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Microeconomics for Life: Smart Choices for You, 3rd edition

Published by Pearson Canada (January 31, 2024) © 2025

  • Avi J. Cohen University of Toronto and York University
  • Scott Wolla Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

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C$67.99

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  • Flashcards help streamline study sessions

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Title overview

For 2-semester principles of economics courses.

Addresses the growing market needs and trends toward a literacy targeted approach to teaching economics, supported by an active-learning pedagogy and premium online teaching and learning resources. 

Economics for Life offers a new narrative-driven approach to learning and teaching economics that demonstrates the relevance of economics to students. Accessible language and graphs, engaging first-person writing, a less-mathematical approach, and practical examples connect economics to students’ lives in a meaningful way. This text helps students become economically literate citizens, unlike traditional texts which prepare them to become economics majors.

Hallmark features of this title

  • Economics Out There. These feature boxes provide real-world examples of the economic principle being discussed. The stories told in Economics Out There help you make connections between the concepts in the chapter and everyday life.
  • Refresh. The Refresh feature provides three questions that require you to review and apply the concepts in the preceding section. These questions give you the opportunity to assess your understanding of the principles developed in the section.
  • Learning objectives are repeated at the beginning of each main section of the book and provide an important reminder of what you will learn in each section.

New and updated features of this title

  • As the world shifts to a greater reliance on digital media, it is appropriate that this resource evolves as well. This Third Canadian Edition is the first fully digital version of Microeconomics for Life. Instructors and students will find that, although the medium has changed, the content is fully consistent with prior editions.
  • Scott Wolla, the Economics Education Coordinator at the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, joins the third edition as a co-author. Scott brings unmatched expertise in economics education, and has taken the lead on all pedagogical aspects of this edition, including the selection of Economics Out There media stories and analysis. His work has been highlighted by major news media including The Economist, National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, and BBC News. 
  • This edition now has an expanded and slightly reorganized set of chapters to also support more traditional and model-focused approaches to teaching principles of microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Digital features

Important Digital Assets in MyLab Economics

  • 2024 Digital Update – Econ in the News - MyLab Question Update (50 New Questions)
  • 2024 Digital Update – Micro Interactive Models with Assessment - 60 new TDX questions to accompany the new and updated models (3 per model)
  • Narrated Dynamic Videos. The PowerPoint graphs, built from the textbook graphic files, are the basis of the Narrated Dynamic Videos. For key analytical graphs in the textbook, a short MP4 video plays when students click on the graph. In a voice-over, we talk the student through the meaning of the graph, and traces shifts of curves and changes in outcomes. There is a moving cursor directing students' attention to the portion of the graph being discussed in the narration.
  • Digital Interactives. Economic principles are not static ideas, and learning them shouldn't be either. Digital Interactives are dynamic and engaging assessment activities that promote critical thinking and application of key economic principles. Each Digital Interactive has 3–5 progressive levels and requires approximately 20 minutes to explore, apply, compare, and analyze each topic. Digital Interactives can be assigned and graded within MyLab Economics or used as a lecture tool to encourage engagement, classroom conversation, and group work.
  • Single Player Experiments. Experiments are an easy-to-use, fun, and engaging way to promote active learning and mastery of important economic concepts. Single-player experiments allow students to play against virtual players from anywhere at any time so long as they have an Internet connection. Pre- and post-experiment questions are available for assignment within the MyLab.
  • Dynamic Study Modules. Using a highly personalized, algorithmically driven process, Dynamic Study Modules continuously assess student performance and provide additional practice in the areas where they struggle the most. Each Dynamic Study Module, accessed by computer, smartphone, or tablet, promotes fast learning and long term retention. 
  • Economics Out There boxes bring currency into your classroom with author written content that connect key concepts with real-life current events. Annually our author(s) add new or revised content or data to figures to ensure that your students have current and relevant examples to help them engage with the course material.

Table of contents

  1. What's in Economics for You? Scarcity, Opportunity Cost, Trade, and Models
  2. Making Smart Choices: The Law of Demand
  3. Show Me the Money: The Law of Supply
  4. Coordinating Smart Choices: Demand and Supply
  5. Just How Badly Do You Want It? Elasticity
  6. What Gives When Prices Don't? Government Policy Choices
  7. Getting the Most Bang per Buck: Utility behind Demand
  8. Finding Producers' Bottom Line: Profits and Cost Behind Supply
  9. Pricing Power: Market Structure and Pricing
  10. What's Perfect About Perfect Competition? Productivity, Costs, and Efficiency
  11. Pricing for Profits in Imperfect Competition: Marginal Revenue and Marginal Cost
  12. When Markets Fail: Natural Monopoly, Gaming, Competition, and Government
  13. Acid Rain on Others' Parades: Externalities, Carbon Taxes, Free Riders, and Public Goods
  14. What Are You Worth? Inputs, Incomes, and Inequality
  15. Are Sweatshops all Bad? Globalization, Trade, and Protectionism

Author bios

Avi J. Cohen is a University Professor of Economics at York University and also teaches at the University of Toronto. He has a PhD in Economics from Stanford University; a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan; is a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; is past President of the History of Economics Society; and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. His research interests are in economic education, the history of economics, and economic history. He has published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Economic Education, Eastern Economic Journal, History of Political Economy, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic History, and Explorations in Economic History, among other journals and books.

He was a pioneer in integration of writing into Economics courses. A 1991 AEA-commissioned report on “The Status and Prospects of the Economics Major” (Siegfried et al. 1991) introduced the importance for Economics of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement. The Journal of Economic Education followed with a 1993 mini-symposium on writing, which included his first collaboration with a writing instructor (Cohen and Spencer 1993). A more recent collaboration, integrating abstract and op-ed writing assignments into a face-to-face principles course with 500 students, and an online course with 400 students, also appears in the JEE (Cohen and Williams 2019).

Prior to authoring Micro/Macro Economics for Life, he was a long-time creator of educational materials, starting in 1992 and continuing through eight editions of Study Guides for the Parkin and Bade introductory Economics textbooks. 

Avi was an early adopter of technologies. After a 2003 visit to the University of Central Florida (award-winning pioneers in online and blended learning) he created a UCF-like 10-week faculty development course called do TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning), training instructors interested in transforming traditional courses into blended and online formats.

Professor Cohen is a member of  the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education (AEACEE), and the winner of numerous teaching awards, including the 3M Teaching Fellowship , Canada's most prestigious national award for educational leadership.

Scott Wolla is the economic education coordinator at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he develops economics curricula including lessons, online learning modules, videos, and podcasts, and provides professional development. He has a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from St. Louis University, M.A. in economics for educators from the University of Delaware, M.S. from Bemidji State University, and B.S. from Minnesota State University Moorhead.  He has produced over 300 published teaching resources, including lessons, online learning modules, videos, articles, and podcasts. He is the voice and face of the popular Economic Lowdown podcast and video series, and he is a primary author and content editor of Page One Economics. 

His research and pedagogy articles appear in The Journal of Economic Education, The American Economist, Review of Political Economy, Journal of Economics Teaching, Social Education, and Social Studies Research and Practice; and he has written chapters for books such as Innovations in Economic Education: Promising Practices for Teachers and Students K-16. His work has been highlighted by major news media including The Economist, National Public Radio, Bloomberg News, and BBC News.
Scott is a leader on diversity-related issues in economic education. In 2018 he launched the award-winning St. Louis Fed Women in Economics Symposium to encourage collegiate women to pursue economics.  And, as chair of Federal Reserve Education, in the weeks of unrest following the death of George Floyd, he led a series of webinars under the banner of Discussing Race in the Economics Classroom, the series broke new ground and set attendance records for the Federal Reserve System Economic Education Committee. 

In 2019, seeing the monetary policy curriculum gap he partnered with an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to design a national public information campaign to inform instructors of the significant changes to policy and to support them with teaching resources as they made the transition to teaching new material. In doing so, they changed the way American instructors teach monetary policy. Their work was featured in The Economist and National Public Radio's popular economics program and podcast, The Indicator. 
Scott has served on the Federal Reserve Economic Education Leads Committee since 2015 and was served as Chair the Federal Reserve System Economic Education Committee in 2019-2020. He also serves on the executive board of the National Association of Economic Educators (NAEE); and in 2020 NAEE awarded him the Bessie B. Moore Service Award in recognition for his service to economic education community. In addition, he was awarded the 2018 St. Louis Fed President's Award for Innovation for the Women in Economics Symposium. 

Prior to the St. Louis Fed, Scott taught economics and history in Minnesota for  fourteen years. During that time, he was the winner of numerous teaching awards  including the 3M Economic Educator Excellence Award (2006) and the Innovative  Economic Educator Award (2003) by the Minnesota Council on Economic Education.  Scott currently teaches economics as an adjunct at Washington University in St. Louis.

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