COP26 Economics: Economists vs. Humans With Dr Mike Brock From University of East Anglia

Through demonstrations and interactive quizzes, economist Mike Brock shows that we don’t always behave as rationally as we might like to think. This introduction to behavioural economics will explore how difficult it can be to encourage humans to act in in ways that benefit the environment, but with the right mixture of nudges and incentives, economists just might have the answer to tackling climate change.

Lecturer Profile (Please Click): Dr Mike Brock

Curriculum links:

KS4 Economics

• Understand how markets operate and the roles of consumers, producers or workers within markets
• Understand and apply their economic knowledge and skills, to investigate current and historical economic situations and issues in a range of national and global contexts
• Understand the concept of scarce resources and unlimited wants, weighing up costs and benefits of economic choices, including opportunity costs
• Introduce the notion of behavioural economics to complement standard economic theory

KS5 Economics

• Biases in decision making: rules of thumb, anchoring, availability and social norms
• The importance of altruism and perceptions of fairness
• Choice architecture and framing
• Nudges
• Default choices, restricted choice and mandated choice

This session is part of UEA’s COP26 series, exploring links between different fields of study and issues relating to the environment and climate change. COP26 is the name of the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in Glasgow from 31 October – 12 November 2021.

Our events are designed so that a group of students can take part from a classroom, or students and teachers can take part as individuals, either from school or from home. This means that sessions will continue irrespective of possible school closures.

As a live, participative event, this session will not be recorded but access to slides and other relevant resources will be given, where possible.

Suitable for: Key Stage 4 & Key Stage 5 students studying or with an interest in studying Economics, and related subjects. Teachers and members of school staff, as always, are welcome too and participants can join as individuals from school/college or home, or as a group from school/college.

Preparation/Pre-Reading: Students are asked to consider some of the key issues and any questions they might like to ask during the session.

Booking a Place: This is free for schools and colleges.  If you would like to take part in this event, please register your interest using the link to the registration form below: