EconViz.org
The functioning or malfunctioning of the economy affects everyone. Unfortunately, the educational system has failed to adequately teach us how the economy works, and myths abound. The goal of this site is to make important concepts in macroeconomics and markets easier to understand for a wider audience.
Current Menu of Visualizations
About This Site
Macroeconomics is very well suited to conceptual visualization, yet most educational material (for example in the blogosphere) remains text-centered rather than visually-centered. This site provides content in an interactive multimedia web format.
Why not just provide videos? The EconViz approach is an attempt to go beyond what conventional videos on the web can offer by incorporating the following features (in addition to the visuals, animation and narration that videos have too):
- EconViz diagrams are interactive — mouse over elements to see conceptual connections dynamically highlighted, supplemental text bubbles, etc.
- Drill-down to optional advanced details — many steps of the tutorial explanations can optionally be clicked on to read more.
- Interactive educational exercises are embedded in the content — use buttons and sliders to control diagrams and learn concepts by "playing" with the economy's mechanics directly! (In the future this could include hands-on quizzes, games, etc).
- Natural pauses between pages to read and digest content allow easy topic review (if desired) to reinforce concepts before moving to the next page.
- Diagrams scale to the size of your browser window with no loss of detail (EconViz uses vector graphics, while standard videos are limited to bitmap graphics).
Data visualization helps us grasp the size and direction of trends in the economy and markets, but doesn't directly illustrate the underlying mechanics. The most common form is charts and graphs, but many other formats have been explored. This site will only focus on data visualization to the extent that it enhances understanding of the concepts.
The workings of the economy as explained on this site are inspired by a branch of macroeconomics sometimes referred to as MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) or neo-Chartalism. MMT is part of (and largely consistent with) the heterodox Post-Keynesian school of economics. Related academic work can be found at the University of Missouri-Kansas City economics department, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and many places on the web, for example the New Economic Perspectives blog, Bill Mitchell's blog, and Warren Mosler's blog.
Future Content
Possible topics of future narrated visual tutorials include:
- Private Sector Debt (Household & Corporate)
- Debt Deflation & Depressions
- The Eurozone & the Eurozone Crisis
- The Functioning of Markets
- Types of Financial Crisis (Bubbles & More)
- Visual Re-enactments of Historical Scenarios:
- 2008+ Financial Crisis
- The Great Depression
- Stagflation (US, 1970s)
- Post-1990 Japan
- Hyperinflations (Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe)
- Drivers of Economic Growth
- Dynamics Underlying Prices and Inflation
- Sustainability Topics (Trade Flows, Deficits, Social Security, Environment, etc)
- Employer of Last Resort (in detail, including both rationale and criticisms)
- Intro to Macroeconomic Balance Sheets
- A Political Guide to Economic Prosperity (choose your politics, see compatible policies that would improve prosperity)
- Mechanics of Monetary Policy
- The Full Endogeneity of the Money Supply
- Anatomy of Income Flows — Labor & Capital Portions, Crude/Intermediate/Final Goods, Distributional Topics, etc
Contact
This site is brought to you by "hbl", a software engineer long fascinated by macroeconomics, who
blogged at ThoughtOfferings.com.
You can email feedback to hbl [at] econviz [dot] org.
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