Charity-Joy Revere Acchiardo - Dystopia and Economics: A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies

Government collapsing? Zombies hunting you down? Everyone you know killed by a global epidemic? Not to worry! Economics holds the keys to survival. Often known as the dismal science, it is particularly equipped to reveal order in what seems like chaos.

Economists observe human behaviour: what leads us to take action, and the subsequent consequences. However, the choices made by individuals are not made in isolation; they influence and are influenced by the actions of others. A set of rules, even if unwritten, guides human behaviour. Foundational economic principles stand firmly in place, even when society is breaking down, and an understanding of these basic tenets of societies is essential to surviving the end of the world as we know it.

In this book, the authors draw from popular culture to show economic principles at work in the dystopian societies depicted in The Walking Dead, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hunger Games, Divergent, A Clockwork Orange, and The Last Man on Earth. In each society, its members face resource and social constraints that incentivize particular behaviours and lead to predictable outcomes. How does human behaviour change when resources are severely limited, the legal system breaks down, or individual freedom is stifled? The examples presented here shed an eerie light on the principles that guide our actions every day.

Dystopia and Economics: A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies provides a user-friendly introduction to economics suitable for a general audience as well as devoted students of the discipline.

Charity-Joy Revere Acchiardo is a Lecturer of Economics at the University of Arizona, USA. She is a frequent speaker at teaching workshops across North America and Europe where she shares tips for making economics come alive for students. Her research has been published in leading economic education journals and she serves on the advisory board for the Journal of Economics Teaching.

Michelle Albert Vachris is Professor of Management, Business, and Economics at Virginia Wesleyan University, USA. Before arriving at VWU she taught economics at Christopher Newport University, where she holds the rank of Professor Emerita, and previously worked as an economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Her publications include articles and book chapters on Public Choice economics, teaching pedagogy and economics in literature.

ROUTLEDGE ECONOMICS AND POPULAR CULTURE

Series Editor

J. Brian ORoark, Robert Morris University, USA

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Economics-and-Popular-Culture-Series/book-series/REPC

Broadway and Economics

Economic Lessons from Show Tunes

Matthew C. Rousu

Dystopia and Economics

A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies

Edited by Charity-Joy Revere Acchiardo and Michelle Albert Vachris

DYSTOPIA AND ECONOMICS

A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies

Edited by Charity-Joy Revere Acchiardo and Michelle Albert Vachris

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 selection and editorial matter, Charity-Joy Revere Acchiardo and Michelle Albert Vachris; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Charity-Joy Revere Acchiardo and Michelle Albert Vachris to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-05135-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-05136-2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-16833-3 (ebk)

To Dirk Mateer; Scott, Kyle, and Brendan Vachris; and Irene Albert for their encouragement and support.

Charity-Joy RevereAcchiardo is a Lecturer of Economics at the University of Arizona. She understands that many people perceive the study of economics as uninteresting and disconnected to the realities of their everyday lives. But she also knows that isnt true. She gets her students actively engaged in observing their own worlds and solving the puzzles they find there. She is a frequent speaker at teaching workshops across North America and Europe where she shares tips for making economics come alive for students. Her research has been published in leading economic education journals, and she serves on the advisory board for the Journal of Economics Teaching. She has served as the Director of the Office of Economic Education at the University of Arizona. Dr. Acchiardo has an MBA from Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a Ph.D. from George Mason University where she was the Olofsson Weaver fellow in political economy.

Tawni H.Ferrarini serves as the Robert W. Plaster of Economic Education and Professor of Economics at Lindenwood Universitys Hammond Institute. Until 2017 she held the only endowed professorship at Northern Michigan University as the Sam M. Cohodas Professor of Economics. She was the 2015 President of the National Association of Economic Educators. Her teaching, research, and service focus on regional growth and development with special attention drawn to the role of the private sector. Accolades include the 2016 Upper Peninsula Economic Development Non-profit Award, 2012; Council on Economic Educations Albert Beekhuis Center Award, 2010; Michigan Council on Economic Education Educators Award, 2009; National Association of Economic Educators Abbejean Kehler Technology Award (inaugural recipient); and a distinguished faculty award at NMU in 2009. Currently, Tawni serves as a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, MI and the Fraser Institute, Vancouver, Canada. She is a co-author of Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity (St. Martins Press, 2016). Tawni also publishes scholarly works in journals. She earned her doctorate from Washington University, where she studied under the 1993 Nobel laureate Douglass C. North.

WayneGeerling is a senior lecturer at the University of Arizona. His expertise covers European economic history, resistance in authoritarian regimes and economics education, specifically using popular culture in the classroom. He has just published a research monograph: Quantifying Resistance: Political Crime and the Peoples Court in Nazi Germany