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Thinking Like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making
Economic forces are everywhere around you. But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you. Instead, with these 12 fast-moving and crystal clear lectures, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn those same forces to your own advantage.
Requiring no previous economics background, Professor Bartlett presents some of the fundamental principles and concepts that shape the lenses through which economists view the world. He then shows you how to use these simple analytical tools to understand what you see through those lenses. By learning to identify the many varied situations in which economics affects your life and how to wield the tools that can help you make the wisest choices in those situations, you'll enhance not only your understanding of daily life but your own success in living it.
Packed with case studies, helpful strategies, economic insights, and more, this series will equip you with a reliable toolkit for thinking more like an everyday economist and approach the issues in your own life with a more educated, seasoned eye. And after these dozen lectures with Professor Bartlett, things really will look very different. You'll see how basic economic ideas like incentives, risks, rewards, and rationality are not just the province of professional economists, government policymakers, or your local bank's loan officer, but instead lie at the root of nearly every decision you must make in your daily life.
Requiring no previous economics background, Professor Bartlett presents some of the fundamental principles and concepts that shape the lenses through which economists view the world. He then shows you how to use these simple analytical tools to understand what you see through those lenses. By learning to identify the many varied situations in which economics affects your life and how to wield the tools that can help you make the wisest choices in those situations, you'll enhance not only your understanding of daily life but your own success in living it.
Packed with case studies, helpful strategies, economic insights, and more, this series will equip you with a reliable toolkit for thinking more like an everyday economist and approach the issues in your own life with a more educated, seasoned eye. And after these dozen lectures with Professor Bartlett, things really will look very different. You'll see how basic economic ideas like incentives, risks, rewards, and rationality are not just the province of professional economists, government policymakers, or your local bank's loan officer, but instead lie at the root of nearly every decision you must make in your daily life.
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First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
October 17, 2011
If you know nothing at all about economics, this will make for a fascinating introduction to many of the central ideas. If you already know the basics, you might have to make a rational decision about the value of some guy telling you what you already know. I listened while painting a bedroom, because I already think like an economist enough to recognize that the opportunity costs associated with listening to it while doing something else were considerably lower than the cost of reading a book covering the same information, even if the book cost a little bit less money. If the preceding sentence makes perfect sense to you, you probably won't learn much from this, but you might enjoy it. I already knew what was going to happen to Frodo at the end of Lord of the Rings, but that didn't stop me from reading it three or four times.
Frodo defeats Sauron because Sauron was thinking like a malevolent entity of unspeakable evil, and not like an economist. It never occurred to him that anyone else would ever dream of destroying the ring. The ring would give its wielder awesome power, and he assumed that everyone else valued god-like might. Sauron applied game theory and concluded that the most rational move of his opponents would be to attempt to use the ring against him, to oust him and take his place. His flaw was that he didn't recognize that Frodo's payoff table was different from his own. He failed to acknowledge that objects do not have innate objective value. The Fellowship was keenly aware of the value Sauron placed on omnipotent power, while Sauron made false assumptions about the value others placed on being a nigh-invincible deity, versus, say, having a nice smoke back in the shire while putting away a few pints of mead with the Boffins and Bolgers. Middle-Earth owes its very existence to the advantage they gained from this information asymmetry.
This is one of the dangers of thinking like an economist, incidentally. It might possibly sap the joy out of life and turn you into a very boring person, obsessively analyzing every goddamn thing in terms of incentives, efficiency, and optimization. You have to factor that into your rational decision about whether or not you want to think like an economist, but I was already pretty boring and annoying before I ever picked up an economics book, so the opportunity costs in terms of people not wanting to talk to me anymore were pretty low.
Frodo defeats Sauron because Sauron was thinking like a malevolent entity of unspeakable evil, and not like an economist. It never occurred to him that anyone else would ever dream of destroying the ring. The ring would give its wielder awesome power, and he assumed that everyone else valued god-like might. Sauron applied game theory and concluded that the most rational move of his opponents would be to attempt to use the ring against him, to oust him and take his place. His flaw was that he didn't recognize that Frodo's payoff table was different from his own. He failed to acknowledge that objects do not have innate objective value. The Fellowship was keenly aware of the value Sauron placed on omnipotent power, while Sauron made false assumptions about the value others placed on being a nigh-invincible deity, versus, say, having a nice smoke back in the shire while putting away a few pints of mead with the Boffins and Bolgers. Middle-Earth owes its very existence to the advantage they gained from this information asymmetry.
This is one of the dangers of thinking like an economist, incidentally. It might possibly sap the joy out of life and turn you into a very boring person, obsessively analyzing every goddamn thing in terms of incentives, efficiency, and optimization. You have to factor that into your rational decision about whether or not you want to think like an economist, but I was already pretty boring and annoying before I ever picked up an economics book, so the opportunity costs in terms of people not wanting to talk to me anymore were pretty low.
January 13, 2024
Thinking Like an Economist, by Randall Bartlett is a straightforward and beautiful book that does exactly what it says. To echo Professor Robert Murphy's words, economics is a way of looking at life. Professor Bartlett offers us this way. He helps us recognize that: 1) People respond to incentives; 2) people evaluate things at the margin; 3) the cost of anything is the set of forgone opportunities; 4) there's no such thing as a free lunch; 5) no one is ultimately in control of any one thing; and 6) there will always be unintended consequences to our actions. Through these six lessons and three useful tools presented at a later lecture, we see many economic situations analyzed in the manner an economist would see them. I enjoyed and learned from it and recommend it to anyone unexposed to the economic lens.
January 18, 2024
The lectures were well done. I learned a few things that I had not thought of from and economist's viewpoint. I can also see how many of the principles can be incorporated into everyday life.
May 3, 2023
These audio lectures summarize different economic theories/ terms that provide a framework for thinking like an economist. I studied those before, so I didn’t hear anything new but they were presented in a fairly easy and understandable manner. Though sometimes I don’t think the terms were very well explained hence I gave 3 stars. Main insights for me are:
There are 6 core principles in thinking like an economist:
1. People respond to incentives. You change incentives - behavior will respond.
2. In a world of scarcity there is no free lunch, there is always an opportunity cost to pay. More of anything means less of something else.
3. Each interaction has at least two sides. Nothing is just one thing and you should be able to see the incentives on all sides of all the participants.
4. Everything affects everything else. Our actions will have sometimes unintended consequences.
5. For any action there is the danger of significant unintended consequences.
6. No one is truly in control.
From those principles come 3 concepts:
1) economists think in terms of rationality. It tells you how to make choices to achieve the objective you have. Rational decisions are decisions made strategically, consciously choosing better alternatives in terms of self-defined welfare over worse alternatives.
2) Economists tend to focus their attention on marginal analysis. Our lives are made up of sequences of small changes, their decisions made on the margins, on the small pieces. Equal marginal principle is the balance between two things to be equal (eg shelter and food). You never decide what you are gonna do with the rest of your life but in fact mostly what you do is choosing what to do with the next small piece of it. Life is the uncontrolled sum of all these smaller choices.
3) Optimization - the process of making small adjustments on the margin, making a little bit of this or that, we have optimized, subject to constraints. Rational individuals will interact only if it makes them both better off.
Scarcity, trade offs and opportunity cost - more of one thing and less of another. And as the marginal value changes - more/ less of something makes the marginal value fall/ rise.
For an economist efficiency is making people as well off as they can be, given the resources available. As per Paretto, the only unambiguous standard for saying this is better outcome than that, is if it makes at least one person better off by their own judgement without making anyone else worse off, then we can say this is unambiguous social improvement. Rational choices can lead all involved to better, socially efficient outcomes but they don’t have to. The failings come more often when my best strategy depends on your choice and vice versa.
Any time that you have a decision to make, that will affect someone, and that person has information relevant to your decision, they have this incentive to filter, distort, to hide this information. Rationale dictates that you will have partial information with which to make the decision.
Anchors can be very useful tool in understanding situations, when we have limited information and limited experience. In that sense their use can be very rational but their use can be used by others (on us) so we need to be conscious about it.
Time matters. When events, both good and bad, happen, time is an important element of evaluating options. Money is an elastic measure, and its real value changes as the cost of living changes. Any measure in dollar units must be examined to determine which type of dollars (nominal or real) are being used. Because of interest, money also has a time value. The present equivalent of receiving $1000 at some point in the future becomes smaller and smaller as that event moves further into the future. Similarly, the longer interest accumulates on an amount of principal, the greater its compounded future value.
Endowment effect - once I get something, its value increases (for me) because I own it.
Loss aversion - a loss hurts twice as much as a gain helps.
Status quo effect - the first useful choice you make becomes the status quo and stuck with it for years even though later it might not be so beneficial anymore.
There are 6 core principles in thinking like an economist:
1. People respond to incentives. You change incentives - behavior will respond.
2. In a world of scarcity there is no free lunch, there is always an opportunity cost to pay. More of anything means less of something else.
3. Each interaction has at least two sides. Nothing is just one thing and you should be able to see the incentives on all sides of all the participants.
4. Everything affects everything else. Our actions will have sometimes unintended consequences.
5. For any action there is the danger of significant unintended consequences.
6. No one is truly in control.
From those principles come 3 concepts:
1) economists think in terms of rationality. It tells you how to make choices to achieve the objective you have. Rational decisions are decisions made strategically, consciously choosing better alternatives in terms of self-defined welfare over worse alternatives.
2) Economists tend to focus their attention on marginal analysis. Our lives are made up of sequences of small changes, their decisions made on the margins, on the small pieces. Equal marginal principle is the balance between two things to be equal (eg shelter and food). You never decide what you are gonna do with the rest of your life but in fact mostly what you do is choosing what to do with the next small piece of it. Life is the uncontrolled sum of all these smaller choices.
3) Optimization - the process of making small adjustments on the margin, making a little bit of this or that, we have optimized, subject to constraints. Rational individuals will interact only if it makes them both better off.
Scarcity, trade offs and opportunity cost - more of one thing and less of another. And as the marginal value changes - more/ less of something makes the marginal value fall/ rise.
For an economist efficiency is making people as well off as they can be, given the resources available. As per Paretto, the only unambiguous standard for saying this is better outcome than that, is if it makes at least one person better off by their own judgement without making anyone else worse off, then we can say this is unambiguous social improvement. Rational choices can lead all involved to better, socially efficient outcomes but they don’t have to. The failings come more often when my best strategy depends on your choice and vice versa.
Any time that you have a decision to make, that will affect someone, and that person has information relevant to your decision, they have this incentive to filter, distort, to hide this information. Rationale dictates that you will have partial information with which to make the decision.
Anchors can be very useful tool in understanding situations, when we have limited information and limited experience. In that sense their use can be very rational but their use can be used by others (on us) so we need to be conscious about it.
Time matters. When events, both good and bad, happen, time is an important element of evaluating options. Money is an elastic measure, and its real value changes as the cost of living changes. Any measure in dollar units must be examined to determine which type of dollars (nominal or real) are being used. Because of interest, money also has a time value. The present equivalent of receiving $1000 at some point in the future becomes smaller and smaller as that event moves further into the future. Similarly, the longer interest accumulates on an amount of principal, the greater its compounded future value.
Endowment effect - once I get something, its value increases (for me) because I own it.
Loss aversion - a loss hurts twice as much as a gain helps.
Status quo effect - the first useful choice you make becomes the status quo and stuck with it for years even though later it might not be so beneficial anymore.
July 18, 2019
The concepts and principles presented in this audio book are pretty basic, but that's exactly why everybody should know about them.
March 27, 2024
Professor Randall Bartlett’s stated goal in this twelve lecture series is to teach critical thinking in the way that an economist might approach a given issue.
Lectures 1 and 2 cover the basic principles. People respond to incentives. Be cognizant of opportunity costs (there is no such thing as a free lunch). With decisions / actions come externalities and unforeseen consequences. Economists generally see the world through the lens of three core concepts: Rationality, Marginal Analysis, and Optimization. When looking at whether behavior is rational, the focus is not on the objective value of the preferred outcome but rather the process in which the individual seeks to achieve said preferred outcome. As to the margins, most choices in life are not all or nothing, but rather how much more or how much less, and at what cost: marginal utility and marginal cost are not linear. Optimization seeks to find the ideal balance when marginal utility and marginal cost, as well as opportunity costs, are considered.
Lectures 3 - 5 discuss the concepts of efficiency, public goods, the Free Rider Problem, the Tragedy of the Commons, and how all are variants of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in terms of different incentives, asymmetric information, and externalities. Lecture 5 ends by tying these issues to social policy, and the difficulties of promulgating policy that counterbalances the aforementioned considerations. Regardless of political leaning, most would probably agree that: Clear rights and obligations beget clear incentives.
Lecture 6 was probably my favorite, as it introduces the concept of Rational Ignorance. With respect to information (like with everything else) there is a point where the marginal cost to obtaining additional information outweighs the marginal benefits. Once past this point of optimal ignorance, it becomes irrational to expend more time and resources acquiring information. In An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) Anthony Downs summarized this with respect to voter ignorance: “It is irrational to be politically well-informed because the low returns from data simply do not justify their cost in time and other resources.” In other words, voters are acting rationally when falling to spend the required time to truly understand the issues, actual consequences, and politicians who espouse or decry such because the effect of a single vote is infinitesimal. (More on this later in my review of Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter.) The free market provides several solutions to individual ignorance and the cost of information. One method is for individuals to take an aggregate / average of independent assessments as discussed in James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds (stock markets theoretically work in this way). Another way is to pay experts who specialize in that information (doctors, lawyers, brokers, car mechanics, etc.).
Lecture 7 applies marginal utility and cost to risk. It is both impossible and impractical to completely eliminate risk. Less obviously, many risk averse individuals engage in irrational behavior by excessively reducing risk. (Fear is no less of a hobgoblin of the mind than greed in terms of rational decision making.) This segues into the heart of the lecture, which is the calculation of Expected Value - if done correctly, gives us a better approach to understanding and planning around risk. In the simplest of terms, calculate Expected Value of by multiplying the probability of each possibility by the value of its outcome and thereafter adding those values together. Example: I will pay you $.80 every time you flip a coin, but you have to pay me $.50 when it comes up heads and $1.00 when it comes up tails. Is this a good deal or not? Casinos are very good at calculating Expected Value, and gamblers are generally bad (or think that the rules of Expected Value do not apply to them). Thinking like an economist entails not only thinking of expected values of the proposed course of action, but also the expected values of its alternatives.
Lectures 8 and 9 discuss Information Asymmetry. Due to our Rational Ignorance, we choose to get most of our information from others. This opens the door for other people to use information strategically (i.e., by withholding, distorting, obfuscating, or selling that information). The classic example is that of a used car salesman, who obviously has much more information about the cars he sells. The hostage concept is one popular method of dealing with Information Asymmetry. Warring families would wed their children to one another to broker peace. In addition to the union, the family member would become a hostage to dissuade bad behavior. Modern day iterations of such a hostage include warranties and collateral (e.g., your house when taking out a mortgage) are variations of the hostage. Lecture 9 also teaches the concepts of present and future value.
Lecture 10 pulls the previous lectures together by way of example - think like an economist when deciding whether to purchase an extended warranty on a new television. The seller certainly has more information than the buyer with respect to the reliability of the television as well as what it costs to repair it. What is the Expected Value of the warranty when comparing the cost against the likelihood of having to fix or replace the television? The present value of the money spent on the warranty is greater than its future value.
Lectures 11 and 12 close out by identifying cognitive fallacies studied in the field of Behavioral Economics, which include Loss Aversion, the Endowment Effect, Anchoring, and the Status Quo Effect. (Highly recommended: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Thinking Fast and Slow.)
At the end Professor Bartlett reminds us that thinking like an economist is not about rote memorization. Rather, it is about using a framework to view the world. Analyze and reason your way into good decision making. #thinkinglikeaneconomist
Lectures 1 and 2 cover the basic principles. People respond to incentives. Be cognizant of opportunity costs (there is no such thing as a free lunch). With decisions / actions come externalities and unforeseen consequences. Economists generally see the world through the lens of three core concepts: Rationality, Marginal Analysis, and Optimization. When looking at whether behavior is rational, the focus is not on the objective value of the preferred outcome but rather the process in which the individual seeks to achieve said preferred outcome. As to the margins, most choices in life are not all or nothing, but rather how much more or how much less, and at what cost: marginal utility and marginal cost are not linear. Optimization seeks to find the ideal balance when marginal utility and marginal cost, as well as opportunity costs, are considered.
Lectures 3 - 5 discuss the concepts of efficiency, public goods, the Free Rider Problem, the Tragedy of the Commons, and how all are variants of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in terms of different incentives, asymmetric information, and externalities. Lecture 5 ends by tying these issues to social policy, and the difficulties of promulgating policy that counterbalances the aforementioned considerations. Regardless of political leaning, most would probably agree that: Clear rights and obligations beget clear incentives.
Lecture 6 was probably my favorite, as it introduces the concept of Rational Ignorance. With respect to information (like with everything else) there is a point where the marginal cost to obtaining additional information outweighs the marginal benefits. Once past this point of optimal ignorance, it becomes irrational to expend more time and resources acquiring information. In An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) Anthony Downs summarized this with respect to voter ignorance: “It is irrational to be politically well-informed because the low returns from data simply do not justify their cost in time and other resources.” In other words, voters are acting rationally when falling to spend the required time to truly understand the issues, actual consequences, and politicians who espouse or decry such because the effect of a single vote is infinitesimal. (More on this later in my review of Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter.) The free market provides several solutions to individual ignorance and the cost of information. One method is for individuals to take an aggregate / average of independent assessments as discussed in James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds (stock markets theoretically work in this way). Another way is to pay experts who specialize in that information (doctors, lawyers, brokers, car mechanics, etc.).
Lecture 7 applies marginal utility and cost to risk. It is both impossible and impractical to completely eliminate risk. Less obviously, many risk averse individuals engage in irrational behavior by excessively reducing risk. (Fear is no less of a hobgoblin of the mind than greed in terms of rational decision making.) This segues into the heart of the lecture, which is the calculation of Expected Value - if done correctly, gives us a better approach to understanding and planning around risk. In the simplest of terms, calculate Expected Value of by multiplying the probability of each possibility by the value of its outcome and thereafter adding those values together. Example: I will pay you $.80 every time you flip a coin, but you have to pay me $.50 when it comes up heads and $1.00 when it comes up tails. Is this a good deal or not? Casinos are very good at calculating Expected Value, and gamblers are generally bad (or think that the rules of Expected Value do not apply to them). Thinking like an economist entails not only thinking of expected values of the proposed course of action, but also the expected values of its alternatives.
Lectures 8 and 9 discuss Information Asymmetry. Due to our Rational Ignorance, we choose to get most of our information from others. This opens the door for other people to use information strategically (i.e., by withholding, distorting, obfuscating, or selling that information). The classic example is that of a used car salesman, who obviously has much more information about the cars he sells. The hostage concept is one popular method of dealing with Information Asymmetry. Warring families would wed their children to one another to broker peace. In addition to the union, the family member would become a hostage to dissuade bad behavior. Modern day iterations of such a hostage include warranties and collateral (e.g., your house when taking out a mortgage) are variations of the hostage. Lecture 9 also teaches the concepts of present and future value.
Lecture 10 pulls the previous lectures together by way of example - think like an economist when deciding whether to purchase an extended warranty on a new television. The seller certainly has more information than the buyer with respect to the reliability of the television as well as what it costs to repair it. What is the Expected Value of the warranty when comparing the cost against the likelihood of having to fix or replace the television? The present value of the money spent on the warranty is greater than its future value.
Lectures 11 and 12 close out by identifying cognitive fallacies studied in the field of Behavioral Economics, which include Loss Aversion, the Endowment Effect, Anchoring, and the Status Quo Effect. (Highly recommended: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Thinking Fast and Slow.)
At the end Professor Bartlett reminds us that thinking like an economist is not about rote memorization. Rather, it is about using a framework to view the world. Analyze and reason your way into good decision making. #thinkinglikeaneconomist
August 4, 2014
To my mind, Randall Bartlett is one of the greatest teachers I've come across in my life so far:
1) he is convincing with his body language, personal stories, vivid metaphors and examples;
2) Randall structures the whole course in simple way and it will last in your memory forever. He equips with toolkit of an economist step by step and in finale you are able to see the World from the perspective of an economist.
N.B. it's a great foundation for further studies. Highly recommend.
1) he is convincing with his body language, personal stories, vivid metaphors and examples;
2) Randall structures the whole course in simple way and it will last in your memory forever. He equips with toolkit of an economist step by step and in finale you are able to see the World from the perspective of an economist.
N.B. it's a great foundation for further studies. Highly recommend.
August 4, 2014
To my mind, Randall Bartlett is one of the greatest teachers I've come across in my life so far:
1) he is convincing with his body language, personal stories, vivid metaphors and examples;
2) Randall structures the whole course in simple way and it will last in your memory forever. He equips with toolkit of an economist step by step and in finale you are able to see the World from the perspective of an economist.
N.B. it's a great foundation for further studies. Highly recommend.
1) he is convincing with his body language, personal stories, vivid metaphors and examples;
2) Randall structures the whole course in simple way and it will last in your memory forever. He equips with toolkit of an economist step by step and in finale you are able to see the World from the perspective of an economist.
N.B. it's a great foundation for further studies. Highly recommend.
October 25, 2025
Great series of lectures.
Notes-
- [ ] Principle 1- people respond to incentives (posture and negative incentives change their behavior)
- [ ] P2- i. The world of scarcity, There’s no free lunch. Opportunity cost.
- [ ] P3- every coin has two sides. No thing is just one thing.
- [ ] P4- butterfly effect- the law of unanticipated events
- [ ] P5- law of unintended consequences
- [ ] P6- no one is and ever can be in complete control.
- [ ] Overfishing problem is a prisoners dilemma problem. Solved by creating rights that can be bought or sold. Even if people dont go fishing they can still sell their rights to earn money. Solves overfishing.
- [ ] Diminishing returns
- [ ] Interpret carefully about the wisdom of the crowd. Someone else’s ECG results may not explain ur anatomy.
- [ ] You can be too safe when the cost is not worth the reduction in risk. Eg u woudnt buy an armoured car because u value safety.
- [ ] Learn to calculate expected value.
- [ ] Different people have varying incentives. Hedge fund managers have different incentives than the funder, so may take more risky paths for higher profits
- [ ] When buying, a warranty on a car ensures it’s not a lemon. (Damaged vehicle)
- [ ] 2008 market crash was due to a financial blind date. The mortgage loans have been packaged and repackaged too many times (eg. By banks, insurers, investors and so on) that unravelled when sub prime mortgages (one without collateral) werent repaid or cancelled
- [ ] Information asymmetry is important in negotiating
- [ ] Timing always matters. Eg. 1k now is worth more than 1k in a year.
Notes-
- [ ] Principle 1- people respond to incentives (posture and negative incentives change their behavior)
- [ ] P2- i. The world of scarcity, There’s no free lunch. Opportunity cost.
- [ ] P3- every coin has two sides. No thing is just one thing.
- [ ] P4- butterfly effect- the law of unanticipated events
- [ ] P5- law of unintended consequences
- [ ] P6- no one is and ever can be in complete control.
- [ ] Overfishing problem is a prisoners dilemma problem. Solved by creating rights that can be bought or sold. Even if people dont go fishing they can still sell their rights to earn money. Solves overfishing.
- [ ] Diminishing returns
- [ ] Interpret carefully about the wisdom of the crowd. Someone else’s ECG results may not explain ur anatomy.
- [ ] You can be too safe when the cost is not worth the reduction in risk. Eg u woudnt buy an armoured car because u value safety.
- [ ] Learn to calculate expected value.
- [ ] Different people have varying incentives. Hedge fund managers have different incentives than the funder, so may take more risky paths for higher profits
- [ ] When buying, a warranty on a car ensures it’s not a lemon. (Damaged vehicle)
- [ ] 2008 market crash was due to a financial blind date. The mortgage loans have been packaged and repackaged too many times (eg. By banks, insurers, investors and so on) that unravelled when sub prime mortgages (one without collateral) werent repaid or cancelled
- [ ] Information asymmetry is important in negotiating
- [ ] Timing always matters. Eg. 1k now is worth more than 1k in a year.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 17, 2018
I pretty much love all of the Great Courses series, but beyond that don't have much to say in a review. This one is relatively short (6 hours), and probably the most practical of the ones I've listened to thus far. Developing the mental toolkit that good economists use affects how you make decisions about just about anything, not just financial. It's also great for understanding how incentives work and just how important they are.
December 9, 2021
This is a good introduction course for people who are interested in economy. But, I found that the author spent too much time telling stories and less into diving into the concepts. Again that might be good for people who are new to economy but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who has undertaken any education in economics.
March 9, 2020
Good and well presented framework for how to think as economist. The information is helpful for anyone in my opinion. If you need to take decisions and evaluate opportunity costs, cost of being too safe and more check out the author's thoughts.
June 5, 2021
An excellent, non-mathematical primer on what modern economics tells us about humans and society today. A bit basic for those who already have a background in economics (that even includes a college level econ 101 class).
April 11, 2018
Succinct, well explained, and applicable to everyday life. A good reminder of (or introduction into) the way to analyze problems through an economic lens.
September 14, 2018
I laughed at the part when the author was asked if he wanted to buy an extended warranty on his new tv. Classic economist.
March 23, 2019
Really cool, very accessible. Worth the study.
December 30, 2019
Great class! Gave a good summary of economic thinking tools and then gave examples of how to apply them to real situations. Definitely recommending to my friends and family.
September 29, 2020
Watch a detailed review along with my favorite ideas and takeaways at:
https://youtu.be/_gw9t1cMz54
https://youtu.be/_gw9t1cMz54
March 31, 2021
Distills economic ideas into a digestible format for management decision making. Perhaps better for those less familiar with with economic principles, expected a more advanced analysis.
January 23, 2022
This was really fun to listen to. Easy to understand, interesting examples, really good content.
November 25, 2023
Excellent! Very rational!!
June 20, 2025
Always found Behavioral Economics aspects fascinating!
February 14, 2018
Great course!
April 20, 2011
This is a class offered by The great Courses. I really enjoyed both the professor and the subject matter. I liked his examples and stories that made economic thinking come alive for me--It is not a technical book on economics, but a manual on how to apply economic thinking to everyday decisions. I hope I will be able to remember it long enough to do more sensible things. If anyone would like to borrow the CD's I would be happy to share.
September 21, 2016
3+ Very enjoyable presentations, especially if you do not read a lot in this field.
Merged review:
Excellent content and a very enjoyable speaker.
This is NOT simply a course in economics but is genuinely a "guide to rational decision-making".
It has great ideas for everyone, but I wish every high-school student could listen to it; the concepts will serve them well in life (and it wouldn't hurt their parents to listen, too!).
Merged review:
Excellent content and a very enjoyable speaker.
This is NOT simply a course in economics but is genuinely a "guide to rational decision-making".
It has great ideas for everyone, but I wish every high-school student could listen to it; the concepts will serve them well in life (and it wouldn't hurt their parents to listen, too!).
April 21, 2012
Interesting overview of economic thinking. Bartlett is a very good lecturer, putting economic concepts into easy to understand concepts. Who know, may be he was the inspiration for President Bartlett of the West Wing, who, if I remember, was the liberals wet dream of a president, having won the Noble Prize for economics.
July 20, 2013
An excellent, succinct lecture series on economic thinking. The practical examples make it easy to understand and apply. This is a must listen for those who like Freakonomics, Nudge, or other popular economics books.
February 1, 2015
This is an excellent summary of economic principles.
June 28, 2012
Listened to it on my commute to work. The last examples deal with traffic...appropriate. He's a good lecturer, sounded a lot like a subdued Lewis Black. A good guide to thinking like an economist.
December 8, 2013
Mr. Barlett spoke of nudging people like Cass Sunstein. Sunstein has communist and anti-American philosophies. I wonder why the professor chose Mr. Sustein as an example.
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