Summary

The Economic System provides an accessible account of introductory economics theory that allows students more fully to appreciate the main features and complexity of the Economic System by integrating microeconomic and macroeconomic principles on a topic-by-topic basis.

The purpose of the approach is to allow the student to understand the economy as a system of complex and inter-related features incorporating: consumers, producers, markets and governments based on an understanding of the roles of prices and markets and exchange. This structure provides a context whereby students understand that to analyse issues from an economic perspective often requires the use of both micro- and macroeconomic tools and an appreciation of the interrelationships that exist between them.

The academic and pedagogical logic underlying the structure of the book arises from the author's extensive experience in lecturing and discussions with other lecturers in economics. One of the main problems experienced by students of economics is that even those who appear to grasp concepts and models often display weaknesses in using them to better understand or analyse problems. Transferability of concepts is a real problem especially for a subject that focuses on being a problem-solving discipline where students should learn skills useful to support decision-making. An explicit aim in the book is to clarify how models and concepts in economics are useful as tools that support rigorous, methodical and logical analysis and not simply useful to solve mathematical 'puzzles' by providing one "correct" answer. This requires being explicit in explaining what the economic approach is about, regarding the role of theories and models to support economic analysis and also regarding how these theories and models support decision making based on economic analysis.