Class Summary 08/31

People respond to incentives. 

Incentives is the overlying idea of these next few lectures. We have seen time and time again that everything that one does is responding to an incentive or a choice. This is where economics comes in. 

• Profit opportunity motivates effort. 
• Incentive structure motivates all social phenomenon.  
• There are unintended consequences of an intended action. 
• We want to look at the relationship between individual choices and the patterns that emerge when all of us make choices. 
• We want to learn what the small changes are that make harmony or discourse.
• Economics is as much about cultural/individual/aesthetic values than it is as much about monetary values. 

So far we have found that this is not a course about opinions or interesting ways about looking at the world. We look at the way our daily life and behavior interacts with different cultures and institutions and how in some way every decision effects economics.