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Planet Money for Educators

Hello and welcome to Planet Money For Educators! This is where we've collected tools to help you use Planet Money in the classroom. We took feedback from teachers and professors who've used episodes in their courses, and partnered with Listenwise, NPR's education partner to create lesson plans for 20 economic topics for high school and college students. Every story has a bank of comprehension questions, graphic organizers, and -- humble brag time -- a cool little 'read along' feature that let's students easily follow the transcripts while listening in class. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

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Author Archives: npr_h1dlv5

Not All Santa Suits Are Created Equal

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Taxing imports makes imported goods more expensive for consumers. So why aren’t all seemingly similar items taxed the same? This audio story focuses on imported suits for Santa Claus impersonators. These red suits with white firm trim are worn by thousands of Santa Clauses around the Christmas holidays. Some of these outfits are taxed, others […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5November 25, 2019November 27, 2019Posted inTrade

Technology, Subsidies, and Cotton

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Chances are, you’re wearing something made from cotton. You can check the label on most garments to find out where they were made. But where was the cotton grown that was the starting point? This story tracks down the source of the cotton that went into a T-shirt. A spinning mill in Indonesia is where […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5October 15, 2019October 29, 2019Posted inTrade

Worker Shortage Not Always Solved by Incentives

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Farming in California has become more difficult in recent years as there aren’t enough people to do the arduous work involved in farming. Incentives of higher pay don’t always work to attract enough workers. So the owner of one California farm has adjusted to this labor shortage in a few different ways and reached a […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5October 15, 2019October 29, 2019Posted inIncentives

Incentives to Work Hard

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In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay in which he predicted that by the time his children were grown up, people would be working just 15 hours a week. Today, in some countries, people do work a bit less than they did fifty years ago, but Keynes’s prediction was essentially wrong. There […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5October 15, 2019October 29, 2019Posted inIncentives

Organ Transplant Allocation

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Many people need organ transplants, but there are not enough organs for all of them. Doctors have had to develop criteria for deciding who gets the organs that are available, knowing that those who don’t get the organs they need may die. Listen to hear how the allocation of available organs puts doctors in the […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5October 15, 2019October 29, 2019Posted inAllocation

What would you give up on the Internet?

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Many Internet services are free: email, Internet search, and maps, for example. But what if you had to pay to use them? An economist sets out to discover how much people value various Internet services by asking how much they would need to be paid to give them up. It’s an example of a core […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5October 15, 2019October 29, 2019Posted inDecision Making

Decision Making and the Stock Market

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Millions of people invest billions of dollars in the stock market to make their money grow. Some pool their money with other investors in high risk investment vehicles known as hedge funds. Hedge fund managers employ a variety of strategies with the goal of doing better than the stock market as a whole. The third […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5October 15, 2019October 29, 2019Posted inDecision Making

Improving the Absenteeism Rate at Work

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Scarcity is a basic economic problem: people have unlimited wants and needs, but the world has limited resources. Resources in that equation include materials, capital, and labor. A pasta factory in southern Italy faced a very particular sort of labor shortage. The Barilla pasta factory in Foggia, Italy had enough employees to keep up with […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5October 15, 2019October 29, 2019Posted inScarcity

The Cheapest Place to Make a T-Shirt

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Making a T-shirt takes a lot of time, but it can be made cheaply. The origins of your T-shirts probably come from Mississippi, where cotton is grown, and the shirts were probably spun in Indonesia. In this story, reporters track the assembly of a T-shirt to Bangladesh and try to understand why that Asian country […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5September 23, 2019September 24, 2019Posted inSpecialization

The Price of a Hermes Bag

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The luxury goods company Hermes makes and sells a high-end purse it calls the Birkin Bag. The Birkin costs $10,000—often more—and it is nearly impossible to find one to buy. Because very few bags are available, the Birkin has become a status symbol, something only very few people can buy. Its scarcity raises its value, […]

Posted bynpr_h1dlv5September 19, 2019September 24, 2019Posted inMarkets and Prices

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Topics

  • Allocation
  • Competition and Market Structure
  • Decision Making
  • Economic Fluctuations
  • Economic Growth
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Fiscal and Monetary Policy
  • Government Failure
  • Incentives
  • Income
  • Institutions
  • Interest Rates
  • Markets and Prices
  • Money and Inflation
  • Role of Government and Market Failure
  • Role of Prices
  • Scarcity
  • Specialization
  • Trade
  • Unemployment and Inflation

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