The best video-based content to learn Economic theory (1/3)
This article is the first part of a comprehensive guide on the best learning resources to study Economics. In this guide, I will gather the most useful material I have stumbled into during my undergraduate studies.
Whether you are an undergraduate student, are more advanced but would still need a little help to become more confident in your learning, or are a professional who wants to better understand Economic theory, you will find in this guide valuable and clear resources that will help you progress.
This list of material is ideal to strengthen and deepen your understanding of the basics of economics. It is crucial to know the basics to dive into research papers and analyze the economic literature. Often economic undergraduates, dive right into research papers and are not fully equipped, to learn from the literature. This lack of preparation often translates into frustration, a waste of time, and can even be discouraging.
The purpose of this blog post series is not to give you a list of the most prominent Economics textbooks. Most textbooks, often praised by professors, are often too detailed and excessively dry and complex ( See part 2. for an overview of the few textbooks I would recommend using). Instead, my hope is that this guide acts as a good complement to the more classical bibliography provided by your Economics professor.
All the materials listed below are great at helping you appreciate the beauty of economic theory. Taken together, they constitute a fabulous tool kit that will help you better comprehend the world and make better decisions.
This guide will cover the best learning resources in the following order :
- Video-based content: free, clear, and enjoyable.
- 5-star textbooks and books
- Best learning material to prepare graduate studies
This blog post will cover video-based learning resources. Without delaying any further let’s jump right in!
The best video-based content to learn Economic theory: free, clear, and enjoyable (1/3)
🧠 Endorse the economist’s spirit (Marginal revolution University)
In their own words, the Marginal Revolution University (MRU) is “on a mission to provide a world-class Economics education to everyone, everywhere for free.” The two founders, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both teach Economics at George Mason University and have succeeded in providing entertaining and straight-to-the-point videos about the fundamentals of micro and macroeconomics. Each course contains 50+ videos that cover the core concepts of economics and help you grasp what is at the heart of economic theory: understanding behaviors and solving problems that occur in a world with limited resources. At first, as an early graduate student, I was highly skeptical about what additional value such videos could bring me. I was more than once tempted to skip several videos of the course (say “Introduction to the asymmetry of information ), as I was persuaded that I already knew everything about it. I ended up watching every single video (each lasts between 5 to 10 min) because it summed up and consolidated all the material I had spent days and weeks trying to grasp during my undergraduate studies. I can’t recommend enough the material that has been produced by MRU. The content they produce is a public good. You don’t want to miss out on such resources! Trust me! As if it wasn’t enough, Tyler and Alex, have partnered with top university professors to produce a wide range of content about economic theory. My personal favorite is the course about econometrics, taught by the legendary kung fu master John Angrist (labor economist and econometrician, professor at MIT).
To put it in a nutshell, this learning resource will help you see what is so beautiful about economic theory: it is a fantastic, highly imperfect, and always improvable framework you can use to analyze our complex world. The videos are ideal for freshers, but also for advanced undergrads who want to build strong/solid foundations. Finally, the videos will be of great interest to any lifelong learner interested in economic theory (young professional, etc.), since the videos always make sure to cover interesting real-world applications.
All of the content is available on their website or youtube channel.
🎓 Build human capital (MIT OpenCourseWare)
“Getting to learn something you love can sometimes be as satisfying as drinking a glass of water when thirsty. MIT OCW is the medium which is helping quench the thirst of many others like me.
PRABHAKAR S., INDEPENDENT LEARNER, INDIA
Putting aside the signaling power, everything about an MIT education is available for free on mitopencourseware.com. MIT staffs share since 2001, syllabuses, bibliographies and even recorded courses online on a large range of topics, from engineering to rocket science. of course, they propose a wide set of lectures about economics. The material covers a wide range of economic topics ranging from industrial organization to public policy. I would particularly recommend the 14.01-course Principles of Microeconomics course taught by Jonathan Gruber, a passionate and talented labor economist. More graduate-level courses are also available although they are less documented on the platform.
you will find the videos on mitopencourseware.com and on the youtube channel ‘« MIT OpenCourseWare ». recorded courses have a duration of 45 min to an hour.
This learning material is a gold mine for undergraduates in any quantitative field. it can also provide useful bibliographies or syllabuses for graduate students studying specialized fields of economics (say anti-trust policying for instance)
🧪 Experiment on your own (Ashley Hodgson )
Mrs. Hodgson is a university professor in the US, and on her youtube channel, she produces short videos about how to construct microeconomics models. Microeconomics is often taught in a boring way, and students often end up memorizing axioms and rules. Mrs. Hodgson in her videos favors a different approach. She uses concrete and relatable examples to explain microeconomic concepts. More importantly, she presents microeconomics as a personalizable framework that you can use to answer all sorts of fun and interesting questions. You will also find on her youtube channel (Ashley Hodgson) digestible videos about the fundamentals of behavioral economics, contract theory, or blockchain economics.
This learning resource is ideal for anyone curious about constructing their own small micro models to understand or analyze behaviors. If you want to have a feeling about this channel, I recommend watching her two video series on comparative statics on job applications. Mrs. Hodgson constructs two different micro models about the dynamic of job application during the pandemic. She shows how every model relies on a set of assumptions and demonstrates several ways to model an interaction.
🚀 That’s it for now …
that’s it for my « top video-based learning resources for economics ». Don’t forget that the fabulous MOOCs platforms Coursera and Edx also likely have great video-based courses on economics
With those three learning resources you will hopefully have everything you need to start building your economist’s spirit; endorse cost-benefit analysis in your thinking, understand that there’s no free lunch in life and make better decisions. You will also build human capital, having access to the lectures of one of the most prestigious universities in the world. And finally, the advice of Mrs. Hodgson will help you experiment and apply your knowledge and ideas to real case scenarios.
But this is only the beginning of the journey …
Coming next, I’ll be sharing with you in subsequent parts of this blog post series, my favorite books, and textbooks to dive into Economic theory, as well as the best material I have found to prepare graduate studies in economics.
Until then, give a try to those insanely valuable goods, available on youtube. I’ll be happy to hear about your opinion in the comments.
