Author Archives: Max Coleman

In my last post, I outlined some of the stereotypes associated with econ majors and why I personally decided to major in economics. For this post, however, I am planning to address research and opinions which say that economics makes you a bad person, or more specifically, ” to exhibit a range of “debased” moral behavior and attitudes” (Etzioni, 2015). For this post I will be citing some relevant academic literature, explaining via examples, and trying to correct what I view as a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. Much of the sociological research, as well as a number of blog posts, describe economists and Continue reading Why Should(n’t) You Study Economics? (Part 2)→

Last Friday, I registered for my last undergraduate semester, and now I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. This made me start thinking about how I ended up as an economics major, given that I spent my first year here assuming I’d be a chemistry major. (I guess making that big of an assumption should’ve been a clue) I think the main two factors were a fun, engaging economics teacher in high school, and a class called IPE 201, with Lisa Nunn. I ended up joining IPE 201: Introduction to International Political Economy, a week into the semester, after a brief foray Continue reading Why Should(n’t) You Study Economics? (Part 1)→

Let’s start this article off by saying, while I can’t say that scientists have proved climate change is real (nobody can really prove anything, even economists and scientists), I think the evidence is convincing enough that even if only 97% of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change, we should probably still do something about it. 81% of climate economics experts believe that a market solution is critical, given that climate change has been called “the greatest market failure the world has seen,” by Nicholas Stern, an economist and climate researcher. Essentially, there are three economic problems occurring with regard to climate Continue reading Time for a Change: Americans Support a Carbon Tax→

Many students have expressed discontent with our current voting system, especially as it relates to the ideas of “choosing between two bad options” or “wasting your vote” on a third candidate. Many articles, bills, and petitions have called for electoral reform, along with celebrities such as Lady Gaga. In this article I will go over the economic idea of a social choice rule, or mechanism which describes how we can move from individual preferences to group preferences, or social preferences. For a primer on the economic idea of preferences, see last week’s post, Accounting for Taste: Ice Cream Preferences. One of the best articles Continue reading Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem: Can We Hit a Societal Bullseye?→