author : Timothy (2) Taylor

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each lecture, a few pictures, and some related reading. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

Taylor explains that Economics is not just about money, it is about making choices in a world of scarcity, about how you decide to allocate your resources of time, money, and effort. And these choices cover the ‘unexpected’ cases of the course title: surrogate pregnancy, selling organs, traffic pricing, crime, marriage, having children, gift giving, obesity, preparing for disasters, sport, and more.

Many of the topics are indeed unexpected, for example, some economists focus on sport, despite its trivial overall economic value, because data is readily available, and some of the pressures and choices apply to other areas, such as CEO pay. The lecture on obesity is interesting too: the majority of the costs here are actually borne by the obese person, not the state.

Although there is a lot of interest here, I don’t think Taylor applies his arguments to all aspects of choice and worth. For example, in talking about blood donation, he mentions that donors can feel a warm glow, but he doesn’t seem to factor in any value of that glow when discussing whether donors should be paid. There are other cases, like discussing that children used to be resources for “household production” but seems to have moved more to being a “luxury good”, when he similarly doesn’t factor in that people might actually like having children for their own sake (hard as that might be to believe, I know).

So, many interesting ideas, but I remain to be convinced it is all just economics.