Largely to recommend to others, I’m looking for free or cheap, but good, resources on economics, ones people might use for self-education. I’ve listed some about which I’m aware below, though I haven’t looked in detail at all of them, so the extent to which they—or that to which they link—are “good” is not fully known to me. I’m specifically not looking for health economics, and my interest is a bit tilted toward micro vs. macro, but not strongly. Nevertheless, if you’re aware of good stuff in the econ realm of any flavor, or have used any of the following, let me know what you think.
- Marginal Revolution University
- EconLib/EconTalk (My, now pretty old, review of EconTalk is here. I’ve also been a guest on the program.)
- Economics For Dummies (Don’t laugh. Every Dummies book I’ve read, including this one, is good.)
- Microeconoics Principles, by Rittenberg and Tregarthen (free, online text, which I have not examined closely)
- Jon Gruber’s Principles of Economics (MIT Open Courseware)
- WikiEducator’s list of free, online economics texts
- A list of microeconomics e-books
- Mark Thoma’s course videos
- Quick Notes Economics
- Economics: A Very Short Introduction, by Partha Dasgupta
- The Little Book of Economics, by Greg Ip
- Advanced material: Advanced Macroeconoics, by David Romer; Asset Pricing (Coursera); Intermediate Microeconomics, by Hal Varian (painfully slow download for me on this last one)
- Much more in the comments
Though they can be high-cost if bought new, feel free to mention textbooks you like. Sometimes one can find them used or older editions for prices that someone intending to self-educate might pay. For what it’s worth, the texts I’ve read most closely are by Cowen and Tabarrok. I was impressed by their micro book and also enjoyed their macro one, some of my thoughts on which are here. Also, I’ve read and contributed to Health Economics, by Santerre and Neun. With that bias in mind, I recommend it.
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