This comedy series shows a series of examples of associated with price ceilings for apartments in New York City. It shows not only the predictably inefficiently low quality of these apartments, but also the wasted resources that are involved when there is a shortage of apartments.
Adam Ruins Everything — Student Loans
Adam Ruins Everything is a half-hour informational comedy were host, Adam Conover, debunks popular myths. Each episode is divided into 3 segments with some common theme. In the Spring of 2018, James Tierney and I sat down to go through all three seasons of Adam Ruins Everything to pick out examples in each episode that could be used in an economics course. If you’re curious about the paper, you can read about it here.
Adam is back to discuss how student loan providers have turned so evil. When traditional institutions didn’t step in to provide loan services to students, the government tried to rectify the situation, but may have made things worse.
Adam Ruins Everything — Trophy Hunting
Some markets fail because of the lack of property rights, but trophy hunting could actually be used to alleviate some of those issues by assigning property rights to game wardens and then selling licenses for the right to hunt the animals. The funding from the licenses could then be used to help maintain the population. We don’t think Adam ruined anything here.
Big thanks to Kalina Staub for sharing this one with us!
Adam Ruins Everything — Gift Giving
Adam does a great job working through the inefficiency of gift giving because of how people value different items.
College Humor: Second Cheapest Wine
A good topic in the behavioral section covers blind tastings and price anchors. The story of wine rating inconsistencies (here’s one from Vox) is a great example and this video can be used to put a little humor into the narrative.