Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Homeromics: Learning Economics Through The Simpsons

Homer Simpson teaches us many economic lessons. One of my favorite comes from this exchange:

[Homer is looking for a lost peanut under the couch]
Homer : Aww, twenty dollars. I wanted a peanut!
Homer’s Brain: Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts!
Homer : Explain how.
Homer’s Brain: Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

Or Homer’s apparent lack of understanding of opportunity cost in the grease episode, where he spends all day collecting grease to earn a few dollars but loses out on his work pay check.

I was thinking of all this while reading a paper on using the Simpsons to teach economics. The paper is written by Josh Hall a prof. at Beloit College. Josh has commented on my blog a few times, so I hope he’s still reading, it’s a good paper for economists and non-economist alike.

The Paper is Linked Here:

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