A 1942 video
from England that tells people to conserve water by using
less water in their bath tubs. Why do economists think that
people usually are unwilling to change behavior as a result
of public-service announcements such as this one?
You may have to watch the subtitles of this video to hear what they are singing. The video manages to mention a great number of the topics that are standard in an introductory economics class. The first stanza is about market types, especially oligopoly, and mentions differentiated products, barriers to entry, game theory, and collusion. The second stanza tries to tell a story using the law of diminishing marginal utility, demand elasticity, and fixed and variable inputs. The third stanza, which does not flow that well, mentions subsidy, demand curve shifting, spillover costs, substitutes, surplus, the profit maximizing condition of MR=MC, and excise tax. Market failure is the subject of the fourth stanza, which mentions public goods, government provision of public goods, non-exclusion and shared consumption (which the text discussed as non-exclusion and non-rivalry), externalities and free riders (a strange mixture), Then there is a nonmusical interlude in which a lot of economic terms are strung together to produce gibberish. The final stanza mentions circular flow, opportunity costs, marginal utility, and the shutdown condition of price less than average variable costs. It also states that you can relate economics to everything you do, They end with a blackboard with macroeconomic material, which is strange. The students who produced this video packed an impressive amount of economics in their video and still managed to misspell the word "because" throughout. The production values and vocals are very good, especially the female vocalist in the refrains. Making it more impressive, it was created by high school students.
(The Econa Bin Laden words represent the name of their class section.)
