This is an opportunity to examine your environmental scanning abilities and, at the same time, discover how every event that occurs, domestically or internationally, can affect both the business world and your personal life. Find a recent copy of a local newspaper and open it to the front page. Briefly state how economics can shed light on each of the six or so stories on the front page. This will be easy to do for stories about national health policy, budget deficits, and inflation. But with a little imagination (and good class participation!), you can show how economics relates to virtually any news story. A cocaine bust? Economics explains why cocaine costs so much and why selling it can be such a lucrative activity for lawbreakers. A war in a faraway region of the world? Economics can help us understand the origins of the conflict, as well as the true opportunity cost of a possible U.S. military intervention. Now discuss how these articles might impact your Fortune 500 company and yourself economically.
This is an opportunity to examine your environmental scanning abilities and, at the same time, discover how every event that occurs, domestically or internationally, can affect both the business world and your personal life. Find a recent copy of a local newspaper and open it to the front page. Briefly state how economics can shed light on each of the six or so stories on the front page. This will be easy to do for stories about national health policy, budget deficits, and inflation. But with a little imagination (and good class participation!), you can show how economics relates to virtually any news story. A cocaine bust? Economics explains why cocaine costs so much and why selling it can be such a lucrative activity for lawbreakers. A war in a faraway region of the world? Economics can help us understand the origins of the conflict, as well as the true opportunity cost of a possible U.S. military intervention. Now discuss how these articles might impact your Fortune 500 company and yourself economically.
