Taught By Professor Randall Bartlett, Ph.D., Stanford University,
Smith College
Economic forces are everywhere around you. You're made aware of that whenever you reach for your
wallet, apply for a loan, shop for health care, or try to figure out the best credit card to carry.
But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon
you. Instead, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn
those same forces to your own advantage.
Making a few simple adjustments to the way you see things and act on them.learning to "think like
an economist".can give you newfound power and confidence in a surprising range of financial and
personal situations that make up your daily life. You can find yourself making better decisions
that not only save time and money, but also produce optimum results in other ways important to you.
And you can also sharpen your understanding of world and national events.
In the 12 fast-moving and crystal-clear lectures of Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational
Decision Making, award-winning Professor Randall Bartlett of Smith College 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.
A Tool Kit for Changing How You Look at Daily Life
Many of the concepts in Professor Bartlett's tool kit may be familiar.
* People respond to incentives.
* There's no such thing as a "free lunch."
* There are at least two sides to every interaction.
* Everything affects everything else.
* Any action can bring with it significant unintended consequences.
* In this world of complex interrelationships, no one is really in control.
However, when used in the context of three core concepts of economic rationality, marginal analysis,
and optimization that Professor Bartlett clearly lays out, his tool kit can make this perhaps the
most practical, life-enhancing economics course you'll ever take.
It's an approach that makes Thinking like an Economist a real-life how-to guide that sets aside
those often-dry economics textbooks and reveals just how often the seemingly remote forces discussed
in their pages are in fact at play in your own life.often in situations in which you may never have
dreamed they'd be present.
While most of us can readily appreciate the role those forces play in expected areas.the ones in
which monetary values are obviously at work.many of us often give little notice to the full reach
of those economic principles into almost every other aspect of our lives, from the safety of our
environment to the amount of candidate information we really need in order to cast a wise vote.
After a dozen lectures with Professor Bartlett, things 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.
Those decisions can include
* choosing wine from a restaurant menu,
* buying an extended warranty on that new television set,
* deciding how to get to work each morning, or
* nearly anything else you might imagine.
Real-Life Examples Clarify Each Key Idea
Using examples drawn from his own life and likely echoing yours, Professor Bartlett shows you how to
* see the world as an economist sees it,
* examine the rationality of individual decisions, and
* evaluate the outcome of those decisions in terms of both personal benefit and social efficiency,
which can sometimes differ.
Professor Bartlett has designed Thinking like an Economist to require no previous economics
education. And he has scaled his examples to include not only those situations common to us all,
but also to those felt across entire countries and even the world, such as the 2008 financial
crisis or the debate about global warming and the most practical ways to respond to it.
An engaging and remarkably clear teacher, Professor Bartlett has for years attracted a widespread
audience.from both on and off campus.for his annual lecture series on financial literacy. This course
will help you grasp why those lectures are so popular, and why the lessons taught in them are so
valuable to you.
About Your Professor
Dr. Randall Bartlett is Professor of Economics and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Smith
College, where he has taught for 30 years. A graduate of Occidental College, he earned both his
master's degree and doctorate from Stanford University and taught at Williams College and the
University of Washington before joining the Smith faculty.
A highly skilled teacher, Professor Bartlett has twice won all-college teaching awards at Smith
and was the 2003 recipient of the college's Distinguished Professor Award. He has served at both
the department and college levels as a teaching mentor to junior faculty and has been instrumental
in developing a number of important programs at Smith, including founding and directing the Phoebe
Reese Lewis Leadership Program and serving as the first director of the Public Policy Program.
He also presents each fall a wildly popular financial literacy lecture series that is attended not
only by students, faculty, and staff, but also by members of the community of Northampton.
The author of numerous articles on economics and public life, Professor Bartlett has also written
three books, including his most recent, The Crisis of America's Cities, which explores the problems
and prospects of urban America.
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