Teaching Economics with Media
Here’s a great opening video for teaching common resources and the tragedy of the commons. This version of the video actually does a great job explaining the math of the overfishing problem and how you need to have enough reproductive pairs in order to maintain the optimal level of the stock. This video could be used a pre-lesson video to introduce the topic.
I’m teaching an Economics of Crime course soon so I’ve been on the look out for great clips related to cheating. I think my current plan is to have a series of goofy examples of cheating. In this Ted Talk, Dan Ariely discusses some of the research from his books on honesty by describing the idea of irrationality related to honesty. The rational model of crime first flushed out by Gary Becker assumed that criminals performed a cost-benefit analysis for cheating and would only cheat if the expected benefits outweighed the costs of being caught. Ariely brings the behavioral aspect of economics into play with his discussion on the nuances around decision making, even in criminal enterprises.
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.
Traffic jams are often provided as an example of a market failure. Drivers are focused on their own driving and don’t consider how it may impact others. As a result, too many people use road systems and congestion occurs. This Ted Talk highlights how Pigouvian taxes could be used to correct the market failure by instituting congestion taxes. While it’s not presented by an economist, he uses a lot of economics concepts throughout the talk.
In the United States and Canada, the first Monday of September is a federal holiday, Labor Day. Originally celebrated in New York City’s Union Square in 1882, Labor Day was organized by unions as a rare day of rest for the overworked during the Industrial Revolution. Kenneth C. Davis illustrates the history of Labor Day from Union Square to today.