Essentials of Economics

Foster Economics Skills in Every Student—For Life

As award-winning professors who research and specialize in economics education, authors Dirk Mateer, Lee Coppock, and Brian O’Roark know how to engage and motivate students. In the new third edition, Essentials of Economics continues to anticipate where students need help and provides the right nudges needed to succeed in the one-semester course. New lead media author Dr. Carla Nietfeld now scaffolds interactive, assignable learning features throughout the courseware, and the team also emphasizes AI literacy in both the text content and new teaching tools. With features that emphasize how students can build economic skills for life and a cutting-edge courseware package, this text nurtures students’ problem-solving skills and brings you best-in-class teaching techniques that have engaged thousands of students.

Highlights of this edition’s new content:

• New coverage of recent tariffs and AI in the micro and macroeconomy help students learn more about these hot news topics, and a revised Chapter 17: “Money and the Federal Reserve,” offers a tested approach to teaching and learning the Fed’s new monetary policy tools.
• New interactives created by Dr. Carla Nietfeld are scaffolded throughout the courseware, expanding students’ hands-on learning and building economic intuition as they try them.
• NEW Economics at Work profiles showcase how recent grads are using Principles concepts in their current jobs and careers, and updated chapter openers highlight key life skills students will learn in each chapter.
• NEW Economics in the Media examples make economics fun and relatable, and new coverage of tariffs and AI help students apply what they’ve learned to these hot topics.
• Updated Office Hours videos have been reworked in an animated format, and include math reviews, as well as coverage of AI in Economics.
• NEW Norton AI in the Norton Illumine Ebook boosts student engagement and is grounded in your textbook’s trusted content. Norton AI uses a powerful generative AI engine with strategic guardrails to support—but not replace!—the process of learning.
• Updated Smartwork and InQuizitive courses now include 80 new Economics in the News questions. Additional new questions also use Dr. Nietfeld’s interactives, providing cohesion across the courseware and deepening students’ exploration of concepts.
• NEW spiral-bound instructor supplement, Best of the Ultimate Guide to Teaching Economics, provides tools and ideas to help instructors engage their in-person, hybrid, and online classrooms. This manual offers curated “best” tips for teaching each chapter, a new primer and activities for using AI, and support for using the 1,000+ resources on the full Norton Teaching Tools site.