Wordsmiths on Economics 36:19 Download Audio Embed on your website Close × Copy the code below to embed the WBUR audio player on your site
Copy embed code Resume Books on free trade, income inequality and property rights don't usually make for easy reading. But look hard enough and you'll find these same economic principles in the works of wordsmiths like Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, and Kurt Vonnegut. When poet Robert Frost considers the opportunity cost of a road not taken, the economic angle blends right into the rhymes. And when Jonathan Swift calculates the cost of raising a child vs. the money that can be made by selling it for its meat, his logic is so unorthodox that it hardly sounds like a cost-benefit analysis.Guests:
Michael Watts, director of the Center for Economic Education at Purdue University, professor of economics at Purdue and associate editor of the Journal of Economic Education
This program aired on August 28, 2003.