The Economics Anti-Textbook

The book seeks to both teach economic material and also to counter what is written in other economics texts.[1][2] The book encourages its readers to become skeptics, urging critical thinking against the hegemony of rigid free market ideology.[1][3]

The book advocates for empiricism in economics and demonstrates the abundance of un-empirical free-market ideology in undergraduate economics classes.[4][5] Many authors have since repeated similar concerns about economics education.[6]

Each chapter begins with a dense but readable summary of common neoclassical economic textbook teaching on a topic, and then proceeds to discuss the limitations of these teachings and their public policy implications.[7]

Throughout the text are suggested "Questions for Your Professor" designed "to reveal the ignorance of neoclassical economics professors of their own discipline, their lack of understanding of alternative theories and their wilful neglect of conflicting evidence."[8]

The book primarily discusses major topics of microeconomics,[1][7] including consumer behavior, firm behavior, market structure, externalities, income distribution, government, and international trade.[7] An appendix discusses the 2008 financial crisis in light of the earlier discussions of markets.[7]

The book is one of several textbooks comparing mainstream and heterodox perspectives on economics, along with Cohn (2007) and Bougrine & Seccareccia (2010).[9] Other similar textbooks offering alternative perspectives to mainstream economics include Earl (1995) and Earl & Wakeley (2005).[10] None of these have yet achieved widespread adoption.[10] A thorough review of critical economics books relevant to 21st century economies recommended this book as a textbook in real-world economics which supports a broad view of economic perspectives, along with Nelson & Harris (2009), Goodwin et al. (2009), and Gowdy (2009)[11] It is one of the most popular works critiquing neoclassical economics, along with [12] and Keen (2001).[13]

The book was part of a movement of economists attempting to offer explanations of economic theory to the general public in the wake of the Great Recession.[14]

Despite not yet being reviewed in mainstream journals, as of February 2011 the introductory chapter has received 13,000 views on stumbleupon[15] and the book has attracted positive comment on various blogs.[16]

The Huffington Post especially recommended the last chapter on trade and globalization.[17] In the journal Labour / Le Travail, Jim Stanford described it as a "needed antidote to the unreal and infuriating doctrines of fundamentalist free-market theory" taught in standard introductory economics courses and textbooks.[18] On the blog Progressive Economics, Professor of Green Political Economy at Queen's University, Belfast, John Barry said, "it should be on all undergraduate economics courses in the spirit of pluralism in economic thinking."[19] In the Int. Journal for Pluralism and Economics Education, Swiss economic sociologist Michael Derrer called it a " a genuine treasure of well-researched and referenced arguments". He suggested to the authors to write a second edition in a less scholarly writing style, in order to reach a global audience.[20]