Economic Lessons from Disney's UP
The opening sequence teaches about tradeoffs, investing, and more
How can a sequence with so few words give so many economic lessons? The opening sequence of Disney’s UP is amazing by itself and even better when you start to think about the economic lessons. In this video I’m joined by Dirk Mateer to discuss the economic lessons in UP.
What are the lessons?
We watch the opening montage that shows Carl and Ellie’s life go by and some of the tough decisions they had to make. There are decisions related to savings, tradeoffs, and even some behavioral economics lessons in there. I enjoyed the conversation with Dirk on this as I think he made some great points — especially on whether Carl should have regrets about the way things turned out.
About Dirk Mateer:
Dirk Mateer is a Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Economics in the Movies, Essentials of Economics, and Principles of Economics. Dirk has been featured in the "Great Teachers in Economics" series and he was also the inaugural winner of the Economic Communicator Contest.