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

Published by Pearson Canada (January 31, 2024) © 2025
  • Avi J. Cohen
  • Scott Wolla

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 GenAI Study Tool

We’ve heard how important it is for students to use reliable AI tools in responsible and productive ways. To that end, Pearson is focused on creating tools that combine the power of generative AI with trusted Pearson content to provide students with a simplified study experience, delivering on-demand and personalised support that compliments your teaching and aligns with the text you’ve chosen. The Study Tool is available to students who access the Pearson eText on its own or through MyLab.

What can the AI Study Tool do?

  • Generate simplified explanations of challenging sections
  • Summarize material to help learners focus on key topics and ideas
  • Students can ask for multiple choice or short answer questions related to a specific chapter or section to help fill knowledge gaps
  • For extra practice, students can also generate flashcards and notes based on their chat interaction with the tool

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.

Key features

Important Digital Assets in MyLab Economics

  • New GenAI Study Tool. We’ve heard how important it is for students to use reliable AI tools in responsible and productive ways. To that end, Pearson is focused on creating tools that combine the power of generative AI with trusted Pearson content to provide students with a simplified study experience, delivering on-demand and personalised support that compliments your teaching and aligns with the text you’ve chosen.
  • 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

About our authors

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 and a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan. Professor Cohen is a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; 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 the 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 of Economics of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement. The Journal of Economic Education was followed by 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.

Professor Cohen 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 a lifelong economic educator and curriculum developer. As assistant vice president and economic education officer, he directs economic education programming at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He earned a PhD in curriculum and instruction from Saint Louis University, an MA in economics for educators from the University of Delaware, an MS from Bemidji State University, and a BS from Minnesota State University Moorhead.

He has produced more than 300 published teaching resources, including lessons, online learning modules, videos, articles, and podcasts. He has hosted the popular Economic Lowdown podcast and video series, hosts the Teach Economics podcast, and is a primary author and content editor of Page One Economics.

His research on economics education and pedagogy has appeared 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. He has also contributed chapters to books, including Innovations in Economic Education: Promising Practices for Teachers and Students K–16.

In 2019, recognizing a gap in monetary policy curricula, Scott partnered with an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to develop a national public-information campaign explaining significant changes in how the Federal Reserve implements monetary policy. Together, they created teaching resources to help instructors incorporate the new framework into their courses. Their work helped modernize the teaching of monetary policy and was featured in The Economist, The New York Times, and NPR’s economics podcast The Indicator.

From 2024 to 2025, Scott led a Federal Reserve System initiative to launch Federal Reserve Education, a national website that brings together hundreds of classroom resources, interactive learning modules, and professional development opportunities for K–16 educators.

Scott is a member of the American Economic Association’s Committee on Economic Education (AEA-CEE) and a trustee of the Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics Foundation. He also served on the writing team for the third edition of the National Content Standards in K–12 Economics. From 2015 to 2022, he served on the Federal Reserve Economic Education Leads Committee, which he chaired from 2019 to 2020. He also served on the executive board of the National Association of Economic Educators (NAEE) from 2019 to 2022. In 2020, NAEE presented him with the Bessie B. Moore Service Award in recognition of his service to the economic education community. He also received the St. Louis Fed’s 2018 President’s Award for Innovation for creating the Women in Economics Symposium.

Before joining the St. Louis Fed, Scott taught economics and history in Minnesota for 14 years. During that time, he received numerous teaching awards, including the 2006 3M Economic Educator Excellence Award and the Minnesota Council on Economic Education’s 2003 Innovative Economic Educator Award. Currently, Scott teaches economics as an adjunct instructor at Washington University in St. Louis.

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