This summer we will again be offering Stanford’s Principles of Economics course online.  The course is more important than ever.

We will offer a for-credit online Principles of Economics course for matriculated Stanford students, students from other colleges and universities, and high school students in Stanford’s Summer Session. To register for the course, go here. The course starts on Monday, June 22 with the first week’s video-lectures and other course content. This is the same as the on-campus course, Economics 1, which I give at Stanford during the academic year, and it fulfills all the same requirements. In addition to watching the video-lectures online, you get course credit by doing regular weekly graded homework, taking three tests online, and participating in a weekly lively session with dedicated teaching assistants. We will all have regular office hours by Zoom, and we will discuss important current events including the economic impact of COVID-19.

We will also offer an open online Principles of Economics course for the general public.  To get more information and sign up, go here. This course also begins on Monday, June 22. These video-lecture are also based on my on-campus Stanford course.  People who watch the video-lectures in this open online course and take short quizzes can earn a Certificate.

These on-line courses cover all of economics at a basic level.  They stress the key idea that economics is about making purposeful choice with limited resources and about people interacting with other people as they make these choices. Most of those interactions occur in markets, and this course is mainly about markets, including the market for bikes on campus, or labor markets, or capital markets.  We will show why free competitive markets work well to improve people’s lives and how they have removed millions from people from poverty around the world, with many more, we hope, still to come.

For both the for-credit course and the open course the textbook is Principles of Economics by John B. Taylor and Akila Weerapana, and it is available online.

I am looking forward to summer quarter. Virtual online economics courses are, of course, becoming much more popular with the Coronavirus epidemic and many campuses closed. But, economics is more important than ever, and we have been doing the online course for several years now, and have a great deal of experience, including the just completed Spring quarter as COVID-19 was spreading around the world. Here is a sampling of views about the online course, either for the general public or for credit, which have been posted on Twitter:

Russell Roberts‏ @EconTalker: Great class. Great teacher. No charge. Get your basics right here.

Ike Brannon‏ @coachbuckethead: The most entertaining economist I know.

Brian Wesbury‏ @wesbury:  If you want to learn Economics from one of the best, click on this link!  What great news!

Juan Carlos Martinez‏ @juank700410: Educación gratuita y de calidad

Tom Church @TomVChurch Interested in economics? Take Econ-1 online. Pass the quizzes and get a statement of accomplishment! Plus, you’ll learn a thing or two.

Chris Pippin @ChrisPippin This is the class and the professor that made me an Econ major. Thanks to the generosity of @EconomicsOne and the miracle of the internet, now anyone can take it.

Nicolas Petit  @CompetitionProf Great course by terrific teacher, comprehensive & more than all eye opening on real world problems like trade wars and monetary policy.