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Editor’s Note
Gossip:
PAE and the economics textbook industry
Recent conversation and correspondence with the head commissioning editors at
three of the world’s largest publishers of English-language economics
textbooks reveal that they anticipate the need to make fundamental changes in
their product lines as a result of the PAE
movement. The growing view in the
industry is that the nature of demand in the economics textbook market is
changing, especially for entry level textbooks.
One editor reports that his firm is planning a book for the first-year
principles market with characteristics I would ascribe to a pluralistic
approach . . such as a rejection of
rote rehearsal of neo-classical theory just because that is always how it’s
been done, and a recognition that books must relate theory to the real-world
and capture the imagination of students.”
Another publisher who is already about to go to press with an explicitly
pluralistic textbook for business economics, is actively seeking an author or
authors for a new first-year principles textbook constructed on pluralist
lines. “What we want”, explained the
editor, “is a text that begins with neoclassical economics, maybe the first
two or three chapters, and then quickly moves on to introduce the student to
other approaches.”
It takes on average three years for a publisher to bring a new major
economics textbook onto the market and then at least a second edition before
it can hope to capture a significant market share. Commissioning editors are now doubly
nervous about the future of this market.
Economics textbooks have long been a big earner for these publishers,
but now are increasingly less so as enrolments for undergraduate economics
courses continue to fall. But there is
also PAE and the perceived movement away from the
neoclassical hegemony. Commissioning editors
appear to regard this as the joker in the pack. It could save them or ruin them. If PAE inspired
textbooks were widely adopted in universities it could bring back the
students and raise textbook sales to previous or even higher levels. But if a textbook publisher holds back now
from investing in pluralist and reality-based textbooks, it could find
itself, as one editor put it, “without a product to sell” in a new market
situation. The market for PAE textbooks may currently be small, but editors are mindful of the possibility
that the movement away from neoclassical economics could at some point
accelerate dramatically, especially as economics teachers scramble to save
their jobs.
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