Designed to parallel five student seminars televised over the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN), this handbook provides an overview of current economic issues for high school students. Selections cover inflation, the crisis in American productivity, unemployment in the United States, global economic interdependence, and the role of free enterprise in the 1980's. For each topic, background articles which introduce important terms, concepts, and basic facts are followed by transcripts of panel discussions by five experts in the field. The handbook concludes with a glossary of key terms. (LP)