Dec 25, 2014
Yoram Bauman is considered the world's first and only stand-up economist and uses cartoons to explain economic concepts and theories. He has a PhD from the University of Washington and a BA in Mathematics from Reed College. Yoram lectured environmental and health economics at both Whitman College and University of Washington and was a visiting research scholar at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. Yoram has swapped the lecture hall for the comedy club and is on a mission to spread joy to the world and to reform economics education. Every year Yoram organizes the Humor Session at the American Economic Association annual meeting.
Yoram is an advocate for carbon pricing and other economic approaches to protecting the environment. Yoram has written extensively on these issues but has also published numerous micro and macro books with comedy and entertainment as its central theme. They include The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change and Stand-Up Economics: The Micro Textbook. Some of these books have been translated into over 10 languages.
In this interview, Yoram mentions and discusses: adverse selection, portfolio selection theory, the invisible hand, environmental economics, environmental taxes, market power, monopoly, corruption, opportunity cost, free market, revenue-neutral carbon taxes, consumption tax, tragedy of the commons, externalities, correlation, hyperinflation, population growth, economic growth, monetary base and rational expectations.
In this interview, Yoram mentions: George Akerlof, James Tobin, Adam Smith, Gregory Mankiw and Paul Krugman.
Find out:
- about revenue-neutral carbon taxing
- if we should keep economics serious or is there room for comedy?
- why it's important to motivate people to open a textbook and how humor and comedy can do this.
- how cartoons and humor can bring so much detail and understanding to economic concepts.
- where it all began for Yoram when writing a cartoon economics textbook.
- about the cartoon books written by Yoram that document the annals of economic theory.
- how Yoram humorously depicts why some economists have won the Nobel Prize in Economics in a simplified and memorable manner.
- how Adam Smith calls the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics to interview them. Spooked? Find out how.
- how Yoram found his true calling while reading Mankiw's economics textbook.
- how Yoram uses cartoons and comedy to teach us economics and to inform us of the need for environmental taxes, something he is passionate about.
- and much much more.
- You can find more content and all the books and links mentioned on this podcast episode at www.economicrockstar/yorambauman