Using The Simpsons to Improve Economic Instruction Through Policy Analysis

Abstract

The analysis of public policy issues in the classroom can be a powerful tool to help students learn because it encourages students to actively apply classroom material. The television show The Simpsons provides several episodes that revolve around policy issues amenable to examination. Using The Simpsons to provide students with material for analysis has two advantages over traditional sources such as newspapers or magazines. First, a long-running and popular television show effectively engages students in a way traditional sources cannot. Second, the context of an animated television show can help students separate positive economic analysis from normative economic analysis.

Using ESPN 30 for 30 to teach economics

“…Mateer and Rice (); Hall and Lawson (); and Hall, Lawson, and Mateer () further refined this approach by introducing new and popular music. Gillis and Hall () used clips from the TV series The Simpsons , while Ghent, Grant and Lesica () proposed the use of clips from the show Seinfeld to facilitate active learning projects. Others have used movie clips to develop discussion in class (Sexton ).…”

Using the Movie Joy to Teach Innovation and Entrepreneurship

“…Leet and Houser (2003) and Sexton (2006) provide discussion of many different clips covering a large number of topics in economics. Gillis and Hall (2010) and Luccasen and Thomas (2010) also use clips to explore a large number of topics in economics but take their examples from one particular television show, The Simpsons. Other papers focus on particular areas of economics, including creative destruction (Diamond 2009), public choice (Mateer and Stephenson 2011), and game theory (Burke, Robak, and Stumph 2018).…”

Teaching the Economic Way of Thinking Through Op-Eds

“…active learning. Economics educators have suggested a variety of methods to get students to engage in active learning, including: classroom exercises utilizing internet research (Simkins 1999); online assignments and discussion boards (Vachris 1999), watching and discussing clips from popular television shows (Hall 2005;Gillis and Hall 2010;, watching portions of movies with economic based content (Mateer and Stephenson 2011), listening to music with economic themes Lawson et al 2008), and classroom experiments (Hunsader et al 2011;Nikolaev 2014). 2 Writing is one of the more traditional ways to get students to "do" economics.…”