Aprender a economia do século XXI

The contributions of Keynes, Hayek, and Nash – aggregate demand, the central economic role of limited information, and strategic interactions modelled by game theory – were extended by many others and have become foundations of economic thinking. Before the end of the 20th century, all three innovations had become standard postgraduate economic instruction, as a quick glance at the tables of contents of leading texts (Mas-Colell et al. 1995, Romer 1996) would show.

What economists know, and what students get

Things are radically different at the undergraduate level. The Samuelsonian paradigm is basically Marshall plus Keynes, and this remains the basic content of the dominant textbooks today. Asymmetric and local information, and strategic social interactions modelled by game theory are mentioned, if at all, at the end of the introductory course, or as special topics,. (Von Neumann had commented – surely ungenerously – about Samuelson that “...even in 30 years he won’t absorb game theory”.)
Understandably, students think information problems and strategic interaction are simply refinements of the standard model, rather than challenges to two of its foundations – price-taking as the benchmark for competitive behaviour, and complete contracts (and hence market clearing in competitive equilibrium) made possible by complete information.
CORE’s introductory text, The Economy, attempts to do for information economics and strategic social interaction what Samuelson did for aggregate demand. CORE has made these concepts part of the foundation of an economic paradigm that can be effectively taught to introductory students. This new open-access online text, simultaneously published as a conventional book, is now available (The CORE Team 2017).^1
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