A note to instructors

A global community

Since its inception in 2013, CORE Econ has grown into a thriving global community of committed instructors at more than 400 universities worldwide.

Our website provides more than 30 case studies from instructors who have shared their experience of teaching with CORE Econ’s textbooks and teaching materials.

Instructors tell us that feeling part of a community—the CORE Econ community—is an important factor in driving their decision to adopt our materials. As a registered instructor, you can access the online Teaching Community to connect with other CORE Econ instructors throughout the world. This online forum lets you:

• share your teaching and learning materials with colleagues and derive inspiration from theirs
• exchange feedback about your experience with CORE Econ and examples of successful teaching practices
• ask questions of the wider community about the content of our textbooks.

How CORE Econ’s Understanding Our Economy is different

CORE Econ and Understanding Our Economy

Like other textbooks in the CORE Econ family, Understanding Our Economy focuses on evidence about the economy from around the world and from history. The textbook is motivated by questions such as “How can we explain what we see?” The CORE Econ method is to ask interesting questions first and then to introduce models that help to answer those questions. Standard tools—such as the constrained choice theory taught through marginal benefit and marginal cost analysis or the analysis of marginal revenue and marginal cost—are taught by showing how they give insight into real-world problems. Economics as a discipline is set in a social, political, and historical context in which institutions and power matter.

CORE Econ textbooks teach students to be economists in the following way:

• Start with a question and look at the evidence.
• Build a model that helps you understand what you see.
• Critically evaluate the model: Does it provide insight into the question and explain the evidence?

An updated paradigm

As Table A summarizes, CORE Econ’s benchmark representation of the economy includes numerous important elements that are not usually seen in principles texts. Those elements are well accepted in the discipline and enhance the realism of the text, but they have been slow to make their way into principles textbooks.

How Understanding Our Economy differs from other CORE Econ textbooks

Understanding Our Economy took The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics as its starting point while recognizing that the audiences for the two textbooks differ substantially. Understanding Our Economy recognizes the particularities of North American higher education, particularly the needs of two-year colleges and large four-year state colleges and universities in the US, among other institutional differences across the region.

Although the emphases and empirical questions are similar and some parts of this textbook employ some of the same tools used in The Economy 2.0 (for example, game trees and payoff tables, best responses, and doing the best you can), other parts of the textbook use different tools from those used in The Economy 2.0. For example, when considering a person doing the best they can, we do not use indifference curves. Instead, we rely more on marginal-benefit and marginal-cost analysis (see Table B, which compares Understanding Our Economy with two other CORE Econ textbooks).

Because students benefit from clear, visual explanations, we also teach important ideas with intuitive figures that convey them in ways that text alone does not. We believe this approach is more consistent with how these topics are taught in North American institutions, and is more accessible to students with an open curriculum.

Understanding Our Economy repeatedly highlights six principles that capture our approach. They are:

• Principle 1: Interdependence. The outcomes that people obtain in economic interactions depend on the actions that they and others take in response to each other, and on what they believe about the future.
• Principle 2: Doing the best you can. Doing the best you can means that, from the set of actions available to them, people will choose the action that they believe will result in the outcome that they value the most, taking into account what they believe the other player will do in response to their choice.
• Principle 3: Trade-offs and opportunity costs. The gains you make by choosing some action typically come at the cost of gains that would have been possible if you had acted differently.
• Principle 4: Mutual gains and conflicts from exchange. People mutually benefit by interacting with others, but typically, there are conflicts over the distribution of these gains.
• Principle 5: Individual and societal interests. Individuals doing the best they can often does not lead to the best outcomes for all people or for the environment.
• Principle 6: Rules of the game. The rules of the game affect how the players play the game, the size of the gains from cooperation available to the players, and how the gains are divided among the players.

We highlight these principles in each chapter and throughout the book.

Structured for flexibility: The many ways to teach and learn from Understanding Our Economy

Several features make our text particularly flexible and adaptable.

Modularity and scaffolding student understanding

Understanding Our Economy is written in a way that makes it unnecessary to teach the chapters in order, though the order is a useful guide to what works best, based on experiences of the institutions that have used the test chapters. Unlike CORE Econ’s The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics, many of the chapters in Understanding Our Economy are written in pairs. For example, Chapters 1 and 2 can be considered as a pair, with Chapter 1 providing the foundation for the ideas in Chapter 2. Similarly, Chapters 10 and 11 work as a pair. Chapter 10 considers the labor market as a matching market, and Chapter 11 explores how firms elicit effort from workers given the match established in Chapter 10. In certain instances, it may suffice to use the initial chapter, and not the second, depending on the instructor’s preferences for the depth of knowledge they wish to convey about given topics. This approach provides instructors with flexibility to design their courses in a way that works best for their specific target audience.

Instructors could also select certain chapters to supplement material from other sources. For example, Chapters 6 and 7 on social interactions and game theory, Chapter 5 on institutions and inequality, Chapters 10 and 11 on the employment relationship, and Chapters 16 and 17 on lending and borrowing provide material that could be included in a principles-level class or used as supplementary material for electives that cover those topics.

Extensions

Extensions appear throughout the text and include additional material on specific topics discussed in the chapter, but they are not required to understand the main content of each chapter. Many of the extensions contain algebra, graphing, or data. In these cases, we have made the kind of extension explicit by labeling it a “Math Extension” or “Data Extension.” Other kinds of extensions do not fit into either of these categories and are labeled simply as “Extensions.” Each extension has its own title.

Other features of the book and our pedagogical approach

• Everyday Economics are sidenotes that contain empirical examples of the models and concepts discussed in the chapter. They often include questions asking students to relate the ideas to everyday life.
• Economists in Action are short videos in which contemporary economists describe their research.
• Seeing the Principles in Action is a table at the end of each chapter that summarizes how that chapter’s ideas relate to the six principles described previously.
• Step-by-step figures and tables show how the figures and tables in each chapter are constructed step-by-step, allowing students to see how the constituent parts are combined to derive the final figure.
• Interactive data figures are enabled by CORE Econ’s partnership with Our World In Data (OWiD). They allow students to manipulate the figures by viewing the underlying data and selecting ranges, specific countries, or other observable characteristics to better understand how data visualizations are constructed and how they can be interpreted.
• At the end of each chapter, the Skills and Learning Objectives, and Concepts to Learn articulate the skills a student learns in each chapter to ensure that students can track the progress that they make and reinforce the development of the skills they are building across their reading and the course they are taking.

Options for course structure

Understanding Our Economy has been classroom-tested in a variety of settings, ranging from community colleges to liberal arts colleges and large state colleges and universities. The instructor case studies on our website encompass a wide variety of courses and show how instructors have adapted CORE Econ’s other textbook, The Economy, to their specific needs. These case studies will be supplemented by case studies about Understanding Our Economy.

• An introduction to microeconomics (one semester; 12–14 weeks): Instructors can teach most chapters from Understanding Our Economy, covering around one chapter per week (though not necessarily all sections). If time is limited or instructors wish to move more slowly, they may choose how to put a final capstone on their course by exploring particular specialized chapters, such as Chapter 11 on wage-setting or Chapter 17 on lending and borrowing.
• Introduction to economics (one semester; 12–14 weeks): Providing the basic concepts of the discipline in a single semester is a challenge, but it can be done using Chapters 1 through 5 and 8 through 11 as the foundation for the course, plus other chapters chosen by the instructor (for example, Chapter 18 as a capstone). These could be supplemented by units from The Economy 2.0: Macroeconomics, such as a selection from Chapters 1 to 5 on the business cycle or Chapter 9 on economic growth, toward the end of the semester, when students are more accustomed to using economic tools.
• A first course (one year): Understanding Our Economy can be taught as a year-long first course in economics that covers all chapters. Within each chapter, instructors can select the material they want to focus on (for example, it is not necessary to teach all of the Extensions). Instructors who want to delve deeper can supplement Understanding Our Economy with material from The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics and The Economy 2.0: Macroeconomics.
• Secondary or high school courses: The material is very relevant to students’ lives, which makes it more accessible. Instructors could select parts of the text that their students might be interested in, such as Chapters 1, 2, 6, and 7, which teach game theory and apply it to workplace relationships and to climate change. Instructors can refer to this case study where The Economy 1.0 is used in a secondary school setting. Similarly, Chapters 10 and 11 on the labor market, and Chapters 16 and 17, which teach savings, compound interest, and the borrower-lender relationship, are excellent foundations for students preparing for college or university.
• Foundation and pre-college programs: Understanding Our Economy can be used in “foundation,” extension, or pre-college programs seeking to prepare students for transition to economics at the college or university level. From the very first chapter, the case studies are provided as enrichment material, and the accessible language enables students to use the textbook in self-directed learning, such as stimulus material for independent research projects. Though some of the specific tools we employ differ from those in The Economy 2.0 (for example, marginal benefit and marginal cost), the book’s orientation and reliance on strategic thinking will also help students prepare to use these ideas during their college careers.
• Nontraditional learning environments: As a result of our relationship with College Unbound (through the presence of Adam Bush, president of College Unbound, serving on our Advisory Board), we have also endeavored to write a textbook well-suited to nontraditional students. The content of Understanding Our Economy integrates well with learning in public environments and with presenting projects based on the real-world examples, applications, data extensions, and empirical examples that are peppered throughout the book.

Options for course formats

Understanding Our Economy incorporates recent developments in pedagogical methods to facilitate a range of teaching approaches.

Traditional teaching

The material can be taught in a traditional way, with much of the substantive theory in each chapter delivered through lectures and then reinforced and elaborated with problems and exercises. Instructors have used CORE Econ material this way in various teaching contexts, ranging from fully in-person instruction to fully online learning, and incorporating interactive elements into lectures and classroom presentations.

Flipping the classroom

Active classroom learning can be encouraged by the selective use of “flipped” or “inverted” approaches, in which traditional lectures are replaced by interactive sessions based on problems, games, or discussions. In these teaching approaches, students are assigned materials (readings, quizzes, or videos, for example) before class. These materials are then used as a basis for discussion and activity in the classroom. Classroom polling software (or student response systems) can be used to test students’ engagement with the assigned tasks through quizzes and think-pair-share activities. Games and data work can then be used to deepen understanding and reinforce understanding.

Understanding Our Economy lends itself well to a flipped classroom approach because the chapters progress from real case studies and narratives to the selection and use of appropriate theoretical tools to understand them, and then to the underlying theory.

One approach to flipping the classroom is to encourage students to read the narratives and historical case studies outside class, and to think about the economic tools that can help explain these cases. The detailed use and understanding of the theory can then be developed in class through problem-oriented data work and classroom games. Experience in many classrooms with The Economy 1.0 and The Economy 2.0 suggests that students engage more readily in preclass reading of the interactive ebook than in other introductory courses they have taken. The habit of reading ahead of class can be kick-started with a multimedia group project used in several universities that use CORE Econ materials. The online teaching guides (to be made available in the Instructors section of our website) will provide further guidance on using Understanding Our Economy in flipped and/or online learning settings.

Classroom games and data exercises

The empirical emphasis and extensive embedding of game theory encourage a more active approach to learning through classroom games and experiments, as well as problem-oriented learning with real data. The chapters contain links to the following pair of CORE Econ’s companion ebooks for games and experiments and for data exploration and analysis activities: Experiencing Economics and Doing Economics. Datasets, ideas for classroom games, and other in-class exercises are provided in the chapter teaching guides (in the Instructors section of our website) to help teachers incorporate these methods into their teaching. The Instructors section of our website also contains the datasets used to construct all the charts in the textbook.

Available resources and formats

We recommend that instructors and students use Understanding Our Economy in its online format, which allows them to take full advantage of its pedagogical features, including end-of-section questions with immediate feedback, embedded videos, interactive data charts, and much more.

The text is also available in the following alternative formats, which are all free to access:

• PDF
• EPUB
• Apple Books
• Android and Windows apps for offline reading.

Instructors can register on the CORE Econ website for free access to teaching and learning resources to complement Understanding Our Economy. We recommend that instructors explore the following:

Note to EBW: Links to be provided once available.

• The Test Bank, a collection of new and improved tests or quizzes with immediate feedback. These can be downloaded as a spreadsheet or in Moodle-, Canvas-, and Blackboard-compatible formats, ready to be uploaded.
• Lecture slides that can be amended to tailor your course’s content (available in PowerPoint).
• Teaching guides with technical notes and teaching advice for the important and challenging concepts in each chapter, as well as suggestions for polls, games, additional reading, discussions, and other activities—all linked to concepts from each chapter. The teaching guides are contained in an Excel spreadsheet, which can be used for planning purposes.

Mapping The Economy 1.0 and The Economy 2.0 to Understanding Our Economy

For instructors moving from The Economy 1.0 or The Economy 2.0 to Understanding Our Economy, we recommend starting with the “base” materials from Understanding Our Economy (such as the lecture slides) and then incorporating the additional materials you have developed while teaching The Economy 1.0 or The Economy 2.0.

Because Understanding Our Economy is an entirely new textbook, we believe this approach will be easier than rearranging your existing materials to align with it. However, it is likely that most of the materials you have developed (for example, exam questions and country-specific applications) will still be relevant. (We would be grateful if you could share some of that material on the community forum.)

The examples, extensions, applications, and data in Understanding Our Economy have also been updated to reflect developments since The Economy 1.0 was written. Table B compares the chapter structure for Understanding Our Economy (UOE) with that of The Economy 1.0 (TE 1.0) and The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics (TE 2.0).

How to cite Understanding Our Economy

To cite Understanding Our Economy, we suggest combining the referencing style for an ebook and citing a given chapter as follows: Simon D. Halliday. 2026. “Cooperation, Conflict, and the Environment.” Chapter 1 in Understanding Our Economy. Available at https://books.core-econ.org/uoe-101/01-01.html [Accessed on (date)].