Curriculum Guide

This guide organizes LearnLiberty videos around an introductory economics curriculum. The videos explain challenging economic concepts and can support your learning in your courses or independent study. If you are a professor, this guide helps identify videos for your courses or can serve as a reference guide for students.

Economics is the study of human action and interaction. Specifically, economics is concerned with how individuals, pursuing their own objectives, cooperate with one another for mutual benefit. Understanding the principles of economics will improve your understanding of the world, helping you grapple with important questions like the following: Why are some countries rich and other countries poor? Who invented money, law, and language? Why do we trade?

• Fundamentals of Economic Analysis

  • Entrepreneurship
    • Are Entrepreneurs Modern Day Heroes?
    • The Vanishing Entrepreneur
  • Scarcity
    • Are we running out of resources?
    • "Trade is Made of Win," Part 3: Conservation
  • Incentives
    • Incentives Matter
    • Incentives and Institutions
    • What Motivates Us?
  • Marginal utility
    • Thinking at the Margin
  • Subjective value
    • Subjective Value
  • Rational choice
    • Indifference curves
    • Budget constraint
    • Substitution and complementarity in consumption
  • Demand
    • Haiku: The Laws of Supply and Demand
    • 1st Law of demand
    • 2nd Law of demand
    • 3rd Law of demand
    • Elasticity
  • Opportunity cost
    • The Broken Window Fallacy
    • Opportunity Cost

• Production

  • Specialization
    • Adam Smith: The Invisible Hand
  • Cost curves
  • Comparative advantage
    • "Trade is Made of Win," Part 1: Wealth Creation
    • "Trade is Made of Win," Part 2: Cooperation
    • "Trade is Made of Win," Part 3: Conservation
  • Production function
  • Law of supply
    • Haiku: The Laws of Supply and Demand
  • Differential rents
  • Factor pricing

• Direct Exchange

  • Equilibrium analysis
  • Gains from trade
    • "Trade is Made of Win," Part 1: Wealth Creation
    • Adam Smith: The Invisible Hand
    • Economic Freedom and Growth
  • Supply-and-demand analysis
    • Economics On One Foot
    • Haiku: The Laws of Supply and Demand
  • Price formation
    • Can order be unplanned?
  • Division-of-labor
    • Adam Smith: The Invisible Hand
    • Liberty and Community: Marx and Smith on Commercial Societies

• Indirect Exchange and Money

  • Emergence of money
    • Can order be unplanned?
  • Purchasing power of money
    • Is the Cost of Living Really Rising?
  • Credit expansion
    • A History of Economic Booms and Busts
  • Inflation

• Time and Business Cycles

  • Time preference
  • Present discounted value
  • Capital theory
  • Discount rate
  • Theories of the business cycle
    • Austrian
      • A History of Economic Booms and Busts
    • Monetarist
    • New Keynesian
    • Real business-cycle theory

• Monopoly and Competition

  • Competition
    • Perfect competition
    • Competition as a process
      • Profit, Loss and Discovery
  • Imperfect market structure
    • Monopolistic competition
    • Monopoly
    • Barriers to entry

• Information and Knowledge

  • Coordination problem
    • "Trade is Made of Win," Part 2: Cooperation
    • Liberty and Community: Marx and Smith on Commercial Societies
    • The Price System, Part I: Information
    • The Price System, Part II: Profits & Losses
    • Spontaneous Order and the Market Process
  • Risk and insurance
  • Radical uncertainty
  • Local knowledge
    • The Price System, Part I: Information
    • The Price System, Part II: Profits & Losses
    • Spontaneous Order and the Market Process

• Property and Institutions

  • Private property rights
    • The Power of Property Rights
    • Incentives and Institutions
  • Transaction costs
    • Externalities

• Market Failure

  • Allocative efficiency
  • Negative externalities
    • Coase theorem
      • Externalities
    • Pigovian taxes
  • Provision of public goods
    • Free-rider problem
    • Common pool resource
      • The Tragedy of the Commons
  • Asymmetric information
    • Principal-agent problem
    • Adverse selection
    • Moral hazard

• Government Intervention

  • Tariffs and non-tariff barriers
    • Free Trade v. Protectionism
  • Legal restrictions
  • Price controls
    • Unintended Consequences of Price Controls
  • Tax incidence

• Comparative Economic Systems

  • Capitalism
    • Spontaneous order
      • Can order be unplanned?
      • Spontaneous Order and the Market Process
    • Profit-and-loss system
      • The Price System, Part II: Profits & Losses
      • Profit, Loss and Discovery
  • Socialism