It’s Just Like Magic: The Economics of Harry Potter

June 18, 2013 Leave a comment

It’s Just Like Magic: The Economics of Harry Potter

Darwyyn Deyo George Mason University – Department of Economics

Marta Podemska-Mikluch Beloit College

May 31, 2013

Abstract:      
Do the laws of economics apply in the magical world of Harry Potter? We argue that even though J.K Rowling placed her characters in a world of magic, wizards remain subject to the implications of scarcity and must obey economic principles. As a result, the series is abundant with illustrations of choice within constraint, marginal thinking, the power of incentives, and the role of institutions. The contents of the books, along with their extraordinary popularity, provide a tool powerful enough to inspire students to adopt the economic way of thinking for life. We demonstrate the pedagogical potential of the series by providing examples for each of Mankiw’s Ten Key Principles of Economics.

Filed under Life

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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