Teaching Economics with Media
A Business Insider correspondent travels around New York City with 100g of gold and a single Bitcoin to see how easy/difficult it is to conduct transactions using these alternative currencies. Even though gold is universally agreed currency, no one is willing to accept it. Bitcoin is a little more popular, but some local places didn’t accept it as payment.
You can see the original article here. Thanks to Jodi Beggs for the tip.
John Stossel explores New York City’s decision to implement rent control throughout the city. He covers many of the predictable outcomes associated with inefficient policy controls. Ask students to identify issues as he progresses through the video. While the references are a bit dated, there aren’t many videos that hit the outcomes as closely as this one does.
Bloomberg corresponds provide some background on the taxi medallion industry and shows an interesting perspective before the big surge of Uber in the city. The original article can be found here.
Senator Alesi discusses a practice known as zone pricing whereas oil companies charge different prices to gasoline station owners depending on how affluent the surrounding area is. This leads to differing gas prices for citizens across the city.
At Pulaski Academy in Arkansas, Kevin Kelley’s team never punts because he opts for high risk decisions because the probabilities are in his favor. He doesn’t believe in taking the risk averse method and he also believes in focuses on his team’s comparative advantage instead of just doing the traditional method.
The Economist outlines the impact that immigrants (particularly young ones) could have profound impacts cities that struggle with revitalization. If you’re looking for a book that details many of the arguments made in this video, I highly recommend Moretti’s New Geography of Jobs.
Bill Gates, in an article with Quartz, argues that if a robot which take workers’ jobs should be required to pay taxes. Those tax funds should be redistributed to pay for re-training programs.
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.
This clip covers the production externalities associated with beekeeping.
This is a great clip to discuss employment discrimination and the value of a name (Freakonomics has a nice piece on that as well). I often joke that this is the only time I can show them a clip from Buzzfeed and it has relevant material for class.