Work, wellbeing, and scarcity

Readings

• Introduction and 4.1-4.12 in Economy, Society, and Public Policy¹
• Chapters 2 and 6 in Naked Economics²
• Anuschka de Rohan, “Why dolphins are deep thinkers,” The Guardian, July 2, 2003 (first 3 paragraphs only)
• Charles Duhigg, “Warning: Habits May Be Good for You,” New York Times, July 13, 2008
• Randall Munroe, “Cost of Pennies”
• Randall Munroe, “Working”

Other useful resources

I pause a couple times during the lecture sections on indifference curves and utility maximization and I mention that you should watch these videos. Here are those videos:

• Marginal Revolution University, “Indifference curves” (watch during the “Utility and indifference” section)
• Marginal Revolution University, “Constraint optimization” (watch during the “Maximizing utility” section)

Also, a complete walkthrough of how to maximize utility with algebra and graphs is at the “Utility maximization” guide in the resources section.

Slides

Download the slides from today’s class.

Videos

Videos for each section of the lecture are available at this YouTube playlist.

• Introduction
• Incentives
• Elasticity
• Preferences, constraints, and tradeoffs
• Utility and indifference
• Calculus party!!!
• Maximizing utility

You can also watch the playlist (and skip around to different sections) here: