econ essay

1. Should we move to a system of mandated voting? Why is there such low voter turnout in general? Do you have other ideas of how to get more people to vote or do you think we should allow people to choose not to vote? Would any of these policies have an impact on Democracy?

2. Why is texting a driving a problem? Use your knowledge of economics to explain why people continue to do it despite the risks. Will fines work to reduce or eliminate texting and driving? Do you have a better idea other than fines? (Keep in mind that the amount of the fine would only factor into one’s decision based on the likelihood of experiencing the fine. In other words, the real marginal cost of the fine is really an expected marginal cost, which would be a very low percentage of the actual fine).

3. Do you think traffic and other fines should be means tested? In other words, should someone who earns more money pay a higher fine? One approach would be to think of demand for traffic (or other) violations that is based on willingness and ability to pay. Is this an ethical way to manage this “market,” or should we come up with a less efficient but more equitable justice system?

4. Explain the results in the experiment under the title “behavior and energy” in the context of economics. In other words, do the results fit with our expectations of consumer behavior, or not?

5. Are fuel prices efficient? Explain a few potential sources of inefficiency in energy markets today. (you could write about renewable sources separately, you could write about fossil fuels, or you could write about both.)

6. Bernie Sanders has referred to medical insurance and medical care as a “human right.” How do you think an economist would respond to the idea that all people have rights to free medical care? Do you think medical care qualifies as a human right?

7. Should college be free? Discuss appropriate incentives and whether or not incentives created by free college align with proper incentives as defined in your answer. (If you wanted to extend this to a long paper, you could address “education” in general. In other words, you could talk about primary and secondary education as well. There have been recent experiments done that test how incentives given to parents and teenagers change graduation rates from high school, for example.)

8. Is pricing carbon through taxes or permits an appropriate policy to deal with climate change? Explain why taxes or permit systems are more efficient than other types of policies.

9. Are taxes or permit systems preferable when dealing with market failure in the context of pollution? How are they similar and how are they different? Should we rely instead on command and control regulations?

10. Imagine you are economically conservative and value consumer sovereignty and view many government policies as paternalistic and therefore support limited government. Explain the opposite position: explain why someone would support government intervention in areas like education, public health initiatives, labor markets, food safety, workplace safety, etc.

11. Imagine you are economically progressive and you support government regulation in markets to solve a myriad of market failures. Explain the opposite position: explain why or how intervention can actually be less efficient, even if it was designed to solve a market failure or improve efficiency. Explain how government can fail and how this might be worse than market failure.

12. One of the posted articles discusses the “end of western civilization.” Explain to the author of this piece how both of his avenues to ‘the end’ are actually economic concerns. Explain how economists would suggest addressing these two issues. (Given that one of them is growing inequality, you will have to choose a “side” in terms of proposed remedies. Some economists actually don’t see inequality as a problem, for example.)

13. Explain why we have so many lobbyists by using the concepts of deadweight loss, rent seeking, and consumer and producer surplus. Why don’t consumers organize against the interests of large entities?

14. Explain to a “lay person” the difference between command and control solutions to externalities and market solutions to externalities. Why are market solutions better? Are they worse? What metric are you using to evaluate their efficacy?

15. Convince someone that they are a ‘free rider’ in some context. Explain to them in economic terms the incentives they face, and why they have chosen to free ride, in economic terms. Explain why we cannot rely on some sort of collective conscience or social cooperation. (For this question, I am thinking of people who claim that they would always choose the collective good over the individual. For example, people who claim they would always recycle, they would always use reusable bags, etc.)