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- I love economics. I began
studying economics when I was 13 and I

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haven't stopped yet. Economics really has
changed my life and the whole way I see

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the world. What so powerful about the
discipline is just how much it shapes, how

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you understand everything around you.

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- But perhaps you're
asking, what's my incentive to learn

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economics? Well, that's a great question.
You've already hit on a key economic

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insight, incentives. For example, why is
the service at a local restaurant

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typically so much better than from the
cable company?

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- Or why do laws which
supposedly protect endangered species,

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sometimes end up with more of those
animals being killed?

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- Or why do big toy companies
sometimes advocate for

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regulations which raise their costs?
Incentives are the key.

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- Another example might help
us explain. Way back in 1787, the British

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government hired sea captains to ship
convicted felons to Australia.

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Conditions on those ships were just awful.
On one voyage, more than one-third of the

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men died and the rest arrived beaten,
starved and sick. The public was outraged,

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newspapers called for better conditions,
the clergy appealed to the captain's sense

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of humanity, and British Parliament passed
regulations requiring better treatment of

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these prisoners. Unfortunately, those
attempted solutions simply didn't work.

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The death rate remained shockingly high.

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- So Tyler, as a good economist.
How would you solve this problem?

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- Well, there was one economist at
the time who came up with a

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novel solution. It was implemented and it
basically worked. Instead of paying the

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captains for each prisoner who embarked to
Australia, the government would pay the

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captains only for the prisoners who
arrived alive. Overnight, the incentives

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of the sea captains changed. The survival
rate of the prisoners shot up to 99%.

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As one observer put it, economy beat
sentiment and benevolence.

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- So what's your incentive
to learn economics? People hear that I'm

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an economist and they ask me about
managing their money. An economics does

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have some lessons for investing in the
stock market, but economics is much

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broader than that. It's the study of human
action, how people make choices and how

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they should make choices under scarcity.
Economics will help you with your choices,

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whether picking a career, parenting a
child or deciding how much education is a

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truly worthwhile investment. Overall,
economics will give you a deeper

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understanding of the key issues
of our time.

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- Economics can be hard.
Retraining your brain to look at the world

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in a different way, isn't always easy.

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- But the reward is a new
set of eyes to see the world.

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So are you ready to begin?