Economics jokes and cartoons

Hello. My name is Kostas Economides and I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of the South of England (USE for short). Well, actually that is not true really as the names of individuals and institutions in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty!

Gus was talking again in the cafeteria about how to lighten things up in his lectures with the odd joke or cartoon - preferably related to the topic in hand. I asked him where he got them from. "Lots of places" he said. "But you could start with JokEc"

Here is one they have included that is from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, Chapter 16. Not so much a joke but a nice quote. 'Arthur awoke to the sound of argument and went to the bridge. Ford was waving his arms about. "You're crazy Zaphod," he was saying, "Magrathea is a myth a fairy story, it's what parents tell their kids about at night if they want them to grow up to be economists, it's..." '

And here is a light bulb joke from JokEc - there are lot's more there.

Q: How many Chicago School economists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. If the light bulb needed changing the market would have already done it.

Gus said that he always looked at Ted Goff's business cartoons - have a look at this one for example. Or this one

Randy Glasbergen also has some great cartoons too - look here

And you should never forget Dilbert! After all Scott Adams studied economics. Here are a few you might like http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-10-27/ ; http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-02-19/ ;http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-11-21/ ; http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-18/

Here is another source but it doesn't get updated very frequently

xkcd is more maths related but some cartoons can be relevant - see for example

And this one reminded me of the great JAY-Z spoof by the metrics gang from Berkeley

Kal's cartoons in The Economist are sometimes useful. If for no other reason you can include them just to remind the students to read The Economist!

Or you can just do a Google search with the word cartoon followed by a relevant keyword. Like this one ; or this one on oil prices

And to end with here are a couple of econometrics related cartoons http://sdickman00.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/regression-analysis1.jpg ; http://tvhe.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/phd100108s.gif