Teaching Market Power, Labor Markets, Healthcare, and Taxes with Video Lessons

Later economics units often move from basic market models into more complicated real-world institutions. Monopoly, oligopoly, game theory, behavioral economics, labor markets, minimum wage, healthcare, end-of-life costs, taxes, and the underground economy all show that markets depend on rules, incentives, information, and power.

These topics are excellent for discussion, but they need careful classroom structure. Students should be able to explain why monopoly power can limit consumer choice, why firms in an oligopoly watch each other, why consumers do not always act like perfect calculators, why wages depend on productivity and institutions, why healthcare is not ordinary shopping, and why taxes raise both revenue and fairness questions.

What this section emphasizes

• Market power lessons help students distinguish competition, monopoly, natural monopoly, patents, barriers to entry, and antitrust policy.
• Game theory and oligopoly lessons help students explain strategy, cooperation, cheating, and price wars.
• Behavioral economics lessons show how framing, loss aversion, bounded rationality, and nudges affect choices.
• Labor-market lessons connect wages to derived demand, productivity, minimum wage, unions, monopsony-style power, and discrimination.
• Healthcare, death, taxes, and underground-economy lessons require sensitive, evidence-based wording and realistic policy tradeoff analysis.

Why prepared materials matter

Prepared worksheets, quizzes, and answer keys are especially helpful for these topics because a clear student task keeps the lesson focused. The teacher can frame sensitive issues with public examples and economic reasoning instead of asking students to disclose personal family finances, health experiences, immigration status, or end-of-life experiences.

Assessment idea

Ask students to compare product-market power and labor-market power. For example, a firm with few product competitors may affect consumers through higher prices or fewer choices, while a major local employer may affect workers through wage-setting power. A strong answer should name the market, explain the incentive, and connect the result to consumers or workers.

This classroom resource is teacher-created and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Crash Course, PBS Digital Studios, YouTube, or the creators or hosts of the videos. It is designed to help teachers use publicly available Crash Course videos with structured student materials.