5 Great TED Talks About Economics

TED Talks Focused on Economics

  • Saving for Tomorrow, Tomorrow
  • The Hidden Force in Global Economics: Sending Money Home
  • Is China the New Idol for Emerging Economies?
  • An Economic Reality Check
  • The New Open-Source Economics

These are some of the best TED Talks about economics, which is a broad field of study involving the consumption as well as the grab for wealth. It could involve a country or humans as individuals. Some of these talks are a bit older, but they have value today.

1. Saving for Tomorrow, Tomorrow

Economist Shlomo Benartzi has studied how and why people plan for the future. He’s examined the reasons that people fail as well as how they can begin to save for the future by taking behavioral challenges and turning them into solutions. Benartzi talks about his program Save More Tomorrow, which has a direct relationship with behavioral finance. He discusses risks in relation to how people want to manage their money. It’s a popular talk that has been viewed over 1.3 million times. It was recorded at TEDSalon in 2011.

2. The Hidden Force in Global Economics: Sending Money Home

Featured in an official TED conference, this talk was given by Dilip Ratha who is an economist examining and analyzing how immigrants send money home to their country. He calls the money “dollars wrapped in love” due to the fact that many foreign workers send much of their paychecks back to family in other countries, and it’s a huge part of the economy of those countries. In fact, migrants sent over 413 billion dollars to family members in other countries. The talk was recorded in 2014 and was watched 1.3 million times.

Read: 10 Best Deals on Master’s in Economics Degrees Online

3. Is China the New Idol for Emerging Economies?

Dambisa Moyo analyzes and examines global topics as an international economist. She gave a talk in 2013 that has been viewed over 2 million times since. Moyo discusses how developed countries differ from emerging markets, and that the ideal might not be the developed country with democracy at its forefront. China embodies a market that is becoming appealing to many in other countries instead of the US and other developed countries.

4. An Economic Reality Check

Tim Jackson is an economist who has studied the values of society, lifestyle and the environment to understand its impact on economics and growth. Between the prior recession, inequality among people and climate change, he discusses the challenges we all face as well as how things will look in the future if it continues. A few hundred years ago, our needs and drives were different than they are today, and he discusses what they might be in the future based on the realities of the day. This TED Talk was from TEDGlobal 2010, and it’s had almost a million views.

5. The New Open-Source Economics

This TED Talk revolves around commerce and the economy as it impacts society through open-source programs on the Internet. He talks about how content is produced in an open environment where it doesn’t belong to any one entity like Wikipedia or Open Directory Project, which relies on volunteers to function. He discusses the idea that instead of a profit or non-profit, a decentralized system or centralized system, people have started to create a system of social sharing and exchange as well as its impact on economics.

These are just a few of the top TED Talks about economics.

 

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