ECO110 Economic Way of Thinking

An important part of your experience in this course will be two short writing assignments designed to foster your skills in using the Economic Way of Thinking. In each of these papers, your assignment is to use a principle, or principles, discussed in the course to explain some pattern of events or behavior that you personally have observed. Numerous examples will be discussed in class.

Your space limit is 500 words. Many excellent papers are significantly shorter. Please do not pad your essay with complex terminology. Imagine yourself talking to your grandma, or a relative who has never had a course in economics. The best papers are ones that would be clearly intelligible to such a person, and typically these papers do not use any algebra or graphs. You need not include a bibliography.

You are not expected to do voluminous research in support of your argument, although a relevant fact or two might help convince yourself and others that you are on the right track. It makes no difference whether your topic is “important,” but try, as best you can, to choose something interesting.

Examples:

Why do brides spend so much money on wedding dresses, while grooms often rent cheap tuxedos, even though grooms could potentially wear their tuxedos on many other occasions and brides will never wear their dresses again?

Jennifer Dulski

Why do top female models earn so much more than top male models?

Fran Adams

Why do airlines charge much more for tickets purchased at the last minute, while Broadway theaters follow exactly the opposite practice?

Gerasimos Efthimiatos

Why do many bars charge for water but give pretzels away for free?

Brad White

Here are some tips from Dr. Hamermesh for finding economics in everyday life.

Here is an example from advice columnist Carolyn Hax of the Washington Post on the diminishing marginal returns of love.

More examples of economic way of thinking (longer and more complicated than what is expected of you, but interesting none-the-less).

Freakonomics authors, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt have a blog and a New York Times Magazine article (that comes out weekly) on interesting phenomenon described through economist’s lenses. Check out the blog here and a recent column asking the question “Why Vote?” and a follow-up to the initial column.