Glenn recently co-wrote an op-ed column for the Washington Post with Alan Blinder. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1994 to 1996. They discuss President Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion relief package currently before Congress. You can read the column HERE, but note that to read articles in the Washington Post you need a subscription, although you may be able to access several article per month for free.
Month: January 2021
Guest Post from Jadrian Wooten of Penn State on Using Pop Culture to Teach Economics
Jadrain Wooten is an associate teaching professor of economics at Penn State. Jadrian created the Economics Media Library. Clips to the site are included in Jadrian’s essay below.
Last September, we interviewed Jadrian on our podcast. That podcast episode can be found HERE.
What follows is an essay from Jadrian on ideas for teaching economics using examples from pop culture.
Using Pop Culture to Teach Economics
My favorite courses as an undergraduate student weren’t always economics courses. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my intermediate microeconomics so much that I immediately dropped my summer internship so I could add economics as a second major (thanks Ed!). The principles courses, however, weren’t that interesting. We drew graphs, talked about efficiency, and then left for the day. The first class I remember that heavily used media as a teaching tool was Mark Frank’s Business and Government class.
Instead of a traditional textbook, we read The Art of Strategy, When Genius Failed, and The Regulators. Instead of straight lecture, Mark ran experiments and showed a particular episode from ABC Primetime that I still show my students today, over 14 years later. It was the last semester of my undergraduate degree, but his course confirmed that I wanted to get a PhD in economics, and that I wanted to teach my courses like he had taught that course.
I had other amazing professors who used media in the classroom (thanks Darren!), and I landed in a graduate program that trusted me to teach my how I saw fit. For me, that meant a heavy dose of television and movie clips in order to avoid the Ferris Bueller treatment of economics. One of the best parts of teaching today compared to a decade ago is just how much media is available online (shameless plug for Economics Media Library). Thanks in part to cheap hosting services, economics educators have created entire websites specific to economic content found in television shows (Breaking Bad, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, Seinfeld, Shark Tank, and Superstore), Broadway musicals, and country music.
Many of these educators have also arranged lesson plans and projects associated with various topics as specific as marginal revenue product and the Coase Theorem. Lesson plans (1, 2, 3, 4) have been prepared that take scenes from different shows and detail how they can be integrated into a lesson. Many of the show-specific websites linked earlier also have a section detailing ways to integrate their clips. Most of this focus is at the principles level, but there are also some resources designed for upper-level courses.
Pop culture isn’t just limited to television and film clips! One of the teaching methods I adopted from my undergraduate experience was assigning trade books. Student in my Principles of Microeconomics course read Think Like a Freak and The Why Axis. My Labor Economics students go through “New Geography of Jobs” and We Wanted Workers, while Economics of Crime students read Narconomics, and my Natural Resource Economics students read Endangered Economies. For almost every course out there, there is likely a trade book that presents current research in a digestible manner. Assessing students on readings can be as varied as creating random assignments for each student or using Monte Carlo Quizzes. Using trade books, in addition to the textbook, gives students another avenue for applying the concepts and theories.
Bridging the gap between books and television shows is the use of podcasts. Rebecca Moryl has put together a series of papers (1, 2, 3) as well as a website that categorizes podcasts that can be used to teach (my favorite is Planet Money). Similar to how I use trade books, my students are assigned podcasts along with readings and are assessed with a Monte Carlo Quiz or on their midterm exams. Short podcasts can be played during class to spark a discussion on upcoming topics or as a review of previous material. I love Planet Money’s “A Mall With Two Minimum Wages” for the labor markets chapter.
The number of available resources will only grow as educators continue to develop creative ways to use media in the classroom. What’s my general advice to instructors interested in using media in the classroom? Start small. Play some music before class starts, but link that song to the lesson. Play Brad Paisley’s “American Saturday Night” before you start your lesson on trade and see how your students respond. We teach our students about marginal analysis, so take the same approach to using media!
If the pre-class music video goes well, consider adding a short clip to introduce a topic. Before teaching about liquidity, show this scene from Modern Family where Luke confuses the meaning of “frozen assets.” Need an example for comparative advantage? Try this scene from King of the Hill where Hank and his neighbor debate the best products from the United States and Canada. Just play the clip and then transition straight to your lesson. Let your students know you’ll cover those concepts in class that day, then refer back to the scene when you get to the relevant section.
Ready to go a bit further and really integrate media into your lessons? Play this interview from The Colbert Report and ask students to draw the market for cashmere, including the externality. Have students calculate consumer and producer surplus after watching this scene from Just Go With It. See if students can identify the type of unemployment from this scene in Brooklyn 99. Check out Economics Media Library to see if there’s a clip that you can use in your next lesson. If all of that goes well, check out all of the great resources educators have put together to see what would work in your classroom for the next semester. Maybe one day you’ll teach an entire course on economics through film or one themed entirely on Parks and Recreation.
Solved Problem: Why Will No One Buy This Farm?
Supports: Economics: Chapter 12 – Firms in Perfectly Competitive Markets (Section 12.5); Microeconomics: Chapter 12, Section 12.5; and Essentials: Chapter 9, Section 9.5
Solved Problem: Explaining Entry and Exit
An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had the headline: “The Last Harvest: Beaver County Organic Farm Closes after Failure to Find Successor.” The article discusses the decision by a 71-year old famer to close down his organic vegetable farm after failing to find a buyer for it despite a 10-year search. Several people, including his four adult children, considered purchasing the farm but in end none did so. His only requirement in selling the farm was that the buyer use the land to grow organic crops. The famer was puzzled by his inability to find a buyer because “There’s money in organics.” The article notes that: “In a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, organic food products generally commanded a [price] premium exceeding 20% over conventionally grown vegetables.”
a. Does the fact that organically grown vegetables sell for prices that are 20 percent higher than the prices of conventionally grown vegetables mean that growing organic vegetables will earn a farmer a larger economic profit than growing vegetables using conventional methods? Briefly explain.
b. Is it likely that the requirement that a buyer had to agree to use the land only to grow organic vegetables affected the inability of the farmer to find a buyer? Briefly explain.
c. What is the likeliest explanation for the farmer being unable to find a buyer for his farm?
Source: Khris B. Mamula, “The Last Harvest: Beaver County Organic Farm Closes after Failure to Find Successor,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 3, 2021.
Solving the Problem
Step 1: Review the chapter material. This problem is about the reason that firms exit an industry, so you may want to review Chapter 12, Section 28.2 “If Everyone Can Do It, You Can’t Make Money at It.”
Step 2: Answer part a. by discussing whether the fact that organic vegetables sell for higher prices than conventionally grown vegetables means that growing organic vegetables will earn a farmer a larger economic profit than growing vegetables using conventional methods. Profit depend on costs as well as prices. We’ve seen in this chapter that organic growing methods typically have higher costs than conventional growing methods. Therefore, the fact that organic vegetables sell for higher prices than conventionally grown vegetables doesn’t guarantee that farmers selling organic vegetables are earning an economic profit. In fact, in the long run we would expect that entry and exit will ensure that the price farmers sell vegetablesfor will just equal the average cost of growing them, whether the vegetables are grown organically or conentionally. In other words, in the long run the higher price of organic vegetables will just offset the higher cost of growthing them and farmers will earn a zero economic profit whichever method they use to grow vegetables.
Step 3: Answer part b. by explaining whether the farme’s requirement that the farm be used only to grow organic vegetables affected his difficulty in finding a buyer. Generally when a firm exits a market, as this farmer is exiting the market for organic vegetables, the firm’s resources will be sold and used for other purposes. For example, when the market for renting videos collapsed, the buildings video rental stores had been in were used for other purposes. (A former Blockbuster video store near where one of the authors lives was converted into a tire store.) Or a resaurant serving Italian food may close and the tables, chairs, and ovens may be used by a restaurant serving Thai food that opens in the same building. By insisting that his farm only be used for growing organic vegetables, the farmer limited the number of buyers who would be interested in buying it. Anyone who wanted to use the land to grow vegetables using conventional methods or wanted to use it for a nonagricultural purpose would not buy the farm.
Step 4: Answer part c. by discussing the likeliest reason that the farmer was unable to find a buyer for his farm. We would expect that someone wanting to sell a firm that is earning an economic profit would have no trouble finding a buyer if the price being asked would allow a buyer to also earn an economic profit on the buyer’s investment. That the farmer in this article couldn’t find a buyer after 10 years of searching is an indication that a buyer of the farm at the price he was asking would at best break even. As noted in the answer to part b., that the farmer wouldn’t allow a buyer to use the land for any purpose other than organic farming reduced the number of potential buyers.
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