I was interested to read this recent article on Inside Higher Education, about 'Swiftonomics':
Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, Nobel Prize winner and Distinguished Professor of economics at the CUNY Graduate Center, began working on the curriculum for the course last summer. Swift’s massive Eras Tour had just kicked off, creating such a frenzy among fans that it caused Ticketmaster’s website to crash.
Most of the course’s 12 economic principles feature a Swift example, from her impact on supply and demand with ticket prices to the discussion of monopolies, since Ticketmaster was the sole seller of her concert tickets. Krugman said he designed his course to make it relatable to college-age students—even if they are not exactly fans of the pop star.
“There’s always been a problem with principles books, where you have middle-aged authors trying to relate to college students, and it comes across as condescending or fake,” Krugman said. “In this case, it’s a natural connection that matters with a lot of students. It wasn’t ‘This is trendy; let’s put it in [our curriculum].’”
My ECONS101 and ECONS102 classes are filled with real-world examples. Indeed, one of the purposes of this blog from the beginning has been to demonstrate to my students how economics applies to real world situations and problems. Am I missing a trick by not including more Taylor Swift examples in those classes? Now, I'm pretty sure that I could come up with a Taylor Swift example for each of the microeconomics topics in ECONS101, which I start teaching next week. [*] It might be a bit more challenging for some of the macroeconomics topics (although for inflation, perhaps a Beyoncé example would suffice?).
How many Taylor Swift examples should be included? We can actually apply some marginal analysis (from my ECONS102 class) to consider this question. This is illustrated in the diagram below. Marginal benefit (MB) is the additional benefit of one more Taylor Swift example. The marginal benefit of Taylor Swift examples is downward sloping. Not all Taylor Swift examples provide the same benefit for student learning, and students would get bored if I trundled out variations on the same tired examples over and over, even if the source material is interesting. So, each additional Taylor Swift example must provide less additional benefit (lower marginal benefit) than the previous one. Marginal cost (MC) is the additional cost of one more Taylor Swift example. The marginal cost of Taylor Swift examples is upward sloping - the more Taylor Swift examples that are used, the higher the opportunity costs of repairing one more Taylor Swift example. Some of the existing examples I use are better than others. We can replace the less-good examples with Taylor Swift examples at relatively low opportunity cost. However, as more and more Taylor Swift examples are squeezed in, the better previous examples start to be squeezed out. So, the marginal cost of Taylor Swift examples increases as we include more Taylor Swift examples. The 'optimal quantity' of Taylor Swift examples occurs at the quantity where MB meets MC, at Q* Taylor Swift examples in the diagram.
Now, consider what happens if more than Q* Taylor Swift examples are included in the paper, such as Q2. For every Taylor Swift example beyond Q*, the extra benefit (MB) of each example is less than the extra cost (MC) of each example, making the students worse off. So, it is clear that it is possible to include too many Taylor Swift examples in a paper.
Now, this doesn't tell us exactly how many Taylor Swift examples is the right number for a paper. But it does tell us that we can go overboard in our enthusiasm for Taylor Swift. Coming back to the Inside Higher Education article, note that for Krugman's course, "most of the course’s 12 economic principles feature a Swift example". That suggests that, for Krugman at least, Q* is fairly low, even in a course titled 'Swiftonomics'. [**]
Do I need more Taylor Swift examples in my papers? Perhaps my students will tell me.
[HT: Marginal Revolution]
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[*] In fact, there are a couple of Taylor Swift examples that I do use in class, one in ECONS101 and one in ECONS102.
[**] Which raises a question about the credibility of titling a course 'Swiftonomics', when it maybe includes one Taylor Swift example in each topic.
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