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Starting econ at uni - good A-Level textbook to start with?

I've got an offer for philosophy and economics at Leeds, but I don't do economics A-Level. There's a 'intro to economics' course for people who only did maths, which I'll be taking, but I thought it might also be useful to work my way through an a-level economics textbook over the holidays. Does anyone who does economics have a suggestion of a good one? Thanks

Reply 1

MagicNMedicine

Principles of Economics by Greg Mankiw is the best starter one if you haven't done economics before.

Reply 2

.ACS.

I wouldn't bother with an A-Level textbook. Just start with a solid introductory text.

For microeconomics, I think http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microeconomics-Jeffrey-Perloff/dp/0273754602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336495462&sr=8-1 is a great intro text as it assumes no knowledge whatsoever. It doesn't even make use of calculus, only graphical and verbal analysis, which is good to give you a grounding in the intuition.

For a broad introduction to both micro and macro in a single text, I'm a big fan of http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Richard-Lipsey/dp/0199563381/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336495574&sr=1-1 and actually used it instead of my A-Level texts. (It's a first year intro text so goes way beyond A-Level but it's really good in terms of intuition etc. and I really enjoyed the macro component.)

I'm yet to find a solid introductory macro text, to be honest. We used http://www.amazon.co.uk/Macroeconomics-MyEconLab-Michael-Parkin/dp/0273753711/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336495657&sr=1-2 in our first year, but I wasn't a huge fan.

Hope this helps. :smile: