Michael Coon shared this great clip from State Farm. If you saved $480 on car insurance, what would you buy with the money instead?
Super Troopers — Free Hot Dog
This clip is a great one for the first week of a principles course and can be used to teach a variety of concepts including opportunity costs, marginal analysis, and incentives. Farva isn’t the smartest police officer on the force, and he’s an even worse economist. The gas station offers a “free” hot dog for people who pump 10 gallons of gas, but Farva only needs 9 gallons to fill his car. He has to make a decision on the margin about whether he wants to get that extra gallon. He weighs the costs and benefits of the extra gallon to determine if the “free” hot dog is worth the cost of 1 gallon of gas. Ultimately, the hot dog cost his 1 gallon of gas.
TedEd: Hotelling Model
This animated clip illustrates the Hotelling Model well (even though they don’t mention it), but can also be used to introduce the idea of sequential moves.
BusinessInsider — Buying People’s Powerball Ticket
Business Insider wanted to test just how strong the endowment effect (regret avoidance) is when it comes to Powerball tickets for the large jackpot this past week. Overall, people seemed really inclined to want to keep their numbers, even when offered the twice what they paid for the tickets.
The Princess Bride: Battle of Wits
The Battle of Wits scene may be one of the best game theory examples that students have scene before. It’s a great opportunity to introduce the concept of full information and knowing what the other one knows.
Golden Balls: Coordination
In the great British game show, Golden Balls, contestants must decide whether to cooperate with each other or be devious. The dramatic outcome of the game (replicated here) is that one will steal and the other will be honest. This variant of the game has a unique twist to ensure cooperation.
The Simpsons — Homer Wants a Ticket
Homer waits in line 8 days to grab a coveted ticket to a coveted event. His excitement is dismayed when a scalper, who happened to be first in line, decides to purchase all of the tickets for the event. Scalpers can serve as an efficient distributor of tickets, but many people don’t believe it’s fair.
If you love economics and The Simpsons, Josh Hall edited a book that may interest you.
The Simpsons — Opportunity Cost of Lines
If you’re teaching opportunity cost, this is a great clip to show the value of time. Homer waits in line 8 days to grab a coveted ticket to an event. A passerby accurately notes that the Homer could have just purchased the ticket with the money he would have earned from working.
The following scene has a nice clip that can be used to talk about efficiency and equity.
If you love economics and The Simpsons, Josh Hall edited a book that may interest you.
Brothers Osborne – It Ain’t My Fault
Introduce correlation vs causation using this music video from Brothers Osborne. In the story, the singer describes a bunch of events from a previous night of drinking, but reiterates that it wasn’t his fault. While his presence was correlated with a bunch of events, he insists he didn’t cause those events. He then goes on to list the causes of each event for the night:
Relevant lyrics:
Blame the whiskey on the beer
Blame the beer on the whiskey
Blame the mornin’ on the night
For whose lyin’ here with me
Blame the bar for the band
Blame the band for the song
Blame the song for the party that went all night long
But it ain’t my fault
For more country music videos that display economics, check out EconGoneCountry.
New Girl – Douchebag Jar
Schmidt has a tendency to be a bit eccentric and bother his roommates with a variety of sayings/outfits. These outburst tend to annoy his roommates so they collectively agree to regular his behavior and force him to pay a tax to a “douchebag jar” when he does things the group considers unfavorable.