Economics Courses Online

Since Winter Quarter of 1997, when I tought BCC's first transfer-credit fully online course, I have been adapting economics courses to the online environment. At present, each of our three basic courses (Survey of Economics, Principles of Macroeconomics, and Principles of Microeconomics) is offered online during every quarter except Summer. A new course on the economics of information technology (Economics 270) is only offered online. Information on online economics courses is available at Economics online at BCC.

Online Textbook for the Survey Course in Economics

Human Society and the Global Economy is a textbook-in-progress for the survey course. It will be freely available online until it is finished, then it will be published by Atomic Dog Publishing.Com, a new publisher of online college textbooks. It should be completed by January, 2002.

This text takes an institutionalist/Post-Keynesian approach to economics. The organization of the book is primarily historical -- following the intertwined development of the global capitalist economy and of economics from the beginning of capitalism to the present. Themes that are examined include: micro-order and macro-order; market and state; development, growth and evolution of the capitalist economy; technology and society; distribution of income and wealth; and the visions of the major economists.

The Information Economy

The microchip-based technological developments of the last two decades will have a profound impact on the structure of the future economy. Mainstream economists see them as little more than an extension of the trends that began with the industrial revolution. Schumpeterians see another "gale of creative destruction" that will be temporarily destabilizing but will bring vast benefits in the near future without any need to seriously restructure the basic institutions of capitalism. Both of these perspectives are based on a superficial analysis of our current economic institutions. One of my current projects is a series of essays exploring the effect that the new technologies are likely to have on our economic/institutional structure.

Web Materials for Principles Text

I am currently developing materials for the Web site which will accompany the 4th edition of David Colander's Principles of Economics texts (Macroeconomics and Microeconomics) published by McGraw-Hill. The Web site will come online in time for Winter quarter, 2001. The materials include a set of Web Notes for each chapter of the text