You know how it works – you hear a song, it gets stuck in your head, and you never forget it. Capital Economics Professor Robert Lawson and two of his colleagues think music may hold a similar power for reinforcing economic principles taught in the classroom.
In a series of writing assignments intended to get students to apply basic economic principles to real-world situations, Lawson, Joshua C. Hall, of Beloit College, and G. Dirk Mateer of Penn State University, captured their students’ interest in music and applied it to economics by connecting the two through song lyrics.
The instructors pulled song lyrics from Coolio, Billy Ray Cyrus, Liz Phair, Bruce Springsteen, Barenaked Ladies, The Offspring, Bob Dylan, the Dixie Chicks and others, and challenged students to look at popular music through an economist’s lens – to think like an economist.
Students were asked to argue against the redistribution of income, as suggested in “I’d Love to Change the World” by Ten Years After, or to draw a labor supply curve illustrating Coolio’s suggestion that he would rap for no money in “1 2 3 4 (Sumpin’ New) – Coolio.”
The assignments are compiled on the blog From ABBA to Zeppelin, Led: Using Music to Teach Economics. Lawson, Hall and Mateer will discuss their new teaching method and its impact on their students with fellow economics instructors this week at the American Economics Association’s annual meeting, held in New Orleans.
Read what Wall Street Journal reporter Brian Blackstone wrote about the project on his blog.