Introductory Economics

How the World Works

Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and the Art of Thinking About Tradeoffs

A free, open-source textbook for college students, self-learners, and anyone who wants to understand why prices rise, why some countries are rich and others poor, and why two reasonable economists can give opposite answers to the same question.

Forty chapters across nine parts. Roughly 1.1 million words.

The DataField Project

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Edition 1.0

This book exists because economics education matters and quality economics education should not cost $324. We owe enormous intellectual debts to Mankiw's Principles of Economics, the OpenStax Economics team, the IGM Forum at the University of Chicago, the Federal Reserve Economic Data team at the St. Louis Fed, and the long tradition of economists whose research populates the further-reading lists at the end of every chapter.

Disagreement with Mankiw on framing should not be mistaken for disrespect: this book exists because his book set a standard that any free alternative must meet.

A textbook for people who want to think clearly about a hard subject.