Why CORE?

Transcript
---

Hi, I’m Antonio Cabrales, professor of economics at the University Carlos III of Madrid, and one of the CORE authors. 

When starting the CORE project, we agreed that a radically different textbook was needed for a first course in economics, which would examine the pressing challenges facing society. 
Our main textbook, The Economy, uses the best of current economics to show how the economy really works now, and how it could be made to work better.  
Here are the crucial problems students think economists today should be addressing - inequality, climate change and sustainability, the future of work and unemployment, instability and globalization, and now, pandemics.
Learning economics using CORE, students see models that fit the world they live in and can help them to answer the questions that motivated them to take up economics. 
It’s by using the developments in economics of the past 30 years that CORE helps students build the tools they can then use to better understand these problems.
We aim to transform economics education by moving away from the idea of self-correcting markets, to one that seeks to understand why markets do not always deliver the outcome we all want. 

CORE turns conventional teaching on its head.
In our approach, the conventional pedagogy, where the model is derived first and an example to illustrate it (often a trivial one such as the choice between pizza and beer) is supplied second, is flipped on its head. 
Each unit begins with a complex, historical or current real world problem, and then teaches the tools of economics that contribute to an answer.
The course begins with the puzzle of how after centuries during which living standards remained unchanged, continuous growth took off. What prompted a process of continuous innovation? Who benefited? And how were the rewards shared? 
Right from the beginning, students see how - by using models and data - economics enables them to understand how the world works and to debate issues of societal importance.  
When economics is rooted in a world where people are more complex than homo economicus, insights from other disciplines are essential. CORE brings in lessons from history, psychology, sociology and political science. 
In summary, CORE aims to improve the experience of economics for both instructors and learners, with a problem-motivated and interactive approach that uses modern economics to address the challenges of today’s world.