Econ 201: Introduction

Link to slides

For interest:

• Whoa...in the past economists did some good things! Tyler Cowen, The New York Times, March 16, 2013

• Media and government seem to pay an amazing amount of attention to economists, relative to historians, psychologists, sociologists, priests.... (Justin Wolfers, The New York Times, January 23, 2015)

• Six policies that economists love, and politicians hate (NPR, July 19, 2012)

• Large scale social interaction among primates

• Incentives matter, they really do.

• Economics on one foot

• How did humans come to dominate? Evolving collective intelligence. By Mark Ridley (Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2010)

• If you are a math nerd who likes social sciences...Northwestern's Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) major is the best of its kind in the world.

For fun:

• Dogbert's World of Amazingly Ignorant People

• Why economists aren't allowed at game night or Bible talk.

  • Every TV News Report on the Economy Ever

• Who are macroeconomists?

• Seriously, take care with your graphs.

• “As intelligence goes up, happiness goes down. See, I made a graph. I make lots of graphs.” - Lisa Simpson

  • People freak out when the economy gets in trouble

• Economics of skipping class

• Do you mind Powerpoint? (Dilbert)

  • Economics of Seinfeld

  • The joy of teaching large classes