sites.duke.edu/intrope/
Michael Munger is Professor of Political Science and Director of the PPE Certificate Program at Duke University.
COURSE OVERVIEW:
Introduction to Political Economy is a self-contained and nontechnical overview of the intellectual history of political economy, the logic of microeconomics, and the definitions used in macroeconomics. It introduces the notion of a political economy, emphasizing the moral and ethical problems that markets solve, and fail to solve.
LECTURE OVERVIEW:
I, Pencil (Leonard Read) No one knows enough to do anything. We all depend on other people for almost everything we need.
Some of that is provided by the state (defense, police). But most is provided by markets, without our thinking about it. Example
is simple: a pencil. No one, no one in the whole world, knows how to make a pencil.
2. What is Seen and What is Unseen (Frederic Bastiat). The broken window fallacy. Does destruction create jobs? What is the
real value of something? The answer is opportunity cost, so destruction does not create jobs, or growth. The problem is that
we SEE the jobs "created" by the broken window, but we don't see the opportunity cost of those resources. If this were not true,
then the President should commission gangs to go around breaking windows and burning cars, because that would create jobs.
3. The Candlemakers’ Petition (Frederic Bastiat) An amusing parable from 19th century France. If we believe that the way to create jobs is to make things more expensive, then just think of how many jobs would be created if we could block the sun! We would need heat, and light, and a lot of people would be employed providing those things. But that is nonsense, because the sun is free and all those things are expensive. The point is not to create jobs, and make things more expensive. The goal should be to take care of consumers, and always make things cheaper and better. Protecting producers is a sucker's bet, but that is very tempting for the state because producers are more politically powerful than consumers, as we will see in this course.
READINGS:
Bastiat, Frederic, Essays, What is Seen and Not Seen
-- Sections 1-2, paragraphs 1.1-1.36
-- Section 6, paragraphs 1.95-1.125
-- (www.econlib.org/library/Bastia... )
Bastiat, F. Economic Sophisms,
-- Chapter 7, “A Candlemakers’ Petition”
-- Chapter 8, “Differential Tariffs”
-- (www.econlib.org/library/Bastia... )
Read, Leonard, “I, Pencil” (LINK: www.econlib.org/library/Essays... )
Video: Pickles (www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?i... )
Stocks, the Stock Market, & the Basics of Trading
( www.investopedia.com/universit...)
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