“Stories are good for us, whether we hear them, read them, write them, or simply imagine them. But stories that we read are particularly good for us. In fact I believe they are essential.”

Frank Smith, Reading: FAQ

More than a decade ago, when Robin and I began writing the first edition of this textbook, we had many small ideas: particular aspects of economics that we believed weren’t covered the right way in existing textbooks. But we also had one big idea: the belief that an economics textbook could and should be built around narratives, that it should never lose sight of the fact that economics is, in the end, a set of stories about what people do.

Many of the stories economists tell take the form of models—for whatever else they are, economic models are stories about how the world works. But we believed that students’ understanding of and appreciation for models would be greatly enhanced if they were presented, as much as possible, in the context of stories about the real world, stories that both illustrate economic concepts and touch on the concerns we all face as individuals living in a world shaped by economic forces.

Those stories have been integrated into every edition, including this one. Once again, you’ll find them in the openers, in special features like Economics in Action, For Inquiring Minds, Global Comparison, and in our business cases. We have been gratified by the reception this storytelling approach has received and in this edition of Economics we continue to expand the book’s appeal by including many new stories on a broad range of topics, and by updating and revising others. Specifically, there are 8 new opening stories, 19 new Economics in Actions, and 8 new business cases. As always, a significant number of the features that aren’t completely new have been revised or updated.

We remain extremely fortunate in our reviewers, who have put in an immense amount of work helping us to make this book even better. And we are also deeply thankful to the users who have given us feedback, telling us what works and, even more important, what doesn’t.

Despite the many changes in this new edition, we’ve tried to keep the spirit the same. This is a book about economics as the study of what people do and how they interact, a study very much informed by real-world experience.