Economics: A New Introduction provides a fresh introduction to real economics. Highlighting the complex and changing nature of economic activity, this wide-ranging text employs a pragmatic mix of old and new methods to examine the role of values and theoretical beliefs in economic life and in economists’ understanding of it. It attends to the problems which have come with high productivity, rapidly changing technology and skills, changing proportions of earning and non-earning years in most people’s lives, and a faltering revolution in childhood and parenting which has brought stress and over-work for many women. It addresses such issues as rising poverty, inequality, insecurity and the slow progress of environmental reform. In focusing on such abuses of affluence the text draws on institutional, Keynesian, green and feminist theories, while emphasising all approaches to understanding economic life.

Hugh Stretton AC (born 15 July 1924) is an Australian historian and professor. He was educated at the Scotch College, Melbourne, the University of Melbourne, the University of Oxford and Princeton University. He has been voted one of Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals[1]

He taught modern history and economics but has written chiefly about town planning, housing policies, and social scientists’ ways of explaining complex historical processes.

He was the deputy chair of the South Australian Housing Trust for 17 years. He currently resides in Adelaide, Australia.

A portrait of Hugh Stretton by Australian artist Robert Hannaford won the Peoples Choice Award in the 1991 Archibald Prize.