Free Alternatives to Mankiw's Principles of Economics (Save $170)
Mankiw's Principles of Economics is the best-selling economics textbook in the world, and it costs about $170 new. Intro economics, however, is one of the best-covered subjects in open publishing — several complete, peer-reviewed, free textbooks teach the same ten principles, supply and demand, elasticity, market structures, and macro fundamentals.
The direct replacements
Principles of Economics 3e (OpenStax)
by Rice University
A complete micro + macro intro text, free as PDF or web. Chapter coverage maps closely to Mankiw — this is the default choice.
The Economy (CORE Econ)
by CORE Team
A genuinely modern free textbook built by an international consortium — teaches economics through real data, inequality, and climate questions. Used at UCL and dozens of universities. Choose this if Mankiw bores you.
Principles of Microeconomics / Macroeconomics (OpenStax)
by Rice University
The same OpenStax material split into single-semester volumes, matching how most courses are structured.
Classic texts worth reading alongside
- •The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith) — public domain; read selectively, Book I especially
- •Essays in Persuasion (John Maynard Keynes) — public domain in many countries; Keynes was a superb writer
- •Economic Sophisms (Frédéric Bastiat) — free, short, and the wittiest defense of free trade ever written
Making a free text work for a Mankiw course
Match by topic, not chapter number. Every intro course covers the same sequence: scarcity and trade-offs, supply and demand, elasticity, consumer/producer surplus, market failures, then GDP, inflation, unemployment, and monetary policy. OpenStax covers each with the same graphs. The end-of-chapter problems differ from your problem sets, but the concepts tested are identical — and CORE's interactive charts often explain them better than static textbook figures.
Search "OpenStax economics" or any classic title on ANYFREEBOOK to jump straight to the legitimate free source.
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