When I began teaching economics to college students in the 1980’s, I chose to concentrate on the core ideas in the discipline. Economics has many concepts that can help governments manage their policies to benefit their citizens. The goal is simple: my students understand the policies governments use in managing national affairs.
I found many textbooks attempt to explain those core ideas with detailed expositions of supporting concepts. Occasionally students bog down in the supporting ideas and lose track of the central themes. Most students benefit from a pared down approach; they can grasp the central ideas and how those ideas interact.
This book presents the central ideas; it allows instructors to add additional illustrative concepts as needed.
McKeever earned a BA, Economics, from Whittier College, California, in 1963 and an M. Sc. (Econ) from the London School of Economics in 1966. His focus was ’The Politics of International Economic Relations with Reference to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.’ He began lecturing on economics consistently in the early 1980’s. McKeever has been a Professor of Economics at City College of San Francisco since 2001.
In the early 1990’s he created a website, www.miepa.net, to present a list of 35 specific economic policies governments can enact to help their citizenry. Several economics students have completed detailed analyses of how well their home country governments adhere to or diverge from these policies. Some of those studies are available at the website covering more than 50 countries.
Chapter 1 | Introduction to Economics
Chapter 2 | The Circular Flow of Money in the Economy
Chapter 3 | Demand, Supply, and Price Determination
Chapter 4 | Markets and Resource Allocation
Chapter 5 | Gross Domestic Product
Chapter 6 | Aggregate Demand and Supply
Chapter 7 | Aggregate Equilibrium
Chapte 8 | Unemployment
Chapter 9 | Inflation
Chapter 10 | Competing Economic Theories
Chapter 11 | Business Cycles
Chapter 12 | Fiscal Policy
Chapter 13 | Money and Monetary Policy
Chapter 14 | Economic Growth