The CourseTutor is written by Jerry Stone and is designed to allow maximum practice, review, and to do so interactively. Students can use the CourseTutor as practice, as in-class exercise, or as homework to be assigned.

The CourseTutor is written by Jerry Stone and is designed to allow maximum practice, review, and to do so interactively. Students can use the CourseTutor as practice, as in-class exercise, or as homework to be assigned.

Economy, Society, and Public Policy is a new way to learn economics. It is designed specifically for students studying social sciences, public policy, business studies, engineering and other disciplines who want to understand how the economy works and how it can be made to work better. Topical policy problems are used to motivate learning of key concepts and methods of economics. It engages, challenges and empowers students, and will provide them with the tools to articulate reasoned views on pressing policy problems. This project is the result of a worldwide collaboration between researchers, educators, and students who are committed to bringing the socially relevant insights of economics to a broader audience.KEY FEATURESESPP does not teach microeconomics as a body of knowledge separate from macroeconomicsStudents begin their study of economics by understanding that the economy is situated within society and the biosphereStudents study problems of identifying causation, not just correlation, through the use of natural experiments, lab experiments, and other quantitative methodsSocial interactions, modelled using simple game theory, and incomplete information, modelled using a series of principal-agent problems, are introduced from the beginning. As a result, phenomena studied by the other social sciences such as social norms and the exercise of power play a roleThe insights of diverse schools of thought, from Marx and the classical economists to Hayek and Schumpeter, play an integral part in the bookThe way economists think about public policy is central to ESPP. This is introduced in Units 2 and 3, rather than later in the course.

What does CORE mean? CoreEconomicsis based on an extensive survey conducted by the author, Gerald Stone. Professor Stone asked several hundred instructors which chapters of their principles books they actually cover in their courses. Two important points emerged: • One chapter/one week. Instructors typically cover one chapter per week, or 15 chapters in a 15-week semester. • The majority of instructors teach the same 2/3 of a standard economics textbook. The overwhelming majority of instructors covers the same chapters in the bulk of their course and then spend minimal time covering additional chapters. Over 90% of professors cover a maximum of 15 chapters in their microeconomics or macroeconomics text, which typically includes 19-22 chapters. Based on this he decided to write a textbook that covers the core topics of economics in the sequence they are most commonly taught. The result is CoreEconomics, a text that provides everything you need to cover in your course in one chapter per week at 2/3 the cost of the average principles of Economics text. In this sense, “core” does not mean brief or abridged. Rather, it means that the textbook contains the chapters that most instructors need, but very few additional chapters or special-interest topics, such as agricultural economics, urban economics, insurance, and risk. BecauseCoreEconomicsfocuses on the core principles, it includes very few boxes, sidebars, or additional features. Rather, examples are incorporated into the main narrative of each chapter. The result is a more satisfying reading and learning experience for the student.