Felipe Correa, ECLAC consultant.
In a recent post, Gabriel Porcile presented a new introductory book of economics called “The Economy”, published by the CORE Project. It features a modern digital format (including interactive graphs and diagrams), videos, biographies of important economists, and allows students to choose which mathematic tool to use.
Regarding the new introductory textbook of CORE, we think it represents a great step for all students and scholars interested in the teaching of economics with a historical perspective, and that represents the complexities of our society in a more realistic way. This is an admirable achievement, considering it is not a book about the History of Economic Thought.
It is useful to compare CORE’s book with the traditional introductory texts used in economics. The two traditional books that are most often used are N. G. Mankiw’s “Principles of Economics” (1997) and Paul Samuelson’s “Economics” (1948). A frequently used methodology to do a comparative analysis of books is the so-called Text Data Mining technique. Among its techniques, one consists of counting the frequency of strategic words that are repeated in the text.
Regarding the new introductory textbook of CORE, we think it represents a great step for all students and scholars interested in the teaching of economics with a historical perspective, and that represents the complexities of our society in a more realistic way. This is an admirable achievement, considering it is not a book about the History of Economic Thought.
It is useful to compare CORE’s book with the traditional introductory texts used in economics. The two traditional books that are most often used are N. G. Mankiw’s “Principles of Economics” (1997) and Paul Samuelson’s “Economics” (1948). A frequently used methodology to do a comparative analysis of books is the so-called Text Data Mining technique. Among its techniques, one consists of counting the frequency of strategic words that are repeated in the text.