I was recently approached about a possibility to write a chapter in a book about the economics that can be found in episodes of The Simpsons. I found this to be a cute and novel concept, but apparently others have already had similar ideas! I present to you “Oh, the Economics You’ll Find in Dr. Seuss!” by Ben Miller and Michael Watts. (Ben is/was an undergraduate at Purdue University, and Michael is a professor at the same institution.)
I figured I would give you a nice visual for your viewing pleasure:
The overall paper is available online and can be found here. It goes through a brief biography of Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Geisel) and then outlines what economic concepts are found in a lot (not all) of his works. The paper is 30 pages long, but it is an easy read and has a nice summary table at the end. Some bio highlights (along with my commentary of course):
- Geisel attended Dartmouth College from 1921-25, and took two principles of economics classes described in the college catalog as designed “to train for citizenship and business life.” (I wish economics classes nowadays had the goals of training for citizenship and business life, since I strongly contend that understanding basic economics helps you to suck less at life in general.)
- His class notebooks from both Dartmouth and Oxford are full of Seuss-style drawings. (This is unsurprising on a number of levels. I have a friend from college who would draw caricatures of Franklin Fisher during our internediate microeocnomics course. I think this started when he showed up one day in a grey trenchcoat and hat and she was getting an Inspector Gadget vibe from him. There was also a humpty dumpty version, but I’m not sure what the motivation was for that one.)
- Suess was his mother’s maiden name, and he added the title Dr. to reflect his father’s unfulfilled hopes for his graduate degree at Oxford. (Hopefully it won’t come to that for me, but one way or another I will totally be Dr. Econgirl some day.)
Here is a nice synopsis of the economic concepts:
| Title | Economics Concepts |
| And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street! (1937) | credible statements |
| The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938) | bandwagon effects, interdependent utility, conspicuous consumption, demand, fairness, hierarchical societies, luxury, pride, sumptuary laws, tastes and preferences, fashion, vanity |
| The King’s Stilts (1939) | economics of natural disasters, interdependent utilities, natural resources, property rights/theft, public goods, specialization and the division of labor, work-leisure trade-offs |
| The Seven Lady Godivas (1939) | entrepreneurship, innovation, research and development |
| Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) | contracts, evolutionary economics, fairness, property rights, reputation effects, shirking, specialization, work-leisure trade-offs |
| McElligot’s Pool (1947) | externalities/pollution, risk aversion in production vs. leisure decisions, uncertainty |
| Thidwick the Bighearted Moose (1948) | altruism, entitlements, fairness/equity, free riding, public choice |
| Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949) | entrepreneurship, experience goods, fame/vanity, pollution, property rights, tastes and product differentiation, unintended consequences |
| Gerald McBoing Boing (1950) | discrimination/diversity, marketable skills, specialization |
| If I Ran the Zoo (1950) | product differentiation |
| Scrambled Eggs Super! (1953) | differences in endowments, interdependence, international trade and diversity in consumer tastes, production, quality control, risk, search costs, specialization |
| Horton Hears a Who! (1954) | asymmetric information, collective action/demonstrations, discrimination, endangered species, public choice, shirking, specialization, skills |
| On Beyond Zebra! (1955) | limited, but examples of: competition, goods and services, innovation, property rights enforcement, scarcity, specialization, transportation |
| If I Ran the Circus (1956) | entrepreneurship, externalities, incentives, labor, unrealistic expectations |
| How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957) | altruism, externalities, interdependent utility |
| The Cat in the Hat (1957) | asymmetric information, environmental issues, externalities, monitoring costs, recreation/leisure |
| Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (1958) 1) “Yertle the Turtle” 2) “Gertrude McFuzz” 3) “The Big Brag” |
constraints, freedom and the diffusion of political power, greed vs. happiness, unlimited wants
constraints, bandwagon effects, conspicuous consumption, experience goods, fairness, relative income/consumption cheap talk and credible statements, relative status, game theory, second mover-advantage |
| The Cat in the Hat Comes Back! (1958) | reputation effects, learning (or not, as in basic Cournot models), workleisure trade-offs |
| Happy Birthday to You! (1959) | scarcity, specialization, wants, utility/happiness |
| Green Eggs and Ham* (1960) | complements, experience goods, interpersonal differences in preferences, utility |
| One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish* (1960) | preferences, specialization |
| The Sneetches and Other Stories (1961) 1) “The Zax” 2) “Too Many Daves” 3) “The Sneetches” 4) “What Was I Scared of?” |
credible threats, game theory
diminishing returns learning in a repeated games, preference models of discrimination discrimination and irrational fears |
| Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book (1962) | wants, work-leisure trade-offs |
| Dr. Seuss’s ABC* (1963) | diminishing marginal utility |
| Hop on Pop* (1963) | nothing |
| I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew (1965) | precautionary motives, risk aversion, shirking, utopian dreams/fallacies |
| Fox in Socks* (1965) | nothing |
| The Foot Book* (1968) | nothing |
| I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories (1969) 1) “I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today!” 2) “The Glunk that got Thunk” 3) “King Looie Katz” |
entrepreneurship
demand, experience goods, externalities, long-term/unintended consequences, prudence relative income/consumption, tastes, fads, vanity |
| My Book about Me* (1969) | scarcity and opportunity cost, labor markets, jobs, specialization and personal skills/characteristics |
| Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?* (1970) | experience goods, specialization, training/education |
| The Lorax (1971) | economies of scale, endangered species, environmental externalities, property rights and enforcement, specialization and division of labor, tragedy of the commons, wants |
| Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!* (1972) | goods and services |
| The Shape of Me and Other Stuff *1973 | very little, but examples of goods and services, and personal diversity |
| Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? (1973) | consumption, work effort and monitoring costs, envy, living wage, relative utility |
| There’s a Wocket in my Pocket* (1974) | nothing but examples of goods and services |
| Great Day for Up* (1974) | tools/capital goods that help people get up |
| Oh, the THINKS You Can Think!* (1975) | nothing except imagination as an unlimited resource |
| The Cat’s Quizzer* (1976) | nothing |
| I Can Read with My Eyes Shut* (1978) | human capital |
| Oh Say Can You Say? (1979) | cost, experience goods, money, occupations, preferences, price, product quality, wants |
| Hunches in Bunches (1982) | choices, decision making, delayed gratification, discounting, opportunity cost, precautionary motives, uncertainty |
| The Butter Battle Book (1984) | arms race games, credible threats, discrimination (taste/preference models), game theory, prisoner’s dilemma |
| You’re Only Old Once (1986) | aging, demographics, externalities (pollution/congestion), health care |
| I Am NOT Going to Get up Today!* (1987) | shirking/leisure |
| Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (1990) | personal beliefs in ability and luck, choices, competition, individual interests and abilities, information, leisure/recreation, migration, opportunity cost, risk, uncertainty, utility, waste/inefficiency |
| Daisy-Head Mayzie (1994) | demand, interpersonal differences, money/fame vs. happiness, principalagent issues, specialization |
| My Many Colored Days (1996) | nothing |
| Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! (1998) | accountability (standardized testing), education and training, entrepreneurship, freedom, general vs. specific training, human capital, incentives, specialization and division of labor, variety |
Hm. I had no idea Dr. Seuss wrote so many books. I also had no idea that pride and vanity were economic concepts…who knew that there was so much overlap between economics and deadly sins?
4 responses so far ↓
1 JohnO // Jul 23, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Ah, good summary of a really cool-sounding paper! Puts my humble undergraduate efforts (the Coke wars, old Coke vs. New Coke) to shame.
I will be forwarding to people I know
On to forward, on to forward I go!
2 econgirl // Jul 24, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Ha. A very similar post showed up on the NYT Economix blog a few hours after I wrote this. On the up side, it reminded me of a related post that Ed Glaeser had wrote, appropriately entitled “The Lorax Was Wrong: Skyscrapers Are Green”:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-lorax-was-wrong-skyscrapers-are-green/
3 econgirl // Jul 26, 2009 at 12:32 pm
This turned out to be unrelated, but I couldn’t help but be curious about something on an economics blog entitled “One Dog, Two Dog, Red Dog, Blue Dog”…
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/07/one-dog-two-dog-red-dog-blue-dog.html
4 sprint iphone 4s // Nov 1, 2011 at 2:28 pm
wow, i could not believe what you have said. BTW thanks for this
Leave a Comment