Legend has it that an art collector once asked Michaelangelo to describe the challenges he faced in sculpting one of his most iconic works.
“It was actually quite easy,” Michaelangelo drolly replied, “I just chipped away the parts of the stone that didn’t look like David.”
The story may be apocryphal, but we’ve found the great artist’s strategy helpful in communicating the essence of economics to our freshman students.
Much of the learning in Econ 101 is subtractive. It consists in removing false notions about what economics is and the sorts of claims economists can make. By gradually chiseling away the things that
