Economy, Society, and Public Policy

by CORE Team

In order to be well-governed, a democracy needs voters who are fluent in the language of economics and who can do some quantitative analysis of social and economic policy. We also need a well-trained cadre of researchers and journalists who have more advanced skills in these fields.

Many students in other disciplines are drawn to economics so that they can engage with policy debates on environmental sustainability, inequality, the future of work, financial instability, and innovation. But, when they begin the study of economics, they find that courses appear to have little to do with these pressing policy matters, and are designed primarily for students who want to study the subject as their major, or even for those destined to go on to post-graduate study in the field.

The result: policy-oriented students often find they have to choose between a quantitative and analytical course of study - economics - that is only minimally policy oriented in content and that downplays the insights of other disciplines, or a policy and problem-oriented course of study that gives them little training in modelling or quantitative scientific methods.

Economy, Society, and Public Policy changes this.

It has been created specifically for students from social science, public policy, business studies, engineering, biology, and other disciplines who are not economics majors. If you are one of these students, we want to engage, challenge, and empower you with an understanding of economics. We hope you will acquire the tools to articulate reasoned views on pressing policy problems. You may even decide to take more courses in economics as a result.

The book is also being used successfully in courses for economics, business, and public policy majors, as well as in economics modules for masters' courses in Public Policy and in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).

This textbook--the print complement to CORE's open-access online eBook--is the result of a worldwide collaboration among researchers, educators, and students who are committed to bringing the socially relevant insights of economics to a broader audience.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction

632 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2019

Reviews

[Vildís Harpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mjög góðar og ýtarlegar útskýringar. Útskýrir eins og maður sé 5ára (á góðan hátt)
Vakti hagfræði áhuga :O

Mæli með ef þig langar að skilja stjórnmála hagfræði

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for the NPR Marketplace book club - such a fun project! There’s so much I don’t know about economics; this was a good place to start.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a free economics textbook I read this as part of NPR's Marketplace. I've read a couple economic textbooks in the past (I think both were by Mankiw), and I really liked the perspective of this book. It didn't assume people had only economic motivations, and it didn't assume markets were the right solution to every problem. I guess it's more of a public policy book rather than macro or micro econ. CORE has a longer book that may be more like the supply-and-demand curve economics book I'm familiar with.

Throughout this book, there is an emphasis on determining the problems markets solve and those they don't. It also talks a lot about power relationships that constrain people's choices. Each chapter starts with a real-world example, such as pirates' rules for dividing up loot or public bargaining around the use of the pesticide chlordecone in Martinique. If you want an introduction to game theory, this book is useful for thinking about how people are incentivized to act given specific constraints. I also finally understand how banks work.

[Martin Lábaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope for Slovak translation in 2023 available online and in Goodreads library.