> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://laurence-wilse-samson.gitbook.io/textbooks/the-american-economy/readme.md).

# Introduction

> **Full draft, last updated November 2026.** One of 22 textbooks freely readable online ([all books](https://lwilsesamson.com/textbooks/)), all written with AI assistance. Corrections are welcome at <laurence@lwilsesamson.com>. See the [status of this edition](/textbooks/the-american-economy/edition-status.md).

## What This Book Is About

This book is a concrete, institutional guide to how the American economy works: which industries dominate, where they are located, who the major players are, how money flows, how government spending and regulation shape activity, how trade works with neighbors, what people buy, and how it all connects.

The United States has a nearly $28 trillion economy, the largest in the world. Where does the money come from and where does it go? Who works in what industries, and where? How do the pieces fit together?

These are hard questions to answer. Economics courses teach models and theory. Business schools focus on strategy and finance from the firm's perspective. Neither provides a systematic map of the economic terrain, the kind of concrete knowledge that a regional planner, a journalist covering business, or an informed citizen might want.

I wrote this book to fill that gap. It draws on regional economics, institutional economics, and economic geography to give a structural portrait of the American economy as it exists today.

## What You'll Find Here

**Part I** sets out the framework: how we measure the economy, how different sectors connect through input-output relationships, and how economic activity is distributed geographically.

**Part II** examines the major sectors of the economy: government, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, retail, technology, energy, and more. Each chapter follows a consistent template: size and scope, how the industry works, who the major players are, where it is concentrated geographically, how it is regulated, and who lobbies for it. Government spending includes transfers and purchases from private firms; its spending footprint differs from its share of value added.

**Part III** covers the financial architecture: how the banking system works, how capital markets function, and how companies are actually financed.

**Part IV** covers America's trading relationships and global supply chains, with particular attention to the integrated North American economy.

**Part V** gives regional portraits: the Northeast corridor, the Sunbelt, the Midwest, the West, and rural America.

**Part VI** covers the institutions: federal economic governance, trade associations and business lobbying, and labor organizations.

**Part VII** is a synthesis: what makes the American economy distinctive, how shocks propagate through the system, and the tensions that will shape its future.

## Who This Book Is For

This book is written for a mixed audience:

* **General readers** who want to understand how the economy actually works
* **Undergraduate students** in economics, public policy, or business who need institutional context
* **Graduate students and researchers** who need a reference on industry structure
* **Journalists and policy professionals** who need background on specific sectors

The main text avoids unnecessary jargon. Technical details and data methods are in the appendices.

## A Note on Data

This is a structural portrait of the American economy in the mid-2020s. The national-accounts reference year is **2023**; many firm and sector examples use 2024, and individual policy discussions state their own dates. These are historical reference points, not a claim that the figures or legal developments are current today. A table's stated year governs its numbers. See [How to Use This Book](/textbooks/the-american-economy/how-to-use.md#data-vintage) for the conventions and [Appendix A](/textbooks/the-american-economy/appendices/appendix-a-data-sources.md) for the primary sources.

Economic statistics are released with varying lags: GDP data may be one to two years old, while employment data is more current. Where possible I have updated figures to the most recent releases, but readers should check primary sources for the latest numbers. My aim is to capture the structure of the economy in the mid-2020s, not to give a real-time snapshot that would be out of date on publication.

## Companion Volume

This book has a companion volume on Africa, [*The African Economy: The Growth Century*](https://lwilsesamson.com/african-economic-future/), which adds an interactive data layer for all 54 African economies.

## License

This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You may share and adapt it for non-commercial purposes with attribution and under the same license.

## About the author

I am an economist in New York. I am Associate Director at Oxford Economics, I teach as an adjunct at NYU Wagner and Columbia SIPA, and I am a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development. I took my PhD in economics at Columbia. More at [lwilsesamson.com](https://lwilsesamson.com/).

## How this book was made

I wrote this book with substantial help from AI language models, principally Claude (Anthropic), which I used for drafting, editing, research, data analysis, figure and interactive (Plotly) code, and consistency checking. The outline, the argument, the selection of material and the judgments throughout are mine, as is the responsibility for what remains wrong. Figures were generated from code using the sources identified in their captions; illustrative figures are labelled. Figure-generation and interactive code may be provided on request.

In October 2026 the figures were rebuilt from public data or labelled as illustrations, except seven that could not be rebuilt from their sources and are marked in their captions as unverified (Figures 9.4, 11.2, 12.6, 12.11, 17.4, 20.2 and 29.1). In November 2026 I had the key checkable claims in each chapter (485 in all: numbers, company facts, attributions, dates and reported findings) compared with a primary source, using AI tools for the lookups and reviewing each change myself. Each claim was confirmed, corrected, softened or cut, except 55 for which no primary source could be reached at first; follow-up checks have reduced that to seven, which are left as written and flagged. About half of the claims checked needed correction, many of them dated company and market figures, and the text has not yet had the editing passes of the other books in this series. This was a check of selected claims, not a line-by-line proofread, so please check numbers and quotations against the primary sources before citing them.

Please report errors to <laurence@lwilsesamson.com>. Corrections usually go live the same day.

I built the interactive visualizations with Plotly.js. The figures were generated with Python with matplotlib, seaborn, and plotnine. Data comes from public sources including the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve, and Census Bureau. The public interactive pages are linked from [How to Use This Book](/textbooks/the-american-economy/how-to-use.md#interactive-visualizations).

***

*Last updated: November 2026*