Economics Anti-Textbook

Rod Hill has taught at the University of Windsor, University of Regina and the University of New Brunswick, where he has been a Professor of Economics since 2003. He's a member of Economists for Peace and Security and the Progressive Economics Forum.Tony Myatt has taught at McMaster University, Western University, Nipissing University College, the University of Toronto, and the University of New Brunswick, where he has been Professor of Economics since 1992. He has developed several different introductory courses as vehicles for teaching principles of economics, including Economics of Everyday Life, Economics in the Real World, and Economics Through Film. Professor Myatt was the recipient of UNB's Arts Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2008.

'Every honest economics teacher absolutely must make this book a compulsory reading for their students.'Samir Amin, United Nations African Institute for Planning'What humankind needs second most (first is a cure for global warming), is a means of defusing the lethal ideological superstitions implanted in the educated masses by Samuelson/Mankiw type economics textbooks. Hill and Myatt’s "anti-textbook" goes a long way toward providing it.'Edward Fullbrook'I highly recommend Hill and Myatt’s "anti-textbook." It is not so much an outright rejection of traditional treatments of introductory microeconomics as it is an exercise in laying bare the premises on which they are based and then suggesting alternative assumptions and methodologies. This approach leaves the student with a much deeper understanding of economic theory and it shows our discipline for what it truly is: an ongoing conversation among competing paradigms. I urge instructors to amend their courses so that time can be made for this important critique.'John. T. Harvey, author of Currencies, Capital Flows and Crises'Hill and Myatt's timely book should be compulsory reading for every student of economics.'Alan Freeman, UK Association for Heterodox Economics'Rod Hill and Tony Myatt have written one of the best critical texts of neoclassical microeconomics that I have ever seen. It is a great text to assign along with an introductory or intermediate microeconomics text.'Frederic S. Lee, American Journal of Economics and Sociology

• Introduction - Our Goals, Audience, and Principal Themes1. What is economics? Where you start influences where you go2. Introducing economic models3. How markets work (in an imaginary world)4. People as consumers5. The firm6. Market Structure and Efficiency - or why perfect competition isn't so perfect after all.Addendum - What about the efficiency of asset markets?7. Externalities and the ubiquity of market failure8. The marginal productivity theory of income distribution - or you're worth what you can get9. Government, taxation, and the (re)distribution of income: is a just society just too expensive?10. Trade and globalization without the rose-tinted glassesConclusionPostscript - A Case Study on the Global Financial Meltdown