Reflection Post

Reviewing all the blog posts that I have written in this class so far, it is evident that they all share a common theme. The connection is that they are all about economics, and more specifically about the economics behind the decisions faced by individuals in groups and teams.

For our first post, I wrote about my experiences working for an organization. The discussion was based more on the organizational structure of the firm and the transaction costs incurred during the hiring of a new employee. The main discussion was regarding the level of authority individuals have compared to the managers and what is an optimal level to balance the quality of work with timelines. The other was comparing the transaction costs of hiring externally vs hiring through an intern pool. All these points focus on finding the right balance or the best solution for the organization as a whole, instead of looking at individual benefit. The second week's post was connected to the individual’s behavior. I talked about the example of picking up money from the street and the opportunity cost of doing so. I then moved onto a more ethical approach as to why people indulge in opportunistic behavior. The post on team organization is connected with the other prompts, as it is also about teamwork, and how a well-organized team is highly functional. Connecting it to the previous post, a well-organized team depends on the structure of the organization, and in turn the team. The structure is thus highly important in forming a functional team that leverages all its members and resources to produce the optimum output. The last post I made was about the Illini Bucks system, and how the system could be used for various reasons on campus.

Aside from the prompts itself, the blog posts were very closely related to some of the themes as discussed in class. The example I gave regarding the behavior when one finds a wallet in the post on opportunistic behavior closely resembles the coordination games we discussed in class wherein each player has the choice of keeping or returning the wallet, and how over the long run, if there is coordination, the total outcome is better as compared to when there is no coordination. I did not notice this connection earlier, as we had still not studied many of the coordination games. But after looking at the post again, I could easily relate the two concepts of opportunistic behavior and coordination. The Illini Bucks post is also a parallel to the transfer pricing we learnt in class. The pricing is also based on the market movements of demand and supply, which is a pure economic concept.

Yes, I feel my writing process has definitely improved since starting to write these blog posts. The reason for this is because of the additional time I spend in writing the blog posts. Before even beginning to write, I read the prompt and think about the topic in detail. I try to gather and organize my thoughts and roughly outline the flow of my blog post before even starting to write. Initially, I had skipped this step and started to write the post as soon as I read the prompt. By reading the prompt first, thinking about what I will be writing helps to make the post be better organized. In addition, I also read some of my classmates posts before starting to write my own, so that any thought or points I may have missed will also be covered by me. I think because of the change in my process, the blog posts have more detail in them and are organized in a better way. If the prompt is closely related to what we have studied in class, I also read the class material to better understand the concepts and try and relate the posts with some of the material learnt in class.

I feel the prompts are already very good. They are not too specific or broad in nature, which allows us to write about the intended topic, but gives a variety so that each post can be uniquely interesting. Many of the post also require us to give examples of our own experiences, which make the discussion more interesting and relatable. I would like to see a bit more of a direct connection to the concepts taught in class as that would supplement the learning material.