A new online, open-access, free textbook promises long-awaited transformation in the way people teach and learn economics. The book, titled The Economy, aims to teach undergraduate-level economics “as if the last three decades had happened,” according to its creators.
The new textbook is produced by a collaborative group called The CORE Project, to which SFI Professor Sam Bowles contributes course content and acts as a member of the steering group. A book review on Resilience.org calls the group "an insurgent team of economists."
The textbook forms part of a larger online curriculum that challenges conventional pedagogical models for teaching economics. Where conventional economics courses may, for example, give economic axioms with little in the way of empirical reference points, the CORE curriculum is empirically motivated and illustrated.
Other examples of The CORE Project’s vision and pedagogy are available on the group’s website. In the preface to their new textbook, a CORE Project member and recent economics graduate notes that “the curriculum addresses inequality, climate change, and financial crises — the questions students come to economics with.”
The Economy is currently available in its beta form and is open to readers’ feedback and suggestions.
Download the ebook through The CORE Project website
Read the book review on Resilience.org (October 23, 2014)