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The Economy 2.0
Full table of contents
Preface
We're changing the way economics is taught
Learn more about our mission and what makes The Economy 2.0 a unique textbook.
Unit 1
Prosperity, inequality, and planetary limits
How capitalism revolutionized the way we live, and how economics attempts to understand this and other economic systems.
Unit 2
Technology and incentives
How improvements in technology happen, and how they sustain growth in living standards.
Unit 3
Doing the best you can: Scarcity, wellbeing, and working hours
How individuals do the best they can within the options available, and how they resolve the trade-off between earnings and free time.
Unit 4
Strategic interactions and social dilemmas
How, when social dilemmas arise from self-interested behaviour, a combination of social norms, a regard for the wellbeing of others, and appropriate institutions may lead to more desirable social outcomes.
Unit 5
The rules of the game: Who gets what and why
How institutions influence the fairness and efficiency of the outcomes that result when people interact in the economy.
Unit 6
The firm and its employees
How the interactions among the firm’s owners, managers, and employees influence wages, work, and profits, and how this affects the entire economy.
Unit 7
The firm and its customers
How a profit-maximizing firm producing a differentiated product interacts with its customers.
Unit 8
Supply and demand: Markets with many buyers and sellers
How markets work in competitive equilibrium, when all buyers and sellers act as price-takers.
Unit 9
Lenders and borrowers and differences in wealth
How borrowing and lending expand opportunities for mutual gain, and the factors that limit their capacity to accomplish this.
Unit 10
Market successes and failures: The societal effects of private decisions
How credit, money, and banks expand opportunities for mutual gain, and the factors that limit their capacity to accomplish this.
Full table of contents
Unit 1
The supply side of the macroeconomy: Unemployment and real wages
How equilibrium in the economy-wide market for labour determines wages, employment, and the rate of unemployment.
Unit 2
Unemployment, wages, and inequality: Supply-side policies and institutions
How differences in institutions, policies, and shocks affect macroeconomic outcomes.
Unit 3
Aggregate demand and the multiplier model
How economies fluctuate between booms and recessions as they are continuously hit by good and bad shocks.
Unit 4
Inflation and unemployment
How fluctuations in aggregate demand and changes on the supply side of the economy affect inflation and unemployment.
Unit 5
Macroeconomic policy: Inflation and unemployment
How governments can moderate costly fluctuations in employment and inflation.
Units 6–10
Coming soon
Units 6–10 of the macroeconomics volume will be available in autumn 2024.
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We are a cooperative of knowledge producers committed to free digital access to The Economy.
We want as many people as possible to be able to reason about, and act to address, the challenges of the twenty-first century economy, society, and biosphere. Our hope is that the best of economics can become part of how all citizens understand and seek to address the problems that we confront.
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