Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Allocation, Distribution, and Policy: Notes, Problems, and Solutions in Microeconomics
Samuel Bowles; Weikai Chen · Open Book Publishers · 2025
Microeconomics has been transformed in recent decades by the increasing use of game theory, behavioral economics, evolutionary modeling, network economics, mechanism design and attention to limited competition and asymmetric information. Bowles and Chen provide problem sets and exam questions (with carefully explained solutions) based on the new microeconomics, engaging learners with applications to income distribution, limited competition in goods and labor markets, climate change, and other public policy topics. Background notes explain the underlying concepts, their origin in the thinking of the great economists of the past, applications to macroeconomics, and relevant empirical evidence. This work provides a problem-based and policy oriented approach to teaching microeconomics, development, labor, environment, public economics and topics in business, management and public policy to upper level undergraduates, masters and doctoral students.
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Better Together: How We Build Economic, Political, And Environmental Sustainability
Fazil Acar · University of Leeds Open Books · 2025
This book explores how economic, political and environmental sustainability can be strengthened when individuals, institutions and societies work together. Part I traces the story of human progress, showing how freedom, innovation and shared prosperity have evolved side by side. Parts II and III examine how national economies and labour markets shape well-being, emphasising the importance of quality work, high-value production and fair opportunities. Part IV turns to money, finance and macro-economic policy, explaining how monetary systems, central banking and exchange-rate dynamics affect stability and equality. Part V extends this to global trade and investment, illustrating how economic interdependence requires political cooperation. Finally, Part VI focuses on sustainability itself, demonstrating why markets alone cannot safeguard the environment or social cohesion. Drawing on behavioural economics, institutional design and active citizenship, the book shows how integrated approaches can meet today’s most pressing challenges. Blending historical insight, economic theory and real-world examples, Better Together argues that we are strongest when we align our economic choices, political systems and environmental responsibilities. It offers an accessible and practical guide for students, policymakers and citizens seeking to build resilient, fair and sustainable societies.
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The London Consensus: Economic Principles for the 21st Century
Tim Besley; Irene Bucelli; Andrés Velasco · LSE Press · 2025
A generation ago, the so-called Washington Consensus laid out a series of dos and don’ts for policymakers around the world. Today, that vision is recognised as having fallen short in a number of ways – particularly in its neglect of the social and institutional factors that are indispensable for achieving sustained growth and for building fairer and more cohesive societies. The immense challenges humanity faces are easy to list: climate change, pandemics, social inequalities, the far-reaching effects of the tech revolution and AI, a fragmenting world economy, and a wave of populism and political polarisation that has undermined support for liberal democracy in many countries. It is much harder to identify a set of new ideas – and policies – that will solve these seemingly intractable global problems. In this new world, political leaders and policymakers need guidance and principles that can assist when choosing among policy alternatives. To this end, the editors of this volume convened over 50 of the world’s leading economists and policy experts at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The London Consensus: Economic Principles for the 21st Century is the result of these exchanges. It is not intended as a one-size-fits-all set of economic remedies, but an exercise in assembling the best available evidence and ideas to foster dialogue, and ultimately to develop a set of principles that can address the urgent political, social and economic tasks ahead.
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Economics for the Greater Good
Caroline Krafft · Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project · 2019
Economics for the Greater Good: An Introduction to Economic Thinking for Public Policy teaches the central concepts of economics through applications to global challenges and domestic public policy issues. Chapters tackle issues of hunger, homelessness, rent control, minimum wages, globalization and trade, crime, discrimination, poverty and anti-poverty programs, education, pollution, health care, social safety nets, and government spending. Both microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts are introduced, including production, markets, supply and demand, price controls, models of trade and trade restrictions, cost-benefit analysis, budget constraints, public goods, externalities, taxes and subsidies, and government budgets and debt. Each chapter presents evidence on a pressing social problem, introduces an economic model to help understand that problem, and discusses evidence on what programs and policies work to alleviate global challenges.
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A Practicum in Behavioral Economics
Arthur Caplan · UEN Digital Press
A Practicum in Behavioral Economics is a practice-based textbook covering the broad field of behavioral economics. Because behavioral economics is foremost a “test-and-learn” field of scientific inquiry that evolves according to experimental outcomes, so too should students test-and-learn. As such, the book’s primary goal is to help students experience behavioral economics through participation in the same experiments and games that serve as the foundations for, and shape the contours of, the field. With the help of this book students learn behavioral economics firsthand, and in the process create their own experiences. They learn about themselves – about how they make private and public choices under experimental conditions – at the same time as they learn about the field of behavioral economics itself.
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Economics for Life: Real World Financial Literacy
Donald Wargo · North Broad Press · 2023
America has evolved into an ownership society. Home-buying decisions, resource allocation, debt exposure, and financial planning for the future are now left to individuals, many of whom may lack the financial understanding to evaluate and make sound decisions. Economics, with its insistence on quantifying ideas and putting specific quantitative values on all manner of phenomena, can help sort through the questions. Economics for Life: Real-World Financial Literacy is designed to help soon-to-be college graduates start their "real lives" with a better understanding of how to analyze the financial decisions that they will soon have to make. Written in an easy-to-read, conversational style, this textbook will help students learn how to make decisions on saving and investing for retirement, buying a car, buying a home, as well as how to safely navigate the use of debit and credit cards. Donald T. Wargo is an Associate Professor of Instruction at Temple University. Prior to his teaching career, he held executive positions in a number of large real estate companies in the Philadelphia area, including vice president of finance and president. For fifteen of those years, he ran his own development company, Wargo Properties, Inc.
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Intermediate Microeconomics
Patrick Emerson · Oregon State University · 2019
Intermediate Microeconomics is a comprehensive microeconomic theory text that uses real world policy questions to motivate and illustrate the material in each chapter. Intermediate Microeconomics is an approachable yet rigorous textbook that covers the entire scope of traditional microeconomic theory and includes two mathematical approaches, allowing instructors to teach the material with or without calculus. With real-world policy topics as an entree into each subject, Intermediate Microeconomics will help students engage with the material and facilitate learning not only the concepts, but their importance and application as well.
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Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
Miliann Kang; Donovan Lessard; Laura Heston; Sonny Nordmarken · UMass Amherst · 2017
This textbook introduces key feminist concepts and analytical frameworks used in the interdisciplinary Women, Gender, Sexualities field. It unpacks the social construction of knowledge and categories of difference, processes and structures of power and inequality, with a focus on gendered labor in the global economy, and the historical development of feminist social movements. The book emphasizes feminist sociological approaches to analyzing structures of power, drawing heavily from empirical feminist research.
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Principles of Political Economy
Daniel Saros · Valparaiso University · 2019
This textbook is unique among economics textbooks. It contains many of the same topics as mainstream textbooks, but it includes and takes very seriously heterodox critiques and alternatives to the mainstream approach to economics. It includes a whole range of alternative theories, including Post-Keynesian, Austrian, Marxian, radical, feminist, institutionalist, and other approaches. The purpose is to teach students about alternative schools of economic thought but also to deepen their understanding of the dominant, neoclassical approach to economics. In this sense, it draws a great deal of inspiration from Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick’s Contending Economic Theories. Following Wolff and Resnick, an even broader objective is to teach students that economics is a discourse and that no single voice can rightfully claim to have a monopoly on the truth about economics.
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International Economics: Theory and Policy
Steve Suranovic · Saylor Foundation · 2012
This text strives to reach a median between these two approaches. First, I believe that students need to learn the theory and models to understand how economists understand the world. I also think these ideas are accessible to most students if they are explained thoroughly. This text presents numerous models in some detail, not by employing advanced mathematics, but rather by walking students through a detailed description of how a model's assumptions influence its conclusions. Second, and perhaps more important, students must learn how the models connect with the real world. I believe that theory is done primarily to guide policy. We do positive economics to help answer the normative questions; for example, what should a country do about its trade policy or its exchange rate policy? The results from models give us insights that help us answer these questions. Thus this text strives to explain why each model is interesting by connecting its results to some aspect of a current policy issue. A prime example is found in Chapter 11 "Evaluating the Controversy between Free Trade and Protectionism" of this book, which addresses the age-old question of whether countries should choose free trade or some type of selected protection. The chapter demonstrates how the results of the various models presented throughout the text contribute to our understanding of this long-standing debate.
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Sustaining the Commons
John Anderies; Marco Janssen · Arizona State University · 2016
This textbook discusses the main framework, concepts and applications of the work of Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues for an undergraduate audience. We began teaching a course on collective and the commons in 2007 at Arizona State University. Initially we made use of Ostrom's classic book “Governing the Commons”, but this book was not written for an undergraduate audience. Moreover, many new insights have been developed since the 1990 publication of “Governing the Commons”. Therefore we decided to write our own textbook, which we have been using since the Spring of 2012. In this book you will learn about institutions–the rules and norms that guide the interactions among us. Those rules and norms can be found from traffic rules, rules in sports, regulations on when and where alcohol can be consumed, to constitutional rules that define who can become president of the United States of America. Rules and norms guide us to cooperative outcomes of so-called collective action problems. If we rely on voluntary contributions only to get anything done, this may not lead to the best results. But research also shows that coercion of people to comply to strict rules do not necessary lead to good outcomes. What combination of sticks and carrots is needed to be successful to solve collective action problems such as sustaining the commons? The book is based on the work of Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues. Ostrom is best known as the 2009 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”. Elinor Ostrom was a professor at Indiana University since the mid 1960s, and a part-time research professor at Arizona State University since 2006. She was active in research and teaching until her death at the age of 78 on June 12, 2012.
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Principles of Microeconomics
David Shapiro; Steven Greenlaw; Daniel MacDonald · OpenStax · 2014
Principles of Microeconomics 3e covers the scope and sequence of most one semester introductory microeconomics courses. The third edition takes a balanced approach to the theory and application of microeconomics concepts. The text uses conversational language and ample illustrations to explore economic theories, and provides a wide array of examples using both fictional and real-world applications. The third edition has been carefully and thoroughly updated to reflect recent developments, as well as to provide a deeper background in diverse contributors and their impacts on economic thought and analysis. For example, the third edition highlights the research and views of a broader group of economists.
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Principles of Macroeconomics for AP® Courses 2e
Steven Greenlaw; David Shapiro · OpenStax · 2017
Principles of Macroeconomics 3e covers the scope and sequence of most one semester introductory macroeconomics courses. The third edition takes a balanced approach to the theory and application of macroeconomics concepts. The text uses conversational language and ample illustrations to explore economic theories, and provides a wide array of examples using both fictional and real-world scenarios. The third edition has been carefully and thoroughly updated to reflect current data and understanding, as well as to provide a deeper background in diverse contributors and their impacts on economic thought and analysis. For example, the third edition highlights the research and views of a broader group of economists. Brief references and deeply explored socio-political examples have also been updated to showcase the critical – and sometimes unnoticed – ties between economic developments and topics relevant to students. A fuller list of changes made in Principles of Macroeconomics 3e are described in the preface and the transition guide to help instructors transition to the third edition.
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Principles of Economics
Steven Greenlaw; David Shapiro; Daniel MacDonald · OpenStax · 2022
Principles of Economics 3e covers the scope and sequence of most introductory economics courses. The third edition takes a balanced approach to the theory and application of economics concepts. The text uses conversational language and ample illustrations to explore economic theories, and provides a wide array of examples using both fictional and real-world scenarios. The third edition has been carefully and thoroughly updated to reflect current data and understanding, as well as to provide a deeper background in diverse contributors and their impacts on economic thought and analysis. For example, the third edition highlights the research and views of a broader group of economists. Brief references and deeply explored socio-political examples have been updated to showcase the critical – and sometimes unnoticed – ties between economic developments and topics relevant to students. A fuller list of changes made in Principles of Economics 3e are described in the preface and the transition guide to help instructors transition to the third edition.
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Principles of Macroeconomics
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2016
Recognizing that a course in economics may seem daunting to some students, we have tried to make the writing clear and engaging. Clarity comes in part from the intuitive presentation style, but we have also integrated a number of pedagogical features that we believe make learning economic concepts and principles easier and more fun. These features are very student-focused. The chapters themselves are written using a “modular” format. In particular, chapters generally consist of three main content sections that break down a particular topic into manageable parts. Each content section contains not only an exposition of the material at hand but also learning objectives, summaries, examples, and problems. Each chapter is introduced with a story to motivate the material and each chapter ends with a wrap-up and additional problems. Our goal is to encourage active learning by including many examples and many problems of different types. A tour of the features available for each chapter may give a better sense of what we mean: Start Up—Chapter introductions set the stage for each chapter with an example that we hope will motivate readers to study the material that follows. These essays, on topics such as the value of a college degree in the labor market or how policy makers reacted to a particular economic recession, lend themselves to the type of analysis explained in the chapter. We often refer to these examples later in the text to demonstrate the link between theory and reality. Learning Objectives—These succinct statements are guides to the content of each section. Instructors can use them as a snapshot of the important points of the section. After completing the section, students can return to the learning objectives to check if they have mastered the material.Heads Up!—These notes throughout the text warn of common errors and explain how to avoid making them. After our combined teaching experience of more than fifty years, we have seen the same mistakes made by many
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Principles of Economics
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2016
This book is intended for a two-semester course in Economics taught out of the social sciences or business school. Principles of Economics aims to teach considerable range and depth of Economic concepts through an approachable style and methodology. The authors take a three-pronged approach to every chapter: The concept is covered with a “Heads Up” to ward off confusion, a real-world application for that concept, and a “You Try It” section to make sure students are staying on top of the concept.
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Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined
Ingrid Robeyns · Open Book Publishers · 2017
How do we evaluate ambiguous concepts such as wellbeing, freedom, and social justice? How do we develop policies that offer everyone the best chance to achieve what they want from life? The capability approach, a theoretical framework pioneered by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s, has become an increasingly influential way to think about these issues. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined is both an introduction to the capability approach and a thorough evaluation of the challenges and disputes that have engrossed the scholars who have developed it. Ingrid Robeyns offers her own illuminating and rigorously interdisciplinary interpretation, arguing that by appreciating the distinction between the general capability approach and more specific capability theories or applications we can create a powerful and flexible tool for use in a variety of academic disciplines and fields of policymaking. This book provides an original and comprehensive account that will appeal to scholars of the capability approach, new readers looking for an interdisciplinary introduction, and those interested in theories of justice, human rights, basic needs, and the human development approach.
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An Introduction to Waste Management and Circular Economy
Stijn van Ewijk; Julia Stegemann · UCL Press · 2023
This introductory textbook provides an essential interdisciplinary guide to waste management and circular economy. It helps students to understand the drivers of waste, the environmental, social, and economic impacts of waste generation, and best practices and technologies for waste management, recycling, energy recovery and disposal. With helpful, full-colour diagrams throughout, each chapter includes learning objectives, introduction to concepts and themes, exercises and review sections, to guide students through the book. The textbook is ideal for teaching environmental engineering and science, as well as interdisciplinary environmental programmes.
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Advanced Macroeconomics: An Easy Guide
Filipe Campante; Federico Sturzenegger; Andrés Velasco · LSE Press · 2021
Macroeconomic policy is one of the most important policy domains, and the tools of macroeconomics are among the most valuable for policy makers. Yet there has been, up to now, a wide gulf between the level at which macroeconomics is taught at the undergraduate level and the level at which it is practiced. At the same time, doctoral-level textbooks are usually not targeted at a policy audience, making advanced macroeconomics less accessible to current and aspiring practitioners. This book, born out of the Masters course the authors taught for many years at the Harvard Kennedy School, fills this gap. It introduces the tools of dynamic optimization in the context of economic growth, and then applies them to a wide range of policy questions – ranging from pensions, consumption, investment and finance, to the most recent developments in fiscal and monetary policy. It does so with the requisite rigor, but also with a light touch, and an unyielding focus on their application to policy-making, as befits the authors’ own practical experience. Advanced Macroeconomics: An Easy Guide is bound to become a great resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and practitioners alike.
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Liquidity, Markets and Trading in Action
Deniz Ozenbas ; Michael Pagano; Robert Schwartz ; Bruce Weber · Springer · 2022
This open access book addresses four standard business school subjects: microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance and information systems as they relate to trading, liquidity, and market structure. It provides a detailed examination of the impact of trading costs and other impediments of trading that the authors call “frictions”. It also presents an interactive simulation model of equity market trading, TraderEx, that enables students to implement trading decisions in different market scenarios and structures. Addressing these topics shines a bright light on how a real-world financial market operates, and the simulation provides students with an experiential learning opportunity that is informative and fun. Each of the chapters is designed so that it can be used as a stand-alone module in an existing economics, finance, or information science course. Instructor resources such as discussion questions, Powerpoint slides and TraderEx exercises are available online.