Introduction to Economic Analysis is a university microeconomics textbook by Caltech Professor Preston McAfee. It is available free of charge under Creative Commons (an open source) license; under this "license that requires attribution, users can pick and choose chapters or integrate with their own material".
Introduction to Economic Analysis was the first published complete textbook being openly available online. McAfee was named SPARC innovator for year 2009 for making the book freely accessible.
The book has been updated three times since it was first introduced. Version 2 is available online from Professor McAfee.
Version 3 is co-authored with Professor Tracy Lewis of the Fuqua School of Business and was published by Flat World Knowledge in 2009 under a Creative Commons license. Introduction to Economic Analysis is already in use on campuses from Harvard to New York University.
Famous quotes containing the words introduction to, introduction, economic and/or analysis:
“Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For better or worse, stepparenting is self-conscious parenting. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
—Anonymous Parent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)
“The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)