CORE Economics
CORE-Econ is an open-access (but not openly-licensed) platform built around a textbook “The Economy” designed for undergraduate courses. In addition, there is a slimmed down version of the book intended for non-economics majors, “Economics, Society, and Public Policy,” and problem sets using real data, “Doing Economics.”
The CORE texts were designed by leading international economists who wanted to re-direct the introductory economics sequence to use more modern tools such as a game theory and address the important environmental and equity issues that students want to understand. Thus, the book follows a non-standard approach, beginning each section with “big” questions integrating macro and micro topics.
The production values in the book are high, including interactive graphs, new interviews with a diverse set of modern economists, and reference to historical and institutional data not usually found in textbooks. That said, the book uses relatively sophisticated vocabulary and assumes prior student knowledge about world events. Thus, it may not be appropriate for community college courses. As an alternative, instructors may want to consult the accompanying list of topics and links that could be drawn from this open source book.