Consumers and the economy

While existing textbooks of economics are quite adequate for conveying information and techniques of analysis, they do not equally successfully do what is the ostensible aim of most courses in social studies: induce students to think for themselves.

This textbook aims to stimulate awareness of existing controversies and differing approaches to the subject of economics. It introduces the reader to some of the basic concepts, problems and controversies while at the same time putting forward some positive proposals for improving the position of consumers.

The book will be of use in general economic studies as a supplement to existing textbooks, approaching the subject from the standpoint of economic policy. More particularly it may be of use where an inter-disciplinary approach to social studies is being attempted, as a discussion of consumers necessarily involves crossing several disciplinary borderlines. Such approaches are in courses on liberal studies; courses on comparative economic systems, for which the position of the consumer is a useful starting-point; courses of management studies, as economic efficiency can be approached from the consumer's as well as the producer's side.