Teaching Economics with Media
Moral hazard occurs when a party that is protected from risk behaves differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. Here, the last line is a perfect example of moral hazard, when Aasif Mandvi says, “Hey man! You can get drunk and have a great time and it doesn’t matter ‘cuz you’ve got health insurance!” Now students can fall off of keg stands and get hurt but that’s ok, they have health insurance now!
Thanks to James Tierney for the clip and the description!
This video does a nice job of describing many of the economic arguments for and against raising the minimum wage in a comical way. The clip is a few years old, but it still does a nice job of discussing many of the common arguments. Note: the clip does include a supply and demand graph, but it labels supply and demand incorrectly! This is a good opportunity to discuss economic misconceptions, as well as the labor supply and labor demand curves.
Thanks to Rebecca Chambers for the clip and description!
Daily Show correspondent, Jason Jones, interviews Dan Hamermesh about looks-based discrimination. While people traditionally associate discrimination with race and gender, discrimination from an economic perspective is showing priority to one group of people over another. While the correspondent takes a comedic approach, the research by Hamermesh has been covered by a variety of outlets including Wall Street Journal, Freakonomics, New York Times, and US News.
Captain Sig Hansen joins Jon Stewart’s Daily Show to discuss life on an Alaska fishing boat. Hailed as the deadliest job in America, Hansen and his crew can earn tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of days so long as the crew is willing to risk their lives. Jon discusses safety on the boats and the motivation for why an individual would risk their lives.