Value: 4% of final course grade Length: 400 to 700 words Submission: Canvas text entry or file upload
Assigned Video
EconPop: “The Economics of House of Cards”
Instructor note: The video will be posted or embedded in Canvas.
Purpose
This assignment asks you to respond to the assigned video using the final concepts of the course: public choice, political incentives, rent seeking, regulatory capture, government failure, and policy evaluation.
The video uses House of Cards to discuss politics and economics. Your job is not to review the show or summarize the plot. Your job is to evaluate the economic argument being made about political behavior. Public choice theory asks us to analyze political actors the same way economists often analyze consumers, firms, and workers: as people responding to incentives.
This means that policy failure is not always caused by stupidity, bad intentions, or individual corruption. Sometimes policy failure comes from the structure of political incentives themselves. Politicians want votes, agencies want budgets and authority, interest groups want favorable rules, and voters may not have enough incentive to become fully informed. These incentives can shape policy outcomes even when the public interest points in another direction.
Prompt
After watching the EconPop video, write a response that answers the following question:
Does the video explain policy failure as a problem of individual corruption, or as a predictable result of political incentives and institutional design?
Your response should evaluate the video’s argument using concepts from Week 5.
Required Elements
Your response must do all of the following:
- Identify the video’s main argument.
Begin by explaining the video’s central claim in your own words. Do not summarize the entire video. Focus on what the video argues about political behavior, incentives, and policy outcomes.
- Identify the public choice issue.
Explain which public choice or government failure concept is most relevant to the video.
Possible concepts include:
- Public choice
- Rent seeking
- Regulatory capture
- Special interest influence
- Concentrated benefits and diffuse costs
- Majority voting
- Median voter incentives
- Rational ignorance
- Bureaucratic incentives
- Principal-agent problems
- Political corruption
- Government failure
- Explain the incentive mechanism.
Do not just name the concept. Explain how the incentive problem works.
For example:
- If the issue is rent seeking, explain what benefit is being pursued and why political effort may be more profitable than productive activity.
- If the issue is regulatory capture, explain how a regulated group might influence the agency or politicians meant to control it.
- If the issue is concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, explain why a small group may fight harder for a policy than the general public fights against it.
- If the issue is rational ignorance, explain why voters may not have enough incentive to learn the details of a policy.
- If the issue is principal-agent problems, explain how political representatives or agencies may act differently from the people they are supposed to serve.
- Evaluate whether the video focuses on individuals or institutions.
Explain whether the video presents political failure mainly as the result of bad individuals, or whether it shows how institutions and incentives produce predictable outcomes.
This distinction matters. If the problem is only bad people, the solution is to replace them. If the problem is incentive structure, then better people may still face the same pressures.
- Connect the video to policy evaluation.
Explain what a public-sector economist would need to know before judging a policy affected by these incentives.
Possible questions include:
- Who benefits from the policy?
- Who pays?
- Are the benefits concentrated while the costs are spread out?
- Which groups have the strongest incentive to lobby?
- Are voters likely to understand the policy’s costs?
- Does the agency implementing the policy have good incentives?
- Is the policy likely to survive even if it is inefficient?
- What evidence would show whether the policy actually works?
- Evaluate what the video gets right.
Identify one part of the video that explains public choice or political incentives well. This could be its explanation of corruption, rent seeking, lobbying, political exchange, or why public policy does not always reflect the public interest.
- Evaluate what the video misses or oversimplifies.
Identify one limitation in the video’s argument. Does it make politics seem too cynical? Does it focus too much on individual corruption? Does it ignore voters? Does it ignore institutions that limit corruption? Does it treat all political action as self-interested? Does it skip over how a policy should actually be evaluated?
- Raise one follow-up question.
End your response with one question that would need to be answered before making a final judgment about the policy issue or political incentive problem discussed in the video.
For example:
- Is the problem mainly corrupt individuals or the incentive structure of politics?
- Who benefits from the policy outcome being discussed?
- Are the costs spread across people who have little incentive to pay attention?
- What institutional rule could reduce the incentive problem?
- Would transparency change the outcome?
- How would we measure whether the policy serves the public interest?
- Is this an example of government failure, or just ordinary political bargaining?
Structure
Your response should be organized into clear paragraphs. A strong structure would look like this:
- Paragraph 1: Main argument of the video
- Paragraph 2: Public choice or government failure concept
- Paragraph 3: Incentive mechanism
- Paragraph 4: Individuals vs. institutions
- Paragraph 5: What the video gets right, what it misses, and one follow-up question
You do not have to use this exact structure, but your response should be organized and easy to follow.
Course Concepts You May Use
Useful concepts from Week 5 include:
- Public choice
- Majority voting
- Median voter theorem
- Rational ignorance
- Expressive voting
- Special interest groups
- Concentrated benefits
- Diffuse costs
- Rent seeking
- Regulatory capture
- Bureaucracy
- Principal-agent problem
- Government failure
- Limited information
- Political constraints
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Cost-effectiveness
- Distributional analysis
- Policy evaluation
You do not need to use all of these concepts. It is better to use one or two concepts carefully than to list many terms without explaining them.
What Not to Do
Do not summarize House of Cards.
Do not write a television review.
Do not simply say that politicians are corrupt.
Do not assume that policy failure is only about bad people.
Do not ignore incentives, institutions, and who benefits from the policy outcome.
Do not forget to connect the video to public-sector economics.
Grading Criteria
This response will be graded on the following criteria:
Main Argument
The response accurately identifies the video’s central argument.
Public Choice Connection
The response connects the video to a relevant Week 5 public choice or government failure concept.
Incentive Mechanism
The response explains how the political or institutional incentive problem works.
Individuals vs. Institutions
The response evaluates whether the video explains policy failure as individual corruption, institutional failure, or both.
Policy Evaluation
The response explains what would need to be known before judging the policy outcome.
Critical Response
The response identifies both what the video gets right and what it misses or oversimplifies.
Follow-up Question
The response raises a thoughtful question that extends the analysis.
Writing Quality
The response is clear, organized, and edited.