Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making

Taught By Professor Randall Bartlett, Ph.D., Stanford University, Smith College



The Greatest Courses | English | ISBN: N/A | 2010 | Audio Mp3 32kbps + Guidebook Pdf | 84,1 MB
Economic forces are everywhere around you. You're made aware of that whenever you reach for your wallet, apply for a loan, shop for health care, or try to figure out the best credit card to carry.
But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you. Instead, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn those same forces to your own advantage.

Making a few simple adjustments to the way you see things and act on them—learning to "think like an economist"—can give you newfound power and confidence in a surprising range of financial and personal situations that make up your daily life. You can find yourself making better decisions that not only save time and money, but also produce optimum results in other ways important to you. And you can also sharpen your understanding of world and national events.

In the 12 fast-moving and crystal-clear lectures of Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making, award-winning Professor Randall Bartlett of Smith College presents some of the fundamental principles and concepts that shape the lenses through which economists view the world. He then shows you how to use these simple analytical tools to understand what you see through those lenses.

By learning to identify the many varied situations in which economics affects your life and how to wield the tools that can help you make the wisest choices in those situations, you'll enhance not only your understanding of daily life but your own success in living it.
A Tool Kit for Changing How You Look at Daily Life

Many of the concepts in Professor Bartlett's tool kit may be familiar.
* People respond to incentives.
* There's no such thing as a "free lunch."
* There are at least two sides to every interaction.
* Everything affects everything else.
* Any action can bring with it significant unintended consequences.
* In this world of complex interrelationships, no one is really in control.

After a dozen lectures with Professor Bartlett, things will look very different. You'll see how basic economic ideas like incentives, risks, rewards, and rationality are not just the province of professional economists, government policymakers, or your local bank's loan officer, but instead lie at the root of nearly every decision you must make in your daily life.

Those decisions can include:
* choosing wine from a restaurant menu,
* buying an extended warranty on that new television set,
* deciding how to get to work each morning, or
* nearly anything else you might imagine.

Real-Life Examples Clarify Each Key Idea

Using examples drawn from his own life and likely echoing yours, Professor Bartlett shows you how to:
* see the world as an economist sees it,
* examine the rationality of individual decisions, and
* evaluate the outcome of those decisions in terms of both personal benefit and social efficiency, which can sometimes differ.

About Your Professor
Dr. Randall Bartlett is Professor of Economics and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Smith College, where he has taught for 30 years. A graduate of Occidental College, he earned both his master's degree and doctorate from Stanford University and taught at Williams College and the University of Washington before joining the Smith faculty.

A highly skilled teacher, Professor Bartlett has twice won all-college teaching awards at Smith and was the 2003 recipient of the college's Distinguished Professor Award. He has served at both the department and college levels as a teaching mentor to junior faculty and has been instrumental in developing a number of important programs at Smith, including founding and directing the Phoebe Reese Lewis Leadership Program and serving as the first director of the Public Policy Program. He also presents each fall a wildly popular financial literacy lecture series that is attended not only by students, faculty, and staff, but also by members of the community of Northampton.

The author of numerous articles on economics and public life, Professor Bartlett has also written three books, including his most recent, The Crisis of America's Cities, which explores the problems and prospects of urban America.

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