Sociology

Sociology

Essay

Project description

Economics is a little like cooking. Governments endeavour to maintain some control over their national economies, preventing them for getting “too hot” or from sinking like a collapsed soufflé. In the 20th century, there have been generally two main schools of thought on how liberal democracies can avoid major economic problems like inflation, recession and depression and maintain a good standard of living for citizens.

In this section challenge, you’re going to demonstrate your knowledge of the major economists, their theories, and the people who supported those theories and implemented them and render your verdict regarding whose ideas are better suited to managing an economy..

The Scenario…

You are the producer of a television show entitled “Celebrity Economist Cook-Off”. Each week two celebrity economists battle to serve up an economy that provides prosperity and stability within nations.

The guests…

This week’s guests are those two giants of economic thought, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek.

The feature dish…

This is an illustration that shows a side profile views good and bad examples of business cycle pie.As the beginning of each episode of Celebrity Economist Cook-Off, the rival economists are presented with the “feature dish” that they must prepare for the competition. This episodes feature dish is “business cycle pie”.

This is a difficult dish to make well. The secret is in the top crust. Use the right tools and techniques and the crust will be relatively smooth. Get it wrong and the crust will inflate in some areas and have deep depressions in others. Check out the profiles below as examples.

This is a collection of photos pinned to corkboard. The photos are of Franklin Roosevelt, Milton Friedman, Theodore Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ronald Reagan, Barak Obama, George W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher.

The assistants…

Each celebrity economist will need help in their “economic kitchen”. The show’s rules allow three “economic assistants” to help the celebrity economists implement their ideas and make the best business cycle pie. As the producer, one of your jobs will be to choose the assistants for each celebrity economic chef from the list to the right. You must chose people that the economist can work with, that is, people who have similar economic beliefs and ideals. You must choose three for each celebrity economic chef and explain the reasoning behind your choices. Record your choices on the Celebrity Economic Cook-Off Producer’s Sheet.

This is a series of photos depicting credit cards, road construction signs, a percent symbol and a hand pushing down on the word “taxes”.

Ingredients and tools…

The chefs will have a variety of economic ingredients and tools at their disposal to try to get a smooth crust on their pie. The tools on the left include public programs, interest rates, taxes and if necessary bail-outs (ex: US banks in 2008/2009). You are not limited to the tools on the left, and may find in your research of assistants that they have used other tools effectively. Your job will be to determine which ones each chef will want to use. You will make this determination based on information acquired by completing the lessons in this section of the course. As well as selecting the tools, you will also need to provide a brief description of how the celebrity economic chefs and their assistants will use the tools to try to make the perfect business cycle pie. All this information will be recorded on the Celebrity Economic Cook-Off Producer’s Sheet.

The judges…

At the end of each episode of Celebrity Economist Cook-Off, three judges each provide their comments on the techniques used by the chefs and their teams. They then score the chefs based on how well their approach to managing the business cycle has provided economic stability and prosperity for the people. The three judges are:

This is a collection of images of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and a silhouette labelled “you”.

You will write the commentary and decide what scores are likely to be provided by Smith and Marx based on what you know about their ideological beliefs. Their commentary and scores should reflect those beliefs. Finally, based on which approach to managing economies you believe has been more successful, you will write your own commentary regarding the success of each team and score them appropriately. All of this information will also be recorded on the Celebrity Economic Cook-Off Producer’s Sheet.

Other advice…

As you plan out this episode, feel free to review notes that you have made during lessons, revisit audio-visual presentations you have watched or do additional research on using the web.