Real World Micro (33rd edition)

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

Edition: 33rd
Date of publication: June 2026
ISBN: 978-1-939402-76-9 
Pages: 420

The thoroughly updated and revised 33rd edition of Real World Micro contains new articles addressing the latest real-world issues and controversies—including the effects of the Trump tariffs, the “affordability” crisis, the economics of Trump’s war with Iran, 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, 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
    
  • 1.6    The Underestimated “Price of Parenting”
    Nancy Folbre 
• Chapter 2: Supply and Demand
  • Introduction
  • 2.1 Price Gouging: It’s Just Supply and Demand
    Marc Breslow
  • 2.2 The Economics of Trump's War with Iran
  • 2.3 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
    
  • 2.6 "Living Off the Land”: The Real Prison Economy of Barter and Hustle
    Tyler Bowman
    
    
• Chapter 3: Consumers
  • Introduction
  • 3.1 Discredited: The Ham-fisted Tyranny of the Credit Agency Oligopoly
    Rob Larson
  • 3.2 The U.S. Corporations Profiting from the Israeli Occupation
    Nick French
  • 3.3 After Horror, Change?
    John Miller
  • 3.4  Starving the Safety Net
    Kalena Thomhave
  • 3.5  The Social and Economic Impact of Weight Gain
    Mark Maier
• 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 Control the Vampire Companies
    Jayati Ghosh
  • 4.5 Taylor's Digital Stopwatch
    Robert Ovetz
  • 4.6 As Boeing  Cracks, Is It Capitalism, or Kafka?   
    Marie Christine Duggan  
    
  • 4.7 Silicon Valley Fractures
    James M. Cypher
    
  • 4.8    The High Costs of the Cloud
    Kalena Thomhave 
• 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
    
  • 5.7    Forsake Some, Fleece the Rest
    Kenny Stancil       
• 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 A Carbon Tax Alone Will Not Solve Climate Change
    John Miller
    
  • 6.5    Dirty Subsidies
    James K. Boyce     
  • 6.6    How to End Wars for Oil: Stop Burning Oil Altogether
    Arthur MacEwan    
  • 6.7    Mega-Dams, Mega-Trouble
    Marianne Hill     
    
    
• Chapter 7: Labor Markets
  • Introduction
  • 7.1 What Is the State of Organized Labor?
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 7.2 Short Staffing
    Mike Prokosch
  • 7.3 Putting Children to Work
    John Miller
  • 7.4 Worker Power at Amazon
    Peter Olney and Rand Wilson   
    
  • 7.5    A Night in the Life of an Amazon Warehouse Worker
    Rose Baker
  • 7.6 Mass Deportations Drain Economic Growth
    John Miller 
  • 7.7 Worker Power Comes from Workers
    Amanda Page-Hoongrajok 
  • 7.8 Wage Stagnation vs. Living Wages for U.S. Workers Today
    Robert Pollin 
  • 7.9 $30 by 2030
    Noah Ranz-Lind
    
    
• Chapter 8: The Distribution of Income and Wealh
  • Introduction
  • 8.1 Geese, Golden Eggs, and Traps
    Chris Tilly
  • 8.2 The American Dream, We Hardly Knew You
    John Miller
  • 8.3 Is the Gender Pay Gap by Choice?
    Lynn Duggan
  • 8.4 Race Inequality, Class Inequality
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 8.5 Economic Inequality and Homelessness
    Arthur MacEwan
  • 8.6 Concentration of Stock Ownership
    Ed Ford
    
  • 8.7 The Heavy, Unequal Burden of Student Debt
    Nick French
    
    
• Chapter 9: Taxation
  • Introduction
  • 9.1 The Great Tax-Cut Experiment
    Gerald Friedman
  • 9.2 The Undertaxed Rich
    John Miller
  • 9.3 A Trillion Dollars in One Year, and No New Taxes
    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
    
  • 9.7    Mamdani Needs to Catch the Value-Capture Bus
    Polly Cleveland
• 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 Trump’s Lump of Coal
    Zoe Sherman
  • 10.7 Economists, the Trump Tariffs, and Alternatives
    Arthur MacEwan   
  • 10.7 SWIFT, the U.S. Dollar, and the Global Political Economy of Trade
    Bill Barclay
  • 10.8 China’s Dangerous Inflection Point
    Bill Barclay