Economics of Crime

Wayne Geerling of La Trobe University in Melbourne has produced some great resources using a variety of media. Here is a video showing “The Economics of Everyday life” and it relates it to marginal cost and marginal benefit analysis. Worth a look.

Still E.C.O.N.

Last week I was at the University of Waikato Professional Development Day for secondary school economics teachers. As well as presentations they showed work done by undergraduate students. Starting in 2011, students in ECON100 Business Economics and the New Zealand Economy have been given the opportunity to complete a video project as part of the assessment for the paper. Below is the students’ Choice Award for Best Video:

The modern economy – what students should be learning.

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times. Gregory Mankiw – Harvard Economics Professor – outlines what is required to understand and be prepared for the modern economy. He comes up with 4 main areas of learning:

Learn some economics – As the economist Joan Robinson once noted, one purpose of studying economics is to avoid being fooled by economists.
Learn some statistics – One thing the modern computer age has given everyone is data
Learn some finance – Americans are increasingly in charge of their own financial future
Learn some psychology – A bit of psychology is a useful antidote to an excess of classical economics. It reveals flaws in human rationality, including your own.
Ignore advice as you see fit – The one certain thing about the future is that it is far from certain. I don’t know what emerging industries will be attracting college graduates four years from now, and neither does anyone else.

Maybe all of this can explain the graph on the left. Click here for the full article from The New York Times.

Museum of American Finance – New York City

There is a cool tour of this museum which has had a major revamp in the last few years – see below. Also their website has a variety of educational materials that might be useful for the classroom. Click here to go to their website. I can recommend the ‘Tracking the Credit Crisis’ poster set from the museum shop – great value and I have bought some for the department. See a small part of the poster set below.

Video Graphics from The Economist

The Economist has a wide variety of video graphics on its website. Topics include: the German Economy; FIFA World Cup; Oil in Louisiana; Banks and Risk. Very informative and great use of graphics. Click here to access the site.

Resource for teaching unemployment

I recently started teaching the AS Level Unemployment topic to my Year 12 class and remembered that one of the first albums I bought was UB40 Signing Off – released in 1980 (see below). The front cover and reverse has been made to look like the UB40 unemployment benefit attendance card from which the band took their name. Their UK top-ten hit “One In Ten” was an attack on Thatcherism and is mistakenly cited as referring to the number of unemployed in the UK at that time. It is in fact a song about government statistics in general, and how politicians use them to de-humanise problems. Useful way to introduce the subject especially if the class like reggae. Click here for the lyrics of the song and here to see the video.