G-DAE negotiates publishing deal

The Global Development and Environment Institute (G-DAE) has signed a contract with Houghton Mifflin for two college-level, introductory principles of economics textbooks: Microeconomics in Context, which is nearly finished, and Macroeconomics in Context.

G-DAE found a need on the part of economics students and their teachers for using materials do a better job of relating economic theory to the real world. The books will have a contextual economics approach, which draws on the work of such traditions of thought as institutionalist, ecological, feminist, radical and socio-economic, as well as on the most useful parts of the standard, neoclassical paradigm.

The contract includes a $100,000 advance, to be paid at various delivery points over the next four years, plus $50,000 to support related research and production costs.

Because G-DAE produced an earlier edition of Microeconomics in Context for transitional economies, the publishing contract paves the way for G-DAE to negotiate translations for the Third World in which users could be exempt from paying royalties to Houghton Mifflin. This makes it possible, as is happening in Russia, for royalties in those cases to be used to support further editions of contextual economics textbooks and related teaching aids. All royalties generated in the United States and other developed countries will come to G-DAE to support its work.