Marginal Revolution University Launches, Bringing Free Online Courses in Economics to the Web

in Economics, Online Courses | October 8th, 2012

A great year for open edu­ca­tion got even bet­ter with the launch of Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty. Found­ed by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, MRUni­ver­si­ty promis­es to deliv­er free, inter­ac­tive cours­es in the eco­nom­ics space. And they’re get­ting start­ed with a course on Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics, a sub­dis­ci­pline that explores why some coun­tries grow rich and oth­ers remain poor. In short, issues that have real mean­ing for every­day peo­ple world­wide.

In an announce­ment on the Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion blog last month, Cowen out­lined a few of the prin­ci­ples guid­ing the project:

1. The prod­uct is free, and we offer more mate­r­i­al in less time.

2. Most of our videos are short, so you can view and lis­ten between tasks, rather than need­ing to sched­ule time for them.  The aver­age video is five min­utes, twen­ty-eight sec­onds long.  When need­ed, more videos are used to explain com­plex top­ics.

3. No talk­ing heads and no long, bor­ing lec­tures.  We have tried to recon­cep­tu­al­ize every aspect of the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence to be friend­ly to the on-line world.

4. It is low band­width and mobile-friend­ly.  No ads.

5. We offer tests and quizzes.

6. We have plans to sub­ti­tle the videos in major lan­guages.  Our reach will be glob­al, and in doing so we are build­ing upon the glob­al empha­sis of our home insti­tu­tion, George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty.

7. We invite users to sub­mit con­tent.

8. It is a flex­i­ble learn­ing mod­ule.  It is not a “MOOC” per se, although it can be used to cre­ate a MOOC, name­ly a mas­sive, open on-line course.

9. It is designed to grow rapid­ly and flex­i­bly, absorb­ing new con­tent in mod­u­lar fash­ion — note the bee­hive struc­ture to our logo.  But we are start­ing with plen­ty of mate­r­i­al.

10. We are pleased to announce that our first course will begin on Octo­ber 1.

Book­mark MRUni­ver­si­ty and look out for its cur­ricu­lum to expand. In the mean­time, you can explore more Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT’s Intro­duc­tion to Eco­nom­ics: A Free Online Course

Free Online Eco­nom­ics & Finance Cours­es

Mas­ter­ing Econo­met­rics: A Free Online Course

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60-Second Adventures in Economics: An Animated Intro to The Invisible Hand and Other Economic Ideas

in Animation, Economics | September 7th, 2012

The Invis­i­ble Hand:

Back in 2011 The Open Uni­ver­si­ty released an engag­ing series of ani­mat­ed intel­lec­tu­al puz­zles called 60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought, nar­rat­ed by the British come­di­an and writer David Mitchell. The series offered a wit­ty and fast-paced trip through some of the most famous para­dox­es and thought exper­i­ments in the his­to­ry of ideas. This week the same team is back with six new adven­tures, this time focused on eco­nom­ics. As the intro­duc­tion on the OU chan­nel at YouTube says:

Ever shak­en an invis­i­ble hand? Been flat­tened by a falling mar­ket? Or won­dered what took the bend out of Phillips’ curve? David Mitchell helps reveal some of the great dilem­mas faced by gov­ern­ments try­ing to run an economy–whether to save or spend, con­trol infla­tion, reg­u­late trade, fix exchange rates, or just leave every­one to get on with it and not inter­vene. You’ll learn why Adam Smith put such a high price on free mar­kets, how Keynes found a bold new way to reduce unem­ploy­ment, and what econ­o­mists went on to dis­cov­er about the impact of pol­i­cy on peo­ple’s and busi­ness­es’ behavior–which may not always be entire­ly ratio­nal.

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics is a fast and fun way to acquaint your­self with a few of the fun­da­men­tal ideas in eco­nom­ics. All six episodes are here, begin­ning with “The Invis­i­ble Hand,” above, and con­tin­u­ing below.

The Para­dox of Thrift:

The Phillips Curve:

The Prin­ci­ple of Com­par­a­tive Advan­tage:

The Impos­si­ble Trin­i­ty:

Ratio­nal Choice The­o­ry:

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John Maynard Keynes Explains Cure to High Unemployment in His Own Voice (1939)

in Economics, History | June 21st, 2012

When some­one ques­tions the effec­tive­ness of Key­ne­sian eco­nom­ics, the obvi­ous reply is: Remem­ber World War II?

The British econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes argued that there is a role for gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion when aggre­gate demand for goods and ser­vices drops, as it did dur­ing the Great Depres­sion. With­out increased pub­lic spend­ing to make up for decreased pri­vate spend­ing, he said, an econ­o­my will slide into a vicious cir­cle of low demand and low out­put, ensur­ing a pro­longed peri­od of high unem­ploy­ment. Gov­ern­ment thrift at such times will only deep­en the prob­lem. “The boom, not the slump,” said Keynes, “is the right time for aus­ter­i­ty.”

In 1939 dark clouds of war were gath­er­ing over Europe, but Keynes saw a sil­ver lin­ing: an oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove his the­o­ry cor­rect. He believed that the mas­sive gov­ern­ment-fund­ed war mobi­liza­tion would final­ly give suf­fi­cient stim­u­lus to end the Great Depres­sion. On May 23 of that year Keynes gave his famous BBC radio address, “Will Re-arma­ment Cure Unem­ploy­ment?” He said, in part:

It is not an exag­ger­a­tion to say that the end of abnor­mal unem­ploy­ment is in sight. And it isn’t only the unem­ployed who will feel the dif­fer­ence. A great num­ber besides will be tak­ing home bet­ter mon­ey each week. And with the demand for effi­cient labor out­run­ning the sup­ply, how much more com­fort­able and secure every­one will feel in his job. The Grand Exper­i­ment has begun. If it works–if expen­di­ture on arma­ments real­ly does cure unemployment–I pre­dict that we shall nev­er go back all the way to the old state of affairs. Good may come out of evil. We may learn a trick or two, which will come in use­ful when the day of peace comes.

When the day of peace did come, the Great Depres­sion was over and Eng­land and Amer­i­ca were embarked on a long peri­od of ris­ing eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty. In these times of reces­sion and gov­ern­ment aus­ter­i­ty, it may be good to remem­ber some­thing else Keynes said in his radio address: “If we can cure unem­ploy­ment for the wast­ed pur­pos­es of arma­ments, we can cure it for the pro­duc­tive pur­pos­es of peace.”

You can find Keynes’ clas­sic work, The Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Employ­ment, Inter­est and Mon­ey, in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

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The Karl Marx Credit Card — When You’re Short of Kapital

in Economics, Random | June 19th, 2012

Is it a tragedy? Is it a farce? In the land once called East Ger­many, in a town once called Karl-Marx-Stadt, a bank called Sparkasse Chem­nitz ran an online poll let­ting cus­tomers vote for images to place on their cred­it cards. And the hands-down win­ner was Karl Marx, an iron­ic pick giv­en that … well, you don’t need me to explain why.

In response to this selec­tion, Plan­et Mon­ey has encour­aged read­ers to post a tagline for the card on Twit­ter, using the hash­tag #marx­card. Here are a few of our favorites so far:

  • There are Some Things Mon­ey Can’t Buy. Espe­cial­ly If You Abol­ish All Pri­vate Prop­er­ty.
  • From each accord­ing to their abil­i­ty, to each accord­ing to his need. For every­thing else, there’s #Marx­card.
  • The Marx Card — Because Cred­it is the Opi­ate of the Mass­es.
  • The Karl Marx Mas­ter­Card — When You’re Short of Kap­i­tal

Got your own to sug­gest? cc: us on Twit­ter: @openculture

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)

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Art for the One Percent: 60 Minutes on the Excess & Hubris of the International Art Market

in Art, Economics | April 4th, 2012

In 1993, CBS 60 Min­utes jour­nal­ist Mor­ley Safer ruf­fled a few feath­ers in the art world with a piece called “Yes…But is it Art?” The pro­gram fea­tured works made up of things like vac­u­um clean­ers, emp­ty canvases–even a can of human feces, which the artist had labeled “Mer­da d’artista.”

On Sun­day, Safer returned with a report on the excess and hubris of the inter­na­tion­al art mar­ket. The seg­ment (above) was taped in Decem­ber at Art Basel Mia­mi Beach, a gath­er­ing billed as “the most pres­ti­gious art show in the Amer­i­c­as,” where exhibitors pay $150,000 to show their wares to a clien­tele of mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires who fly in for the event on pri­vate jets.

Safer­’s report, “Art Mar­ket,” is more an exer­cise in social crit­i­cism than art crit­i­cism. Nat­u­ral­ly some peo­ple took it per­son­al­ly. “Now that Andy Rooney has gone up to that big grumpy­cham­ber in the sky,” wrote Stephanie Murg on the Media Bistro “UnBeige” blog, “Mor­ley Safer has tak­en over the role of iras­ci­ble clean-up hit­ter for the dod­der­ing team of Bad News Bears that is 60 Min­utes.”

In a piece on the “Arts Beat” blog head­lined “Safer Looks at Art but Only Hears the Cash Reg­is­ter,” crit­ic Rober­ta Smith called Safer­’s return vis­it to the art world “a rel­a­tive­ly tooth­less, if still quite clue­less, exer­cise”:

Mov­ing down the aisles he uttered some dis­mis­sive phras­es like “the cute, the kitsch and the clum­sy” while the cam­era passed often incon­se­quen­tial work that was left uniden­ti­fied. Men­tion was made of per­for­mance and video art. Occa­sion­al­ly he mus­tered fee­ble attempts to be recep­tive. There was a respect­ful pause in the asper­sions as the cam­era passed a can­vas by Helen Franken­thaler, although her name was not men­tioned. Kara Walk­er was referred to as a “tru­ly tal­ent­ed artist.” At the Metro Pic­tures booth it was hard to know whether he liked the work of Cindy Sher­man, but he not­ed that her pho­tographs sold for $4 mil­lion (gloss­ing over the fact that only one did).

At one point on Safer­’s stroll there is a chilly encounter with art deal­er Lar­ry Gagosian, who has gal­leries on three con­ti­nents.

“At least say hel­lo,” says Safer.

“Hey Mor­ley,” says Gagosian, with­out get­ting up from his chair or offer­ing the 80-year-old man a seat. “You always look so dap­per. I love that.”

Regard­less of whether you love the art Gagosian sells at his gal­leries in Bev­er­ly Hills, Paris, Gene­va and at least eight oth­er cities around the world, you have won­der at the eco­nom­ic real­i­ty Safer­’s report expos­es. At a time when unem­ploy­ment in Amer­i­ca is still well above 8 per­cent, when more than one in five mort­gage hold­ers have neg­a­tive equi­ty in their homes, when the top one per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion is pock­et­ing 93 per­cent of the gains from a glacial eco­nom­ic recov­ery, Safer­’s piece does what a work of art should: it opens the eyes.

Safer­’s 1993 report:

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Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lectures from Occupy Harvard Teach-In Provide Answers

in Current Affairs, Economics, Harvard | December 12th, 2011

Last Wednes­day, the Occu­py move­ment gained a lit­tle more intel­lec­tu­al momen­tum when eight fac­ul­ty mem­bers from Har­vard, Boston Col­lege, and N.Y.U. gath­ered in Cam­bridge to present a day­long Teach-In. In one talk, Archon Fung (Ford Foun­da­tion Pro­fes­sor of Democ­ra­cy and Cit­i­zen­ship and Co-Direc­tor of Trans­paren­cy Pol­i­cy Project at Har­vard) took a vague the­sis of the Occu­py move­ment — “Shit is Fucked Up and Bull­shit” — and gave it some aca­d­e­m­ic depth in a data-filled talk called â€śWhy Has Inequal­i­ty Grown in Amer­i­ca? And What Should We Do About It?” The oth­er talks are avail­able on YouTube (see links below) or via audio stream:

Het­ero­dox Eco­nom­ics: Alter­na­tives to Manki­w’s Ide­ol­o­gy - Stephen Mar­glin, Wal­ter Bark­er Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Wall Street’s Role in the Euro­pean Finan­cial Cri­sis - Richard Park­er, Lec­tur­er in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Senior Fel­low at the Shoren­stein Cen­ter, Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

The Occu­py Move­ment and Stu­dent Debt Refusal — Andrew Ross, Pro­fes­sor of Social and Cul­tur­al Analy­sis, New York Uni­ver­si­ty

Eco­nom­ics for the 99% — Juli­et Schor, Pro­fes­sor of Soci­ol­o­gy, Boston Col­lege

Booms and Busts: The Legal Dynam­ics of Mod­ern Mon­ey — Chris­tine Desan, Pro­fes­sor of Law, Har­vard Law School, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Fear and Pow­er — Brad Epps, Pro­fes­sor of Romance Lan­guages & Lit­er­a­tures and Depart­ment Chair for Stud­ies in Women, Gen­der, and Sex­u­al­i­ty, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Vig­i­lance, Inquiry, Alien­ation & Hope at Har­vard and in the USA - John Wom­ack, Robert Woods Bliss Pro­fes­sor of Latin Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky at Occu­py Boston

Har­vard Thinks Big, a TED-Esque Event

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Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (Free Online Course)

in Economics, Online Courses | November 21st, 2011

David Har­vey, an impor­tant social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er, has got the right idea. Take what you know. Teach it in the class­room. Cap­ture it on video. Then dis­trib­ute it to the world. Keep it sim­ple, but just do it.

Har­vey is now mak­ing avail­able 26 hours of lec­tures, dur­ing which he gives a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Das Kap­i­tal (1867). This work, often con­sid­ered to be Marx’s mas­ter­piece, is where he elab­o­rat­ed a cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism and laid the ground­work for an ide­ol­o­gy that took the 20th cen­tu­ry by storm. Har­vey is no stranger to this text. He has taught this class for over 40 years now, both in uni­ver­si­ties (Johns Hop­kins and CUNY) and in the com­mu­ni­ty as well.

The first lec­ture, pre­ced­ed by an intro­duc­to­ry inter­view last­ing rough­ly six min­utes, appears above. The rest of the lec­tures can be accessed via Har­vey’s web site, YouTube, and iTunes. Also, we have placed the course in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, which keeps on grow­ing. Find it under the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion.

UPDATE:  David Har­vey is look­ing for vol­un­teers to trans­late his lec­tures into 36 lan­guages. If you want to help you, you can get start­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cri­sis of Cap­i­tal­ism Ani­mat­ed (with David Har­vey)

Hayek v. Keynes Rap

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The Story of Broke: An Animated Look at US Federal Spending and Values

in Current Affairs, Economics, Politics | November 14th, 2011

Back in 2008, Annie Leonard pro­duced The Sto­ry of Stuff (see below), a 20-minute ani­mat­ed film that explores the way our con­sumerist habits take a toll on the envi­ron­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The video racked up mil­lions of views on YouTube, and now Leonard returns with the sec­ond video in a longer series. It’s called the The Sto­ry of Broke (see above) and it takes a short­er, ani­mat­ed look at U.S. gov­ern­ment spend­ing — at how we pri­or­i­tize our spend­ing, and what it says about our core nation­al val­ues.

We have a lot of mon­ey float­ing around. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed $2.16 tril­lion in tax rev­enue in FY 2010 (and we bor­rowed yet anoth­er $1.3 tril­lion more). Mean­while, rough­ly $705 bil­lion went to defense spend­ing, which is sev­en times (or $589 bil­lion) more than the next biggest defense spender, Chi­na. It turns out that oper­at­ing a bloat­ed empire with troops deployed across 150 coun­tries is a cost­ly nation­al pri­or­i­ty. Then, as Leonard points out, we also unthink­ing­ly fun­nel a lot of mon­ey, in the form of sub­si­dies and give­aways, to dinosaur indus­tries. And then we’re told that noth­ing is left over for Social Secu­ri­ty ($707 bil­lion), Medicare/Medicaid ($732 bil­lion), and edu­ca­tion. But we should­n’t take those claims at face val­ue. Where we spend mon­ey is a choice. It’s ide­al­ly our choice, but all too often it’s real­ly a mat­ter of what’s val­ued by our lead­ers and their finan­cial back­ers.…

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