Economic Rockstar

Connecting Brilliant Minds in Economics and Finance

154: Pat Holt on the Economics in Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and Black Panther

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154: Pat Holt on the Economics in Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and Black Panther


Pat Holt is a computer engineer, a comic book geek and a born-again economics lover.

Pat reached out to Brian O’Roark after listening to episode 116 of this podcast and after a while, he contributed a chapter tothe book ‘Superheroes and Economics: The Shadowy World of 

Capes, Masks and Invisible Hands’ edited by Rob Salkowitz and Brian.

In this Episode, Pat mentions and discusses:

  • Unemployment, utility maximisation when saving the galaxy.
  • Human capital, opportunity costs and trade-offs.
  • How comic books provide a historical context life by capturing the social and economic issues of the day.
  • Racism, chauvinism and feminism.
  • How Superman brought down the Ku Klux Klan.
  • How Spider-Man epitomises many of our battles to get through the day.
  • Whether Spider-Man is representative of a start-up entrepreneur.
  • The gender inequalities of the 1960s and how Wonder Woman led the way to fight for women’s rights and continued the feminist movement.
  • The Dandy and The Beano at the time of World War 2.
  • Lou Ferrigno as the Incredible Hulk.
  • How Gloria Steinem helped Diana Prince gain back her Wonder Woman powers.
  • Black Panther, the Resource Curse, trade and vibranium.
  • Captain Marvel.
  • Supergirl.
  • Wakandanomics by The Economist
  • Weird Al Yankovich: Everything You Know Is Wrong

Other Episodes of Interest:

How to Contact Pat Holt:

  • Twitter: @PatNHolt
  • Email: ballroomsalsadancer[at]gmail[dot]com

Books:

Patreon

If you’re a fan of the podcast and would like to show your support in anyway, please check out my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/economicrockstar where you can sign up for any of the awards for as little as $1 a month or you can simply follow me on the Economic Rockstar Facebook page or on Twitter or simply recommend the show to a friend, especially if they have never had the opportunity to study economics.

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152: David Kyle Johnson on Economics and Philosophy in Soylent Green

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152: David Kyle Johnson on Economics and Philosophy in Soylent Green

This is a 3rd instalment of my interviews with Professor David Kyle Johnson, an  Associate Professor of Philosophy at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

We catch up again after watching the 1973 dystopian movie ‘Soylent Green‘ and discuss some economics and philosophical themes that run through the movie.

In this Episode, we cover:

  • Scarcity
  • Choice
  • Over-population
  • Consumption
  • Inflation
  • Production
  • Automation
  • Altruism
  • Theft
  • Black market economy
  • Pricing
  • Equilibrium
  • The Invisible Hand

Social Issues Discussed Include:

  • Social class/status,
  • Feminism
  • Poverty

Philosophical Questions Addressed Include:

  • Should we resort to cannibalism to save the human race?
  • Should we have the right to die with dignity in the face of a terminal illness, the loss of hope or over our moral principles?
  • Is there a god?
  • And more.

Movies:

Other Episodes to Check Out:

146: David Kyle Johnson on Science Fiction as Philosophy and Finding Nietzsche’s Übermensch in Economics

151: Unreleased Bonus Episode with David Kyle Johnson

Books:

Patreon

If you’re a fan of the podcast and would like to show your support in anyway, please check out my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/economicrockstar where you can sign up for any of the awards for as little as $1 a month or you can simply follow me on the Economic Rockstar Facebook page or on Twitter or simply recommend the show to a friend, especially if they have never had the opportunity to study economics.

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151: Unreleased Bonus Episode with David Kyle Johnson

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151: Unreleased Bonus Episode with David Kyle Johnson

This is a continuation of my conversation with Professor David Kyle Johnson from Episode 146.

Checkout Episode 146 if you want to catch up with our conversation prior to this Bonus Episode.

We agreed to meet up a third time to talk about economics and philosophy in Soylent Green since I hadn’t watched the movie. So we did just that in Episode 152. Check it out here: www.economicrockstar.com/soylentgreen

 

In this episode we touch on the following themes:

  • Overpopulation
  • Food scarcity
  • Inefficient agricultural and meat production methods
  • Euthanasia

Books:

Movies:

TV Series:

People:

  • Socrates
  • Plato

Patreon

If you’re a fan of the podcast and would like to show your support in anyway, please check out my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/economicrockstar where you can sign up for any of the awards for as little as $1 a month or you can simply follow me on the Economic Rockstar Facebook page or on Twitter or simply recommend the show to a friend, especially if they have never had the opportunity to study economics.

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134: Edward Castronova on the Economy of Virtual Worlds

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134: Edward Castronova on the Economy of Virtual Worlds

 

Edward Castronova is professor of Telecommunication and Cognitive Science at Indiana University Bloomington. He pioneered the study of how money,value, and property flow inside online games like Everquest

Castronova’s paper Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier became the most downloaded paper in the entire database — beating out works by dozens of Nobel laureates.

Books by Professor Castronova: 

Papers:

  • Castronova, Edward (2008). A Test of the Law of Demand in a Virtual World: Exploring the Petri Dish Approach to Social Science. CESifo Working Papers.
  • Castronova, Edward (2001). Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier, CESifo Working Paper No. 618, December.
  • Castronova, Edward (2002). On Virtual Economies, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 752, July.
  • Castronova, Edward (2003). The Price of ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’: A Hedonic Pricing Model of Avatar Attributes in a Synthethic World, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 957, June.

Games:

 

Patreon

If you’re a fan of the podcast and would like to show your support in anyway, please check out my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/economicrockstar where you can sign up for any of the awards for as little as $1 a month or you can simply follow me on the Economic Rockstar Facebook page or on Twitter or simply recommend the show to a friend, especially if they have never had the opportunity to study economics.

http://www.patreon.com/economicrockstar

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118: Zachary Feinstein on Systemic Risk and Economics in Star Wars and Harry Potter

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118: Zachary Feinstein on Systemic Risk and Economics in Star Wars and Harry Potter

Zachary Feinstein is Professor joined the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis in 2014.

While earning a doctorate at Princeton University, Zachary supervised the senior thesis-writing group and assisted in teaching several courses.

Previously, he conducted research at Hunan University in China and was an intern at Millennium Partners LP and Lehman Brothers Inc., both in New York City.

Professor Feinstein works in the broad fields of operations research and financial engineering and he heads The Operations Research and Financial Engineering Laboratory Washington University.

His research focus has been on the applications of set-optimization to financial risk measurement, with projects studying and defining dynamic risk measures in markets with transaction costs and measures of systemic risk.

You can find Professor Feinstein’s work on Star Wars and more at www.fictionomics.com.

On Systemic Crises and Contagion:

“This is something that comes up very regularly in modern economic history. And really it’s something that we talk about it for a year after the crisis and then we forget to think that this is a problem. So by bringing it up in Star Wars and by bringing it up in Harry Potter we can keep this in the public consciousness.” Professor Zachary Feinstein.

Economics:

In this episode, Zachary discusses and mentions: systemic risk, contagion, world GDP, Gross World Product, Gross Galactic Product (GGP), interstellar travel, economic stagnation, financial deregulation, resources, scarcity, bailout, bank failures, TARP, moral hazard and the Glass-Steagall Act.

In this Episode, you will Learn:

  • about the petition to White House to build the Death Star.
  • how the Death Star would cost $193 quintillion to build and World GDP is $70 trillion.
  • about how Professor Feinstein used the Manhattan Project to build the first Atomic Bomb as a proxy to calculate the cost of the second Death Star.
  • why people would go back to authoritarian rule like The First Order (economic depression).
  • how economic growth is linked to population growth.
  • what happens in a systemic crisis if it’s generated by currency exchanges.
  • the Economic System in the Star Wars Galaxy.
  • the systemic risk imposed by the Gringotts Bank in the Harry Potter series.
  • and much much more.

Movies/TV Series Mentioned in this Episode:

Writing Tips:

Just write it down. Get something on page and then afterward you can mark it up in red as much as you want. Don’t worry about getting the right sentence down, just get something on the page and then move it all around. Mark it up. Completely delete it if you want. But once it’s on the page, it’s much easier to move forward than worrying about the perfect sentence to start – Professor Zachary Feinstein.

Academic Papers:

Links:

Books:

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117: Courtney Conrad on Broadway Economics and What We Can Learn Through Musicals

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117: Courtney Conrad on Broadway Economics and What We Can Learn Through Musicals

broadway-economics-economic-rockstar

Courtney Conrad is a senior undergraduate economics major at Susquehanna University.courtney-conrad-economic-rockstar

At Susquehanna, Courtney serves as a research assistant, teaching assistant for principles of microeconomics, and tutor.

Courtney’s research interests include labor economics, experimental economics, behavioral economics, and the economics of education.

After completing her Bachelor’s degree in economics, Courtney plans on furthering her economics studies and research at the graduate school level with the aspiration of becoming an academic.

Since being hand-picked as a research assistant during her first year at SU, Courtney has actively assisted her mentor, professor and department chair Dr. Matthew Rousu, on a variety of projects over the years.

As a first-year and sophomore, Courtney managed and conducted experimental auctions for a National Institute of Health grant-funded study in which tobacco smokers’ demand for e-cigarettes was assessed.

Additionally, Courtney collaborates with Dr. Rousu in creating the videos and accompanying economics concept call-outs, discussion questions, and video descriptions for BroadwayEconomics.com.

Links:

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116: Brian O’Roark on The Economics of Superheroes and The Hunger Games

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116: Brian O’Roark on The Economics of Superheroes and The Hunger Games

Brian O’Roark is University Professor of Economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. He is the Co-Director of the Robert Morris Center for Economics Education and has a Ph.D. from George Mason University.

In 2014, Brian was given the Undergraduate Teaching Innovation Award by the Middle Atlantic Association of Colleges of Business Administration. He teaches the Survey of Economics course, and Principles of Micro and Macro Economics.

Brian is the co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Essentials of Economics where hundreds of teaching tips is compiled into one essential, thoughtfully designed teaching resource making it easy for new instructors to incorporate best teaching practices into their courses and for veteran teachers to find inspiration to enliven their lectures.

Professor O’Roark has integrated economic content in songs with many topics being covered in the music videos available at  http://www.criticalcommons.org/author/oroark.

To me Brian has become synonymous with superheroes and I could be forgiven for calling him Super Econ Man.

Economics:

In this episode, Brian discusses and mentions: comparative advantage, institutions, production possibility frontier, inequality, opportunity costs and choices.

Economists:

In this episode, Brian discusses and mentions: Jeff Cleveland, Kim Holder, Matt Rousu, Deirdre McClosky, Andrew Heaton, Beatrice Cherrier, Manu Saadia, Peter Leeson, Steve Horwitz, James Tierney, Dirk Mateer, James Buchanan and Walter Williams.

Links:

Movies for Economics:

 

TV Shows:

  • The Flash
  • The Green Arrow
  • Super Girl

Superheros:

Writing Tips:

  1. Write on things that you’re interested in. Once you lose that interest, it makes writing so much more difficult. For me right now,  I’m writing on dystopian literature and writing about superheroes and hopefully writing more on information security. Those are things that I’m really really interested in and that makes the job of writing so much easier.
  2. Do the writing and get your ideas down on paper first. Don’t worry about what other people have said on the topic before you start writing yourself. When I was at Mason, James Buchanan was still there. And he made this comment that stuck with me more so than anything that I have learned in any of the classes that I had there. He would write the paper first and then do the literature review later. Because he didn’t want anybody else’s opinion’s to affect what he was writing. He wanted all of the ideas that he put down on paper to be his own. And if other people had written about it he could weave what they said into what he said. But he didn’t want to work it the other way around. He didn’t want to have his ideas be the offspring of somebody else’s work.
  3. Make sure you carve out time to write. If you carve out time to get your writing done it doesn’t become the last thing on your to-do list. When it becomes the last thing on your to-do list it tends to keep getting pushed back and pushed back and then it doesn’t get done at all.

Books:

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