Economics is Fun, Part 1: Value

Dr Madsen Pirie, President of the Adam Smith Institute, is attempting to prove that economics is fun.

His new book, Economics Made Simple: How Money, Trade and Markets Really Work, is available from Amazon now in paper and Kindle formats: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Mad...

How do banks work? What does the City do? Why do prices rise or fall? Is competition wasteful? How can we create more wealth? What causes globalization and how does it affect people? This book answers these and other questions, not in the way that economics textbooks do - with graphs, abstract models, jargon-ridden theory, and mathematical equations - but through narrative and lucid explanation rooted in everyday experience and common-sense intuitions. This is a personal school of economics for anyone who has ever wanted to know how money, trade and markets really work. The study of economics has never been so enjoyable - or eye-opening.

• Category

  Education

[Hale Adams]

Dr. Pirie:

An excellent video. But PLEASE get a lapel microphone, or find some other way to improve the audio-- the echoes make it a little hard to follow what you're saying.

Thanks for the good work, and I look forward to seeing more of these videos.

Hale Adams

Pikesville, People's Democratic Republic of Maryland

[guonbeeman]

This is wonderful. Please continue to create these!

[Leon Polya]

Economics made simple by Dr Pirie is a lucid book with no mathematics and makes a good read for £ 15.

[Leon Polya]

To say a glass has no value is incorrect. It is that the glass has no unique one value but theoretically an infinite number of values ( expressed in fractions or multiples of £) on the demand probability distribution curve that the glass is worth £ X tapers off or becomes smaller very quickly as X increases. The value of the glass clearly does depend on the beholder or purchaser and it would have an average value on the demand probability distribution curve of its value.

[Švabo P]

So that means i should trade more often?

[Aayushi Gupta]

I love the concept of the video, however it is very inaccurate about the belief of Karl Marx. , Karl marx did not equate value to the labour, it was Ricardo who did that. Karl Marx equated value to the socially acceptable labour time, which automatically rules out any labour that results in a commodity which has no demand.

[Lulzalutioners]

Spot on.

[OvenDoorGlue]

Excellent series, but can't help thinking you are Frank Skinners brother!

[xander621]

the later videos have progressively better and better audio qualities as we improved our technique. Glad you are enjoying them.

[PlantFaceMan]

There videos are so wonderfully simple and concise that I think I may even be able to educate some of my fellow English students with them. God knows Marxists and socialists could use some basic grounding in economics.

[Daniel Pryor]

Fantastic. 

[HarrimanHouse]

The best YouTube videos of 2012, surely!