect important advances in the profession in the recent decades, such as game theory or the study of poverty and inequality, as well as progress in empirical methods and techniques (experiments and the “credibility revolution” in econometrics).
How do you see CORE addressing this?
As Steven Durlauf and Wendy Carlin have pointed out in their recent conversation in the Inequality Podcast, CORE does a great job at integrating these contemporary pressing concerns, starting with inequality, by using theoretical and empirical insights that reflect recent advances in economics and social sciences. It is an answer to the critics of traditional materials that keeps high standards and that practices pluralism by integration instead of pluralism of ideas by juxtaposition or confrontation. Showing perfect competition as a special case and not as the general case makes it easier to study phenomena such as crises or inequality. Doing all this by providing the materials for free to students is a great contribution.
You were one of the editors of the recently published Spanish edition of The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics. Why is the Spanish edition so important?
Many universities around the world use their local languages. Spanish is spoken in Spain, Mexico, and Latin America, so it was very important to have a Spanish edition, especially at the introductory level. When people graduate, perhaps they move into English, but undergraduate studies are often still in local languages. People are very excited about CORE in Latin America and Spain, so it’s great we have a Spanish edition.
Were there challenges in accurately translating economic concepts?
The main challenge was addressing small discrepancies between Spanish in Spain and Spanish in Latin America. The main editors Antonio Cabrales and Humberto Llavador are, like me, from Spain but the others – Luz Marina Arias and Juan Camilo Cardenas – are from Latin America. We worked together to agree on certain words to make sure they made sense to students from both areas. The final result is very professional; I think it’s excellent.
Francesc, thank you so much. It was great talking to you. We wish you all the best for your time with the Catalan government.
Thanks also to our translators, José Izquierdo and Dulcinea Otero-Piñeiro.
La economía 2.0: microeconomía is available now on the CORE website.
Visit Francesc’s blog Real Progress, where he praises CORE for providing a better introduction to economics.
