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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Economic Dynamism
Published on
Mar 18, 2024
Contributors
Wayne Geerling
Dirk Mateer
Julien Picault
Image: Asset Prices Simulated using Brownian Motion (Wikimedia Commons, 02/06/2025)

Extreme Pricing Goes Viral: Lessons for Teaching Price Controls

Contributors
Wayne Geerling
Wayne Geerling
Wayne Geerling
Dirk Mateer
Dirk Mateer
Senior Fellow
Dirk Mateer
Julien Picault
Julien Picault
Julien Picault
Summary
All price controls in competitive markets create unintended consequences.
Summary
All price controls in competitive markets create unintended consequences.
Listen to this article

Price controls are a popular topic among students. However, the effects of implementing price controls are not as straightforward as students typically expect, especially the unintended consequences that students tend to overlook. This paper provides three teaching guides designed to teach price controls which can be easily implemented in an introductory-level economics course. We build on the work of Geerling et al. (2023c) by using short-form viral videos from popular platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, which match the streaming and content medium of choice for Gen Z. The use of celebrities and social media influencers make abstract teaching moments more relatable to students. As such, this paper offers a unique opportunity for creatively teaching economics to a new generation of students.

Read the Full Paper

This paper was originally published by the Journal for Economic Educators

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