Free Science and Video Lectures Online!
Free education online is possible.

Great news! New Science Site launched: Free Science Videos and Lectures

Another great news! My Programming Site launched: Good coders code, great reuse

More great news! I started my own company: Browserling - Cross-browser testing.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Economics and Economy Video Lectures

This month I have found a great amount of video and audio lectures (courses) in economics (economy).

Have fun with these!


Economic Analysis - Micro (Microeconomic Analysis, Econ 100A, UC Berkeley)

Video Lecture Course Syllabus:
Optimization and Equilibrium, Supply and Demand; Preferences and Utility; Risk and Expected Utility; Budget Constraint, Utility Maximization; Substitution and Income Effects, Individual and Market Demand; Applications of Demand Theory; The Firm, Production Functions and Scale Economies; Cost Minimization; Short Run vs. Long Run; Profit Maximization and Competitive Supply; Industry Supply, Review; Competitive Equilibrium, Auctions; Producer and Consumer Surpluses; Taxes and Subsidies, Price and Quantity Controls; More Applications of Competition; Monopoly and Monopsony Behavior; Price Discrimination- First and Third Degrees; Self Selection and Second Degree Price Discrimination; Tying and Product Bundling; Concentrated Industries, Cournot Equilibrium; Bertrand and Stackelberg Oligopoly and Dominant Firms; Product Differentiation and Monopolistic Competition; Games and Strategic Behavior; Externalities; Common Property Problems; Risk, Information, and Insurance



Principles of Microeconomics (UC San Diego, Fall 2007, Professor Kate Antonovics)


Economic Analysis - Macro (Macroeconomic Analysis, Econ 100B, UC Berkeley)

Audio Course Description:
This course develops the tools you need to understand economic outcomes at the level of the nation instead of at the level of the firm or industry. It uses these tools to study basic issues in macroeconomics, including growth, technological change, income inequality, interest rates, inflation, wages, unemployment, government debt and deficits, international trade, and exchange rates. The course places a heavy emphasis on problem solving, economic analysis, and data analysis.


Audio Course Syllabus:
Endogenous and Exogenous Variables; Economic Output; Income Approach; Solo Growth Model; Measuring the Macroeconomy; Overview of the Long Run; A Model of Production; The Solow Model; Growth and Ideas; The Labor Market; Inflation; The IS Curve; Monetary Policy and the Phillips Curve; The Full Short-Run Model; The Government Budget Constraint; International Trade; Exchange Rates and the Open Economy.


Macroeconomics (UC San Diego, Fall 2007, Professor Genevieve Peters)



Energy Economics (UC San Diego, Fall 2007, ECON 132, Professor Genevieve Peters)



Economic Geography of the Industrial World (Geog 110, UC Berkeley)
Course Description:
Industrialization, urbanization, and economic growth in the global North. Locational patterns in manufacturing, retailing trade, and finance. Geographic dynamics of technical change, employment, business organization, resource use, and divisions of labor. Property, labor, and social conflict as geographic forces. Local, national, and continental rivalries in a global economy, and challenges to U.S. dominance.

Course Syllabus:
Historical Spread of Industry Around the World; Industrial Revolutions; The Capitalist Economy; Political Economy; Countries and Continental Blocs: The Modern State and Beyond; Comparative Models of Capitalism; Globalization;



Economics U$A (Economy USA)

Course Description:
Explore the fundamentals of economic history, theory, and practice, including microeconomics and macroeconomics, through interviews with Nobel Prize-winning economists. The series features Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Heller, and others. In each program, case studies of major economic events show how economic theory relates to the real world. Expanded interviews are available on 28 audiocassettes. This series is also valuable for teachers seeking to review the subject matter.


Course Syllabus:
Resources and Scarcity; Markets and Prices; U.S. Economic Growth; Booms and Busts; John Maynard Keynes; Fiscal Policy; Inflation; The Banking System; The Federal Reserve; Stagflation; Productivity; Federal Deficits; Monetary Policy; Stabilization Policy; The Firm; Supply and Demand; Perfect Competition and Inelastic Demand; Economic Efficiency; Monopoly; Oligopolies; Pollution; Labor and Management; Profits and Interest; Reducing Poverty; Economic Growth; Public Goods and Responsibilities; International Trade; Exchange Rates.



Introduction to Economics (UtahState University, ECON1500, Fall 2005)

Course Description:
Introduction to Economics is designed to build an understanding of economic institutions, history, and principles. In addition, it will focus on relationship between private and public sectors of the U.S. economy. Also, it will analyze major economic institutions, such as property rights, markets, business organizations, labor unions, money and banking, trade, and taxation.

Course Syllabus:
Workings of a market economy; The institutions upon which the market system is based; The history and development of U.S. economic institutions; The economic role of government in a market economy; The nature and causes of inflation, unemployment, and changes in national output and standards of living; The workings of the banking system and the role of the Federal Reserve; The benefits of international trade.



Managerial Economics (UtahState University, ECON4010, Fall 2005)

Course Description:
This course covers the essential principles and tools of Managerial Economics, the application of microeconomics to management decisions. Students who master this material will be better prepared for leadership positions in business, not-for-profit, and government entities.



International Economics (UtahState University, ECON3400, Fall 2005)

Course Description:
This course provides a broad overview of international trade theory, policy, and international finance. Students who master this material will be better able to work in and make contributions to organizations (e.g., business firms) involved in international trade and finance issues.


Personal Finance and Consumer Economics (Economy Video Lectures 1110)

Course Description:
An overview of personal and family financial planning. Emphasis is placed on financial record keeping, consumer spending, tax planning, making buying decisions, purchasing insurance, and selecting investments.



Game Theory (UC San Diego)


Operation Research (UC San Diego, ECON 172A)


Video Interviews with Nobel Prize Laureates in Economics


Individual Video Lectures


Making Globalization Work for All

Lecture Description:
A decade’s-worth of high-profile efforts to change sweatshop conditions in overseas apparel factories hasn’t worked. Hannah Jones describes Nike’s dismay following in-depth research at its overseas facilities, where the corporation had attempted to implement codes of conduct and compliance monitoring. The corporation made “some stark realizations,” acknowledging such systemic issues as excessive overtime, unpaid wages, worker harassment and denial of workers’ rights to associate freely. Real remediation of the problem, says Jones, must deal with root causes. “There’s no point in Nike having 96 monitors on a factory floor day in and day out monitoring overtime, if overtime is being caused way up the supply chain.” So Nike is scrutinizing its own behavior as a buyer. We must “incentivize suppliers to become part of business decision-making,” she says, and convince them that creating efficiencies in a volatile market doesn’t mean “squeezing labor costs” but “squeezing time to market.” The worker “is central to that,” and better-trained factory managers may be key.

Scott Nova agrees that major U.S. garment retailers must take corporate responsibility to heart. The pressure on foreign suppliers hasn’t succeeded, he says, because “factory managers conclude correctly that if the brands were truly serious about improved working conditions, they would pay enough to make it possible for those conditions to be achieved.” Instead, factories compete to pick up cheap contracts, pressure their workers to toil for pennies, and use “fakery and deception when customers send auditors to inspect labor conditions.” But there is good news, he says: “The economics of apparel production are such that the problem could be fixed.” Since labor costs are a minute percentage of the retail price of apparel, a tiny increase in the cost of a product passed along to a consumer could enable “brands to pay factories to reflect the true costs of compliance—living wages for workers.”



Global Poverty: How Demanding Are Our Obligations?

Lecture Description:
Peter Singer walks listeners through one of his most provocative philosophical arguments -- that affluent individuals must acknowledge their moral obligation to relieve the unnecessary death and suffering of the poor. His sinuous reasoning starts with the simple case of a bystander coming upon a child drowning in a pond with no one else around. Should the bystander leave the child to drown, or must he stay and save the child? Most people intuitively recognize a duty to rescue the child. Singer argues from analogy that there is “no morally relevant difference between the drowning child situation and the situation of the affluent with regard to children dying of avoidable poverty related causes.”



Ending Global Poverty

Lecture Description:
Imagine a bank that loans money based on a borrower’s desperate circumstances -- where, as Muhammad Yunus says, “the less you have, the higher priority you have.” Turning banking convention on its head has accomplished a world of good for millions of impoverished Bangladeshis, as the pioneering economist Yunus has demonstrated in the last three decades. What began as a modest academic experiment has become a personal crusade to end poverty. Yunus reminds us that for two-thirds of the world’s population, “financial institutions do not exist.” Yet, “we’ve created a world which goes around with money. If you don’t have the first dollar, you can’t catch the next dollar.” It was Yunus’ notion, in the face of harsh skepticism, to give the poorest of the poor their first dollar so they could become self-supporting. “We’re not talking about people who don’t know what to do with their lives….They’re as good, enterprising, as smart as anybody else.” His Grameen Bank spread from village to village as a lender of tiny amounts of money (microcredit), primarily to women. Yunus heard that “all women can do is raise chickens, or cows or make baskets. I said, ‘Don’t underestimate the talent of human beings.’ ” No collateral is required, nor paperwork—just an effort to make good and pay back the loan. Now the bank boasts 5 million borrowers, receiving half a billion dollars a year. It has branched out into student loans, health care coverage, and into other countries. Grameen has even created a mobile phone company to bring cell phones to Bangladeshi villages. Yunus envisions microcredit building a society where even poor people can open “the gift they have inside of them.”



Globalization and the Economic Downturn

Lecture Description:
Globalization is for the first time being hit by a global economic hard landing. What happens to globalization in the process? What should one expect to see when it comes to a recovery? How do companies and national economies have to change their management styles in hard times? Professor Thurow puts the events of September 11 into perspective and discusses economic storms, the "shape" of recessions, the herd mentality and more in this IAP event.



How Technology and Innovation Drive Economic Growth by Paul Romer