The Interior — Economics · Every band

Economics

The whole course on one page, band by band: every unit with its chapters, sections and numbered lessons. Tap a lesson to open it. A tick means you got all three checks right.

← Economics, every band

8 units 16 chapters 187 lessons 0 done
Band

Grades 9–10

4 units · 8 chapters · 92 lessons

Drawn scene: a student seen from behind at a lamplit table one evening, a paycheck and a work apron on one side and a stack of study books on the other, with a road forking toward a diner and a school through the window
1Unit

Scarcity, Choice and Opportunity Cost

Foundations
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Chapter

Scarcity Is Not a Shortage

The Economic Problem

The storyTwenty-Four Hours — On a Sunday night a Chicago junior adds up everything she wants to do on Monday and discovers the day is seven hours short.

The storyThe Shift or the Game — A Peoria junior gets two offers for the same Saturday afternoon and has to work out what each one really costs.

Drawn scene: a farmers’ market at golden hour, striped awnings over crates of fruit and a lemonade stand with a hand-lettered price board, shoppers seen from behind
2Unit

Supply, Demand and the Market

Markets
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Chapter

Demand and Supply

The Curves

The storyNinety-Six Degrees on Maple Street — Two lemonade stands, one heat wave, and a price that would not sit still.

Chapter

Equilibrium and Elasticity

Market Outcomes

The storyFace Value: $75. Resale: $300. — Eighteen thousand seats, a hundred thousand fans, and a price on the ticket that nobody actually paid.

Drawn scene: a long line of cars waiting at a lit gas station at dusk, while a factory smokestack’s plume drifts over a row of houses in the distance
3Unit

Prices, Controls and Market Failure

Markets
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Chapter

Ceilings, Floors and Rationing

Price Controls

The storyThe Winter the Pumps Ran Dry — In the 1970s, American drivers waited in lines that stretched around the block, and the reason was not only a lack of oil.

Chapter

Externalities and Public Goods

Market Failure

The storyThe Bill Nobody Sent — A paper mill, a river, and a town twenty miles downstream that never signed a contract with anyone.

Drawn scene: a small print shop at night with a screen-printing press and stacks of folded shirts under a hanging lamp, while a big-box store’s lit sign glows far off across a dark parking lot
4Unit

Competition, Firms and Market Structure

Firms
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The storyThe Numbers on the Napkin — A line cook quits her job, buys a used food truck, and learns in one month that revenue and profit are not the same thing.

Chapter

The Four Market Structures

Market Structure

The storyTwenty Pizza Places and One Phone Tower — A student moves from a Chicago neighborhood full of choices to a small town with only one phone company, and her monthly bill tells the rest of the story.

Band

Grades 11–12

4 units · 8 chapters · 95 lessons

Drawn scene: the Chicago skyline at dusk seen across the river, office windows lit, rooftop beacons climbing from left to right like a rising line, their lights doubled in the water
5Unit

Measuring the Economy

Macroeconomics
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The storyCounting a Town for One Year — A class in a small Illinois town tries to total up everything the town produced in twelve months, and discovers that counting is harder than it sounds.

Chapter

Prices and Jobs: The CPI and Unemployment

Inflation and Employment

The storyGrandpa's Dollar Sixty — A grandfather remembers his first paycheck, and his granddaughter sets out to learn whether $1.60 an hour was a good wage.

Drawn scene: a country road rising and dipping over rolling hills at evening, running toward a lit town with a capitol dome at the far end
6Unit

The Business Cycle and Fiscal Policy

Macroeconomics
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Chapter

Expansion, Peak, Contraction, Trough

The Business Cycle

The storyThe Signs in the Windows — Two walks down the same downtown street, two years apart, tell the story of a whole economy in the space of six blocks.

Chapter

Taxes, Spending and the Budget

Fiscal Policy

The storyWhere the Twelve Hundred Dollars Went — One spring, a deposit landed in millions of bank accounts at once, and each family's choice about it added up to a national experiment.

Drawn scene: the columned stone front of a central bank at night, warm gold light glowing between the columns above the steps, with a few coins resting in the foreground
7Unit

Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve

Money and Banking
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Chapter

Money and Banks

Money

The storyThe Jar on the Dresser — Coins in a jar do nothing; the same coins in a bank account go to work. Here is the trip they take.

The storyTwo O'Clock in Washington — A vote in a marble building on a Wednesday afternoon shows up weeks later on a loan offer at a car lot in Peoria.

Drawn scene: a towboat pushing a line of grain barges down the Illinois River under a gold evening sky, with stacked shipping containers on a far dock and a steel bridge overhead
8Unit

Trade, Taxes and the World Economy

The World Economy
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Chapter

Comparative Advantage and Trade Policy

International Trade

The storyOne Ship, Two Directions — A container ship leaves a Pacific port full of phones and comes back with beans that grew in Illinois dirt.

The storyThe Number on the Airport Board — A family lands in Mexico City with $800 and discovers that how much it buys depends on a number that changed while they were in the air.

Section 4The Economic Way of Thinking
16.10The Course in One Page16.11Applying the Model
For the teacher

The course follows the standard high-school economics sequence — microeconomics in grades 9–10, macroeconomics and the world economy in 11–12 — as units, chapters, sections and numbered lessons, in original text written at each band’s reading level. Every lesson starts from a situation a student can picture, walks through a worked example with real numbers, and ends with three checks. Where economists disagree, the lesson says so and gives both sides.

Progress ticks live on this device only. Print any unit page for a paper copy.