Teaching Economics with Media
Tradeoffs are one topic you can use this video for. With only $3 to his name, Chris needs to decide between a gallon of gas or a 6-pack of beer!
Thanks to James Tierney for the clip and description. For more country videos with economics, check out EconGoneCountry!
The song is about a guy that chose to go fishing instead of staying with his wife. It shows opportunity costs because he could either choose fishing where he didn’t know if he would catch anything or stay with his wife which could have been the best thing for him.
Thanks for the summary and the clip Aaron Wolfe! If you’d like to see more country music videos that have economic themes, check out Econ Gone Country.
Aaron Tippin sings about the hard working lifestyle of a blue-collar worker who works 8 hours per day. While others may have more money than he does, he did it the way he felt was right by not selling his values.
If you love country music and economics, check out EconGoneCountry.com
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.
When I get to the chapter on sunk costs, I always play this music video before class starts. I typically use relationships in the behavioral portion of the class because most students can relate to the idea of sunk costs in terms of old relationships.
This is one of the better “lyrics” music videos made by a YouTube user for Brad Paisley’s American Saturday Night. I use this song as my pre-class music for the international trade chapter. I use this as an introduction to start talking about why we have preferences for items from certain regions of the world and why we don’t just make them all here?