CORE Econ was conceived in late 2012,[4] by Professors Wendy Carlin of University College London, Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute, and Oscar Landerretche [es], who at that time was Director of the School of Economics and Business of the University of Chile.
ISIPE, for example, argued that "teaching in economics departments is too narrowly focused and more effort should be made to broaden the curriculum".
In it, economic actors are amoral and self-interested, perfectly competitive market prices equate supply to demand implementing "optimal" outcomes, while environmental degradation, instability, and inequality are afterthoughts at best … Yet it continues as the backbone of much undergraduate teaching.
"[8]Launched in October 2013 at HM Treasury,[9] CORE Econ said its mission was to address these issues by creating a textbook incorporating contributions from many academics with different points of view that was "humbler, more empirical and more topical".
They will learn to use evidence from history, experiments and other data sources to test competing explanations and policies.
"[11] CORE Econ's courses are offered through open access online ebooks published on its web site.
In 2017, a print version of The Economy 1.0 was published by Oxford University Press [13] and has been self-published by CORE Econ since 2022.
All projects come with step-by-step instructions and exercise solutions and students can decide to complete them in R, Excel, Google Sheets or Python.
Other prominent economists have contributed to the published material,[17] including Nobel laureates James Heckman, Alvin Roth and Joseph Stiglitz, who recorded videos for it on inequality in education, matching markets and the financial crisis.
"[20][21]CORE Econ argues that concepts developed in the second half of the 20th century, such as asymmetric information, strategic social interactions and incomplete contracts should be given greater prominence in undergraduate teaching.
"[20] Several authors have researched on CORE Econ's curriculum and written about its innovations and how it helps students learn economics.
The Economist wrote that "[e]arly results are promising": The Economy does not dumb down economics; it uses maths readily, keeping students engaged through the topicality of the material.
Quite early on, students have lessons in the weirdness in economics—from game theory to power dynamics within firms—that makes the subject fascinating and useful but are skimmed over in most introductory courses.
[24]In The New Yorker, John Cassidy wrote that "The members of the core team deserve credit for responding to the critics of economics without pandering to them.
[26] Bethan Staton highlighted in the Financial Times how CORE Econ's "fresh approach to teaching that grounds economics in the real world" has been gathering steam in business schools too.
"[28] Some curriculum reform campaigners have criticised CORE Econ for being too narrow and prescriptive, and not acknowledging competing schools of thought.
But real critical pluralism that reflects the true diversity of real-world perspectives is still a long way off.
Yuan Yang, one of the founders of Rethinking Economics, told The Financial Times that: "Core is not a pluralist curriculum ...