The Economics of Seinfeld

What a great idea! A few economics professors in the midwest have found an entertaining way to teach economics.

The Economics of Seinfeld uses clips from the old TV show to illustrate economics concepts like incentives, fixed and variable costs, margins, altruism, cost-benefit analysis, game theory, compensating differentials… you name it! Whatever the economics concept, there's a Seinfeld example for you.

The site was created by Linda Ghent, Chair of the department of Economics at Eastern Illinois University along with 2 other economics professors, Alan Grant, Associate Professor of Economics at Baker University, and George Lesica, Assistant to the Dean of the College of Sciences at Eastern Illinois U. It looks fairly new. There's not much in their blog, yet, but there's plenty of stuff ready to use.

The clips tend to be very short. (The one on compensating differentials is only 39 seconds, for example). The index page lists every economics concept you can think of and provides links to the Seinfeld clips that relate to each of them. Their search tool is excellent. I sent news of this site to a few economics professors I know and one responded with "I wonder where the soup Nazi fits in?" I entered "soup nazi" into their search box and immediately found the answer: "barriers to entry" and "monopoly power."

They also provide an embed code should you want to use it online. All of these are made available through a group called Critical Commons which describes itself as "a non-profit advocacy coalition that supports the use of media for scholarship, research and teaching, providing resources, information and tools for scholars, students, educators and creators." The site has loads of great information about Fair Use as it relates to education. (More about that in a future post).