Teaching Economics with Media
In behavioral economics we begin to study why people procrastinate. If you are teaching Time inconsistency either in your behavioral section of microeconomics or in a full class on behavioral economics, this is a nice short clip to motivate discussion.
This clip and reference come from James Tierney!
In this clip, Tracy has a small debate with her roommate about going out to a party on St. Patrick’s day. While her roommate tries to convince her to go out, claiming that she is doing nothing with her time, Tracy rebuttals and says how she is “about to enter my robots doing track and field events period” as she looks over at her painting she has been working on. This clip displays the concept of opportunity cost. If Tracy decides to go out she could potentially be finding a new possible soulmate but she would be giving up time to work on her painting. If she decided to stay home, she could improve and progress the work on her painting but she would be giving up her potential love she could be finding.
Thank you for the clip and summary James Hetherington!
Ted introduces his girlfriend to his group of friends. Ted’s friend Barney quickly realizes that his girlfriend’s personality may be crazy even though she appears to be attractive. Barney then draws out a hot crazy scale graph explaining the more attractive a girl is the higher her crazy personality is seen. This is a fun opening when discussing model building and ceteris paribus.
Robin and Ted list all the ways that the upstairs neighbors are being inconsiderate during their “bagpiping.” While enjoying themselves, they are causing a negative externality in the apartment below them and they aren’t considering that when they decide to bagpipe.