Watch Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making

2023
1 Season

Discover why "thinking like an economist" can give you newfound confidence in a range of financial and personal situations. Learn how to identify the varied situations in which economics affects your life—and how to wield the tools economists use to help you make the wisest choices in those situations.

Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making is a series that ran for 1 seasons (11 episodes) between November 1, 2023 and on The Great Courses

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Seasons

12. Acting like an Economist

November 1, 2023

Apply what you've learned by thinking like an economist about three different issues: doing a cost-benefit analysis of crime from a criminal's perspective; altering our own structure of incentives to motivate healthier behaviors; and finding policy solutions to traffic congestion and its resulting pollution.

11. Behavioral Economics - What Are We Thinking?

November 1, 2023

Despite the predictive power of conventional economic presumptions about fundamental rationality, behavioral economists are showing that we sometimes do things that indeed seem irrational. Delve into several examples of this and possible means of overcoming these behaviors.

10. Think Again - Evaluating Risk in Purchasing

November 1, 2023

Apply several of the new tools you've been working with to learn how an economist might confront one complex choice you have likely faced yourself: whether to purchase that extended warranty on an expensive consumer item like a big-screen television.

9. A Matter of Time - Predicting Future Values

November 1, 2023

Time can be one of the most important factors in economic thought; when events occur matters. This lecture looks at how economists deal with this critical factor, introducing you to concepts such as nominal versus real value and present versus future value.

7. Playing the Odds - Reason in a Risky World

November 1, 2023

People can strategically use information

6. The Economics of Ignorance

November 1, 2023

In the first of three lectures examining how economists approach situations where information is incomplete, imperfect, or inaccurate, learn that there can indeed be an optimal level of ignorance. Also, explore some cost-efficient ways to reduce uncertainty.

5. False Incentives, Real Harm

November 1, 2023

Two case studies involving tragic fires help you grasp two classic economic situations

4. Incentives and Optimal Choice

November 1, 2023

How do economists think about the rights and rules that govern human interactions? Using real-life examples and classic problems like the Prisoner's Dilemma, plunge into questions of ownership, trade, and compensation and how ideas like incentives and responsibilities are intimately connected to them.

3. The Myth of "True Value"

November 1, 2023

Put your new tools to work by examining a central conclusion in economic thinking: that rational individual choices can - even though they might not always - produce socially efficient results, where no person can be made better off without harming another.

2. The Economist's Tool Kit - 3 Core Concepts

November 1, 2023

Complete your tool kit for economic thinking with three key concepts. Learn what an economist means by rational decision making; how marginal analysis is used to solve complex problems; and how you combine these first two concepts to understand optimization.

1. The Economist's Tool Kit - 6 Principles

November 1, 2023

Assemble the intellectual tool kit that will be used throughout the course to help you see the world from an economist's perspective. The first tools in your kit are six principles of human behavior accepted by nearly all economists as fundamental.

Description

Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making is a series that ran for 1 seasons (11 episodes) between November 1, 2023 and on The Great Courses

Where to Watch Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making

Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making is available for streaming on the The Great Courses website, both individual episodes and full seasons. You can also watch Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making on demand at Amazon Prime and Amazon.