Three Horizons
In this post I make a suggestion for a positive, disruptive, innovation in (economics) education. This idea is based on an introduction of the Three Horizons of Bill Sharpe by Kate Raworth.
The Bitcoin Standard
In the book Layered Money, by Nik Bhatia, the idea of Bitcoin as a successor to the gold standard was introduced to me. To consider Bitcoin as an equivalent of gold from a monetary perspective was a whole new insight.
3.4 Economics of inequality and poverty | 4.10 Economic development strategies | Economic Well-Being | Equity | Interdependence | Social Foundation
Prisoner’s Dilemma
I recently finished Melanie Mitchell’s Complexity: A Guided Tour. One of the insights I gained from reading the book was the concept of an idea model applied to the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Welfare is a Stock, GDP is a Flow
I am not exactly sure if I heard him say it in his talk on 6 May 2021 as part of a series broadcasted by the Oxford Martin School, or if I read it in the first pages of his review, but it did provoke a train of thought, Sir Partha Dasgupta’s statement that “Welfare cannot be measured by GDP, since Welfare is a stock and GDP is a flow”.
The Beer Game
I have been participating in a group that was reading Complexity: A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell. In one of our last sessions we set the book aside and explored the complexity of the supply chain.
2.8 Market failure - Externalities and Common goods | Economic Well-Being | Safe Haven - Into the Doughnut
Dead Weight Loss
Accidentally I stumbled upon a disparity between the definition of Harberger’s triangle or deadweight loss as it is employed in a Dutch textbook I consulted as opposed to the way it is employed in my son’s A-level textbook or the IB textbook in our possession.
2.10 Market failure—asymmetric information | Choice | Ecological Ceiling | Social Foundation | Sustainability | Unit 2: Microeconomics
Mental Models
One of the things I find important in relation to a 21st century economics education is systems thinking. But when discussing systems thinking with interested others I often find that it is such a huge concept.
Systems of Provision Approach
Last weekend I watched an online lecture with the title “How We Got Addicted to Cars” brought by the University of Utrecht. The lecturer was the economist Julia Steinberger, Professor of Social Ecology and Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds.
I took something away from this lecture, that is much more profound to me than our addiction to cars, and very much in tune with the doughnut framework: The Systems of Provision Approach.
When you know your economy
The social foundation offers ample possibilities to connect financial and economic literacy, like health, education, food, water, energy and housing. These elements correspond with economic sectors in which students engage now, and will engage more when they take the next step in their lives and have responsibility for their own household budget. That is how we came up with the idea of a series of lessons called ‘Know Your Economy’.
Replanting a Forest
Recently, I had an interesting discussion with a teacher in higher education. He had a classroom discussion about deforestation and his students were rather blasé about the topic. Their standpoint was that if you cut down a tree, you simply replant it elsewhere, so what is the problem. I mean, you can compensate your aviation kilometers too by planting trees, or not?