Economics, Explained

A New Series From Me

In case you missed it, Justin Wolfers is joining the “creator economy” with his own Substack, media company, etc. I subscribed to his substack and there’s a very strong case to be made that you should, too. He has a strong message: the people who understand [economics]… make better decisions in their careers, their finances, their relationships, and their communities… Economic literacy isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity and everyone… deserves the tools to see the world clearly.”

And yes, you’ll notice the ellipses throughout that quote. Wolfers had some language that I don’t disagree with but I also don’t really agree with fully. I don’t think I’ve distorted his quote at all, but I agree with my version of what he wrote more than the full version.

I don’t have the backing, the clout, or the fame that he does (probably because I don’t have an Australian accent and cool, longish hair). But what I do have is over a decade of experience teaching economics to undergraduate students. And because I absolutely cannot keep myself on track without some sort of guide, I have several thousand powerpoint slides that I used as lecture notes that I developed over the years just for myself. As a rough estimate, I probably have at least 4,000 lecture slides, all sitting on my hard drive… doing nothing.

I’m also really, really interested in AI and what it can do if it’s given good materials and good prompts.

So here’s the plan: I’m going to upload these slides to Claude and have that (it?) write me a first draft of a post based entirely on the slides I give it. I’ve already tried this with the first post. It was… alright. I’d say that it’s probably around 60% of the way there, right out of the gate, which is pretty impressive. But I think we can do better and, after refining a few parts of my prompt (which I used Claude to help me with, ironically), the output now is very, very impressive. I won’t post the raw output and I never will, but I’m also not going to rewrite the entire thing - I do have a full time job and this is meant to be a personal, just-for-fun side project.

The idea is that the “lecture” will go out on Monday. It’ll cover a lot, it’ll include graphs where necessary, and it will probably be on the longer side. On Wednesday, I’ll post a news link and application of Monday’s lesson.

I’m going to start with my version of Economics for the Citizen. This is a class that means a lot to me. I was the TA for the course when Pete Boettke taught it and he made me come to every single class and take notes. The way he put it, he had two goals for the course: 1) teach the students the good stuff and 2) teach me how to teach the students the good stuff. After being his TA, I co-taught it with him, and then I taught it solo and it’s been the cornerstone of every class I ever taught.

That said, I have changed it over the years (sorry, Pete!) to suit my needs, the school’s needs, and what I perceived to be the needs of the students. It ends on a more macroeconomics-heavy note than it did when I taught it at GMU, with and without Pete.

The first post in this series will drop next week on Monday, May 18. I hope you’ll join me for this adventure!