As part of the preparation for the new course I’m teaching at the University of Manchester this autumn, Economics for Public Policy, I’ve been looking again at [amazon_link id=”0691126380″ target=”_blank” ]Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions and Evolution [/amazon_link]by Sam Bowles. It’s a decade old now but still pretty unique in its approach, which is rooted in social interactions and institutions rather than the atomised individuals of the standard micro course. In other words, it’s about economies, and not ‘economics’.

[amazon_image id=”B00MF16TVQ” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution (The Roundtable Series in Behavioral Economics) by Bowles, Samuel (2006) Paperback[/amazon_image]

It’s a graduate level text, but I’ve also started looking at a brand new undergraduate micro text, [amazon_link id=”3642374336″ target=”_blank” ]Microeconomics: A Fresh Start[/amazon_link] by Peter Dorman. It starts with some history of thought and then the assumptions of economic models, and the values and objectives of economics, before going on to institutions – of which markets are one example. Demand and supply and market structure come later, followed by bargaining power and market failures. There is a final section on applied economics challenges, such as poverty, ecological questions, financial markets. Although I’ve not worked through any of it in detail, it is hugely more appealing than the standard textbooks. I’m not teaching micro per se, nor have I worked through this in any detail, but would recommend anyone who is teaching the core undergraduate courses to take a look at this. There’s also a [amazon_link id=”3642374409″ target=”_blank” ]macro volume[/amazon_link] I’ve not yet looked at.

[amazon_image id=”3642374336″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Microeconomics: A Fresh Start (Springer Texts in Business and Economics)[/amazon_image]

Sam Bowles is one of the leading lights of the CORE curriculum reform project, in which I’m also involved, and its Intro to Economics goes into the pilot phase soon. There are lots of different barriers to reform of the economics curriculum, the availability of better (ie. non-standard) textbooks being only one of them. It’s so encouraging, though, to see – only 2 years on from [amazon_link id=”1907994041″ target=”_blank” ]What’s the Use of Economics[/amazon_link] – several more realistic and humane approaches to economics being developed for use where it really matters, in the education of future generations of economists – and policy-makers, and bankers, and accountants, or whatever they go on to be from their undergraduate degree.