Category: Hot Topics
Welcome: 2020-21 FTE Student Ambassadors
This year, FTE is welcoming thirty-seven student ambassadors who are committed to sharing the economic way of thinking. FTE Ambassadors…
Hot Topic: The US Airline Industry…Fight or Flight!?
By Greg Caskey, January 2018 Use this Hot Topic in the classroom! Teacher and Student Guides. “It’s time to level the flying…
The Streamin’ Blues
What’s not to like about streaming? The music you want, wherever and whenever you want. Sounds good! But does your favorite artist think so?
Hot Topic: In a Pickle
“You’re kidding me?!” That’s what the Alaska food bank director said when Feeding America sent her a semi full of 5 gallon buckets of pickles!
Learn how the economic way of thinking helped a charity sell its way out of a pickle.
Hot Topic: Immigration 2016 !
The tools of economic reasoning can bring some much-needed critical thinking to the heated political debate over immigration policy.
Hot Topic: Ubernomics
In 4 short years, Uber brought down the taxi kings of New York City. Students examine data from medallion sales and ride sharing services, and then identify the incentives and institutions that first closed the taxi market in 1937 and then flooded it with competition in 2011.
Hot Topic: It’s All In the Bag!
In the Bag! uses the economic way of thinking to investigate luxury markets, focusing on how firms like Hermès, Ferrari, and many elite universities use market power to restrict quantity supplied and keep prices high.
UPDATE – Target: Big Game Hunting
Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the African lion to the Endangered Species List. Should wildlife lovers celebrate or cry?
Review the economic reasoning tools you learned in “Target: Trophy Hunting” to decide whether this latest development truly honors Cecil.
Hot Topic: Sun Burn?
Just in time for the Paris Conference on Climate Change!
“Sun Burn?: Paying the Bill for Solar Energy” uses the economic way of thinking to examine and evaluate the rules of the game that shape development of solar energy in the United States.
In this lesson, students practice using ERPs #3&4, identifying the “rules of the game” and the incentives shaping the solar industry.
Hot Topic: Gas Prices ?!?
Moaning about the rising price of oil and gasoline has become part of our daily routine. We expect rising gas prices because . . . . Well, because, in our experience, that’s what gas prices do. But then, they didn’t! The price of gasoline began falling last summer . . . and it kept falling and kept falling – until the national average price in January was $2.05/gallon. #HowCanThatBe? Use the economic way of thinking and Economic Reasoning Propositions 3&4 to figure it out.