The 1970s and 1980s brought a significant 
proliferation in the publication of economics 
textbooks in the United States. I have assembled 
an enormous bibliography of economics texts 
published during this period, thanks to the 
extensive holdings of the Library of Congress, 
but I am trying to get a sense for which of these 
textbooks were the most popular/most widely 
adopted during this period.  (Why? I am tracing 
the diffusion of the Coase theorem in the 
textbook literature, and I want to get at not 
only how the various books treated­or did not 
treat­the theorem, but how it was treated in the 
most popular books and thus was presented, in 
writing at least, to the largest body of students.)

I am particularly interested in:

Principles of Economics texts (besides Samuelson’s Economics)

Intermediate Microeconomics texts

Public Finance texts (Musgrave & Musgrave, but what else?)

If anyone has any knowledge of sales data, I 
would love to hear where such data can be found, 
but I am also interested in hearing impressions 
of those who have a general sense for what books 
were most widely used in the 70s and 80s.

Thanks,

Steve Medema