Decoration Day

A day of remembrance.

Your Weekend Reading

Burning Euro version.

Large Cheese and Lakers

An edible hoops logo.
A pretty solid example of product differentiation gone wild.

John's Apartment

SSEMI3. The students will explain how markets, prices and competition influence economic behavior.

SSEMI3 b. Explain and illustrate on a graph how price floors create surpluses and price ceilings creates shortages.

No problem right? You simply pop in your Stossel DVD, the one you scored at the one-day high school Micro workshop you attended last semester, and you let John do the rest. He talks about the sweet deals that Woody Allen, Carly Simon, Kim Alexis and Alistair Cooke had, shows the decrepit looking buildings in the Bronx and throws in a Walter Williams interview for good measure. Everything explained in just a few short minutes!

Well what are you going to do if your students want to dig a little deeper, and you know they will, into the whole rent control mess. What you do is have them start looking here and then have them read this interesting piece. John Burke likes paying a mere $288 a month but his landlord sure doesn't want to dump any money into fixing the place up because there is simply no incentive to do so. Incentives matter.

Stabilize-O-Rama

This budget simulator is pure gold. Proves once again that talking about cutting the debt is much easier than actually doing it.

Specialization (We're #1)

All of us probably spend a lot of time discussing specialization with our students. Kind of hard to teach econ without mentioning the concept over and over again. Humans specialize, businesses specialize, states specialize, and of course, countries specialize. Every country is a leader in something. This great visual provides the details.

Go Czech Republic!

Oz

The Gold Standard, populism, silver slippers and a magical land called OZ. Special Econblog tip of the hat to Dr. John Swinton, Director, Center for Economic Education, Georgia College & State University for sending along link.

Minty

How many of you out there are doing some kind of budget project with your students? A good number of you I bet. You know the trick, assign your students an income and have them attempt to live off of that income for a set period of time in order to help them discover that there really is no such thing as a free lunch....or a free apartment.

Show your students this cool website the next time you roll out your budget project. In addition to the helpful budgeting ideas, your students will also find tips on investing, advice on how to shop around for a lower APR and information on planning for retirement.

Your Weekend Artwork

Demand- The amount of a particular economic good or service that a consumer or group of consumers will want to purchase at a particular price.

In this case...$106.5 million.

Greece, Part 2

The Greek Crisis Explained, Episode 2 from NOMINT on Vimeo.

Greece, Part 1

The Greek Crisis Explained, Episode 1 from NOMINT on Vimeo.

Georgia Leads the Way!

Huge congratulations to Jill Beracki and her winning team from Douglass High School of Atlanta for taking home 1st Place (1st place as in...1st place in the entire country!) in the 2010 Capital Hill Challenge Stock Market Game!

Jill and her five-member team will be traveling to Washington, DC in June for an award ceremony and a chance to meet Representative John Lewis. Great job Douglass High!

Europe Day

May 9th......Europe Day. What did you do to celebrate? Me, I broke out my favorite outfit, had myself a nice baguette, reminisced about my favorite city and listened to one of my favorite albums. To top it all off I also watched a little football on the telly.

I do love Europe. The countries, the people, the automobiles, the movies, the food, the scenery, the architecture, the castles. Drop me off in just about any European country and I will be good to go for months.

Luckily for you the European Union is mentioned in the high school standards (SSEIN2 d). A terrific website for everything EU can be found right here. Go ahead, dig around. I guarantee you will find everything you will need, and a whole lot more, to teach your students about the European Union. Go now as there are plenty of great "current event" stories coming out of Europe as we speak.

Simpsonomics

Man, I would have totally aced this class back in the day. Take a look at how an instructor and professor at Mississippi State have mixed economics with the Simpsons. I never took the time to do this when I was in the classroom. I now wish I would have made these connections. I'm thinking students would really enjoy learning econ through the Simpsons.

BLS Data Lesson

Another solid lesson to add to your repertoire. I've said it before and I will say it again. The Bureau of Labor Statistics website is the real deal. You will be doing your students a huge favor by showing them where to find all of the wonderful data.

Your Weekend Reading

Volcanic ash really stinks if you are in the flower business.