Real World Micro (32nd edition)

Edited by Rob Larson, Alejandro Reuss, Bryan Snyder, Chris Sturr,
and the Dollars & Sense collective

Note: If you are a student at UMass-Amherst, please order through Collective Copies/Levellers Press (link here), or you may want to purchase a copy at Collective Copies at 71 S. Pleasant St. in Amherst. If you order through Dollars & Sense, there may be significant delays.

The thoroughly updated and revised 32nd edition of Real World Micro contains new articles addressing the latest real-world issues and controversies—including the effects of the Trump tariffs on supply chains, the economic causes of Boeing’s troubled safety record, and the demise of China’s growth model—and ongoing issues such as the minimum wage, tech monopolies, the “gig” economy, concentration of stock ownership, and trade policy. The articles in Real World Micro bring complex topics to life and highlight the effects of economic change on communities, workers, and the environment.

Organized to follow the outline of a standard economics text, the book includes a brief introduction for each chapter, including discussion questions for all articles, to help students relate the articles to the theories in standard textbooks. Its contents provide vivid, real-world illustrations of key economic concepts.

Real World Micro’s well-researched, readable articles are drawn from the pages of Dollars & Sense, the leading magazine of popular economics.

Praise for Real World Micro:

"The principles of economics books (yes, even mine) tend to be on the dull side and leave aspects of the economy and economics unchallenged. Real World Micro and Macro can spice up your course and lead students to ask the type of questions they should be asking." —DAVID COLANDER, Middlebury College

"I’ve had great success with Real World Micro. Students really like its short, snappy analysis of current events and feel challenged by its alternative viewpoint." —SUSAN HELPER, Case Western Reserve University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note: This is the table of contents for the latest (32nd) edition of Real World Micro. If you are ordering a pdf of an earlier edition of this title, please ask your instructor for that edition's table of contents, and make sure you order your pdf using the URL your instructor gave you.

• Chapter 1: Perspectives on Microeconomic Theory
  
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 The Unreal Basis of Neoclassical Economics
    Al Campbell, Ann Davis, David Fields, Paddy Quick, Jared Ragusett, and Geoffrey Schneider
  • 1.2 Shaking the Invisible Hand
    Chris Tilly
    
  • 1.3 Freedom, Equity, and Efficiency
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 1.4 Sharing the Wealth of the Commons
    Peter Barnes
  • 1.5 Why and How the Economics Discipline Must Change
    Jayati Ghosh
    
    
• Chapter 2: Supply and Demand
  • Introduction
  • 2.1 Price Gouging: It’s Just Supply and Demand
    Marc Breslow
  • 2.2 The Economics of Residential Rent Control
    Stephen Barton
  • 2.3 Getting Up to Speed on the Minimum Wage
    John Miller
    
  • 2.4 Brewing Inequality
    Saurav Sarkar
  • 2.5 Getting Stuff from Here to There
    Bill Barclay
  • 2.6 "Living Off the Land”: The Real Prison Economy of Barter and Hustle
    Tyler Bowman
    
    
• Chapter 3: Consumers
  • Introduction
  • 3.1 Wealth, Inequality, and All That
    Bill Barclay
  • 3.2 Discredited: The Ham-fisted Tyranny of the Credit Agency Oligopoly
    Rob Larson
  • 3.3 Forced Arbitration Is Bad for Consumers
    Heidi Shierholz
  • 3.4 The Limits of Ethical Consumerism
    Marc Triller
    
  • 3.5 The U.S. Corporations Profiting from the Israeli Occupation
    Nick French
  • 3.6 After Horror, Change?
    John Miller
  • 3.7 The Future of Work, Leisure, and Consumption
    An Interview with Juliet Schor
    
    
• Chapter 4: Firms, Production, and Profit Maximization
  • Introduction
  • 4.1 What Are Corporations?
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 4.2 If Corporations Are People, What Kind of People Are They?
    Geoff Schneider
  • 4.3 Pursuing Profits—Or Power?
    James K. Boyce
  • 4.4 “Free” Labor and Unequal Freedom of Expression
    Zoe Sherman
  • 4.5 Control the Vampire Companies
    Jayati Ghosh
  • 4.6 Taylor's Digital Stopwatch
    Robert Ovetz
  • 4.7 As Boeing  Cracks, Is It Capitalism, or Kafka?   
    Marie Christine Duggan  
    
  • 4.8 Silicon Valley Fractures
    James M. Cypher
    
    
• Chapter 5: Market Failure I: Market Power
  • Introduction
  • 5.1 Is Small Beautiful? Is Big Better?
    Chris Tilly
  • 5.2 A Brief History of Mergers and Antitrust Policy
    Edward Herman
  • 5.3 Monopoly Everywhere
    Armağan Gezici
  • 5.4 TikTok’s Enshittification
    Cory Doctorow
  • 5.5 The Monster That Government Made
    Marie Christine Duggan  
  • 5.6 The Landlord Lobby Fights Dirty
    Sam Knight
    
    
• Chapter 6: Market Failure II: Externalities
  • Introduction
  • 6.1 Why the Climate Crisis Is Also the Crisis of Capitalism
    Ying Chen and Güney Işikara
  • 6.2 Pricing the Priceless
    Lisa Heinzerling and Frank Ackerman
  • 6.3 Can We Afford a Stable Climate?
    Frank Ackerman
    
  • 6.4 Inequality and Climate Change
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 6.5 A Carbon Tax Alone Will Not Solve Climate Change
    John Miller
    
  • 6.6 A Battle Over Copper in Colombia
    Austin Landis
    
    
• Chapter 7: Labor Markets
  • Introduction
  • 7.1 What Is the State of Organized Labor?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 7.2 Household Labor, Caring Labor, Unpaid Labor
    Nancy Folbre
  • 7.3 The Opening Moves in the New War on Workers
    Nick French
  • 7.4 Short Staffing
    Mike Prokosch
  • 7.5 Putting Children to Work
    John Miller
  • 7.6 Worker Power at Amazon
    Peter Olney and Rand Wilson   
    
  • 7.7 Immigrants Create Jobs for U.S. Workers
    Ed Ford
    
    
• Chapter 8: The Distribution of Income and Wealh
  • Introduction
  • 8.1 Geese, Golden Eggs, and Traps
    Chris Tilly
  • 8.2 The Rise of Income Inequality in the United States
    Alejandro Reuss
  • 8.3 Is the Gender Pay Gap by Choice?
    Lynn Duggan
  • 8.4 Undervaluation Is a Certainty
    An Interview with Michelle Holder
  • 8.5 Economic Inequality and Homelessness
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 8.6 Concentration of Stock Ownership
    Ed Ford
  • 8.7 Race Inequality, Class Inequality
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 8.8 The Heavy, Unequal Burden of Student Debt
    Nick French
    
    
• Chapter 9: Taxation
  • Introduction
  • 9.1 The Great Tax-Cut Experiment
    Gerald Friedman
  • 9.2 A Trillion Dollars in One Year, and No New Taxes
    John Miller
    
  • 9.3 The Optimal Tax
    John Miller
  • 9.4 Corporate Taxes: Less, Less, and Less
    Arthur MacEwan
    
  • 9.5 Millionaires’ Tax Reality Back at You
    John Miller
  • 9.6 The Potential of Tax Reform in Latin America
    C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh
    
    
• Chapter 10: Trade and Development
  • Introduction
  • 10.1 Comparative Advantage
    Ramaa Vasudevan
  • 10.2 The Globalization Clock
    Thomas Palley
    
  • 10.3 Does U.S. Prosperity Depend on Exploitation?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 10.4 Globalization in Crisis
    John Miller
  • 10.5 Trump's Dumb and Dumber Tariffs
    John Miller
    
  • 10.6 SWIFT, the U.S. Dollar, and the Global Political Economy of Trade
    Bill Barclay
  • 10.7 China’s Dangerous Inflection Point
    Bill Barclay
  • 10.8 Whatever Happened to Development?
    Jawied Nawabi

Edition: 32nd
Date of publication: June 2025
ISBN: 978-1-939402-79-0 
Pages: 400
Price: $55.00