Economics for Life: Making Smart Choices, 3rd edition

Published by Pearson (December 19, 2024) © 2025

  • Avi J. Cohen University of Toronto and York University
  • Scott Wolla Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
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Addresses the growing market needs and trends toward a literacy targeted approach to teaching economics, supported by an active-learning pedagogy and premium online teaching and learning resources.

Economics for Life offers a new narrative-driven approach to learning and teaching economics that demonstrates the relevance of economics to students. Accessible language and graphs, engaging first-person writing, a less-mathematical approach, and practical examples connect economics to students' lives in a meaningful way. This text helps students become economically literate citizens, unlike traditional texts which prepare them to become economics majors.

Part 1: Microeconomics: Basics of Smart Choices

  1. What's in Economics for You? Scarcity, Opportunity Cost, Trade, and Models
  2. Making Smart Choices: The Law of Demand
  3. Show Me the Money: The Law of Supply
  4. Coordinating Smart Choices: Demand and Supply
  5. Just How Badly Do You Want It? Elasticity
  6. What Gives When Prices Don't? Government Policy Choices

Part 2: Microeconomics: Applications of Smart Choices

  1. Pricing Power: Market Structure and Pricing
  2. What's Perfect about Perfect Competition? Productivity, Costs, and Efficiency
  3. Pricing for Profits in Imperfect Competition: Marginal Revenue and Marginal Costs
  4. When Markets Fail: Natural Monopoly, Gaming, Competition, and Government
  5. Acid Rain on Others' Parades: Externalities, Carbon Taxes, Free Riders, and Public Goods

Part 3: Macroeconomics: Measuring Economic Performance

  1. Are Your Smart Choices Smart for All? From Microeconomics to Macroeconomics
  2. Up Around the Circular Flow: Measuring GDP and Living Standards
  3. Do Macroeconomic Dreams Come True? Potential GDP, Economic Growth, and Business Cycles
  4. Costs of (Not) Working and Living: Unemployment and Inflation

Part 4: Macroeconomics: Theory and Policy

  1. Skating to Where the Puck is Going: Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand
  2. Steering Blindly? Money, Monetary Policy, and the Bank of Canada
  3. Spending Others' Money: Fiscal Policy, Deficits, and National Debt

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