Online textbook

Understanding Our Economy 101

With a focus on the economics of everyday life, useful skills, and modern principles, this is the economics textbook that teachers wish they had read in college.

01

Cooperation, conflict, and the environment

What happens to the environment when people work together, and when they fight?
02

Changing the rules: Power and fairer bargains

Who gets to make and break the rules, and is that fair?
03

Our world transformed: Institutions, inequality, and planetary limits

How have the institutions of capitalism transformed the way we live and what are the costs of this transformation?
04

Innovation, incentives, and technology

How do improvements in technology happen? How do technological improvements sustain growing living standards?
05

The distribution of income: Endowments, technology, institutions, and policy

Where does income inequality come from, and what can people do to change it?
06

Economic Interactions and their outcomes

How can we predict what people will do when their choices affect one another? When does pursuing self-interest lead to mutual gains, and when does it create social dilemmas?
10

The firm and its workers: Finding a match

How do interactions in labor markets differ from interactions in product markets? How can these differences cause or perpetuate economic inequality?
11

The firm and its workers: Effort and wages

Why do workers work hard at their jobs? How do employers decide what wage to offer to their workers?
12

The firm and its customers: Demand, costs, and profits

How do I maximize profits? What price should I charge buyers? How much should I produce? What costs do I incur to produce my product? Can I produce in a sustainable way?
13

The firm and its customers: Market power and the benefits of exchange

How do firms gain market power? How does greater market power translate into higher profits? How do buyers and sellers benefit from exchange?

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Extra resourcesSupporting teachers

Our additional teaching resources make it easy to to start using Understanding Our Economy with your class.

  • Answers to exercises

  • Data files for charts

  • Fact checker

  • Lecture slides (PPTX)

  • Slides of figures

  • Test Bank

Behind the book

Understanding Our Economy is created by experienced instructors who know what it takes to teach and learn college economics.