The Economy 2.0

The Economy 2.0, the rewrite of the 1.0 edition, will be available soon.


The first edition of The Economy was published in 2017. The world that the book attempts to explain with economics has evolved since then. Consequently, the tools we provide to students need to be updated, so that CORE Econ can continue in its mission to introduce students to what economists do now, and what we know.

Over the years, we received extensive feedback on The Economy 1.0 from committed instructors and learners. In addition, in 2020 we ran a survey of a broader group to better understand how The Economy could be improved to meet the teaching and learning needs of our users.

 

The Economy 2.0 retains CORE Econ’s distinguishing features:

  1. Content: Today’s economics for today’s problems. We use simple ideas from game theory, behavioral economics and constrained optimization to study the decisions of owners, entrepreneurs, employers, workers, customers and governments  – and how they interact. Inequality is embedded within the model because the interactions of the actors depend on the extent of their power and specific endowments. Sustainability and distributional concerns follow as straightforward applications of the models.
  2. Pedagogy: Students experience economics as a powerful tool they can wield to understand their world and the problems it faces. This approach develops economic intuition and an understanding of how economists learn from facts. It brings to the foreground market and government failures and how changes in the rules of the game (whether policies or institutions) affect efficiency, inequality and sustainability.
  3. It’s free for students and instructors: Instructors are supported with a full set of slides, games, step-by-step model-teaching videos, answers and test banks ready to go. Our open access digital-first content includes figures and data charts that students can manipulate, and instant-feedback review questions compatible with Moodle and Canvas, for ease of integration with instructors’ learning management systems.

 

Table of contents

The Economy 2.0 will be divided into a volume for microeconomics, available in May 2023, and a volume for macroeconomics available in December 2023.

Microeconomics – Actors, Institutions, and Outcomes will consist of the following units:

  • 1. Capitalist revolution: prosperity, inequality, and planetary limits
  • 2. Technology, specialisation, and comparative advantage
  • 3. Scarcity, work and choice
  • 4. Social interactions: game theory and experiments
  • 5. The rules of the game: how institutions distribute income and wealth
  • 6. Owners, managers and employees
  • 7. The firm and its customers: demand, costs and market power
  • 8. Supply and demand: markets with many buyers and sellers
  • 9. Lenders and Borrowers: wealth, time and interest rates
  • 10. Misallocation markets, and policies: the societal effects of private decisions

Macroeconomics – Employment, Growth, and Fluctuations in a small planet will consist of the following units:

  • 1. The supply side: unemployment, real wages, and inequality
  • 2. Aggregate demand and the multiplier
  • 3. Inflation, unemployment and the Phillips curve
  • 4. Monetary and fiscal policy
  • 5. Money, banks, and financial markets
  • 6. Systemic instability: financial and environmental
  • 7. Growth, technology and structural change
  • 8. Creative destruction and the future of work
  • 9. A century of growth, fluctuations and crises: applying the models
  • 10. The government as an economic actor

 

What will happen to The Economy 1.0?

The Economy 1.0 will continue to be available online after the 2.0 edition has been published, but it will no longer be updated. It was last updated on 31 March 2022, when:


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Last updated on 22 March 2023.