Learning economics by watching Seinfeld: It turns out that Seinfeld is not quite the show about nothing. Alan Grant is an associate professor of economics at Baker University talked to Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast (runtime 21:30) about his website, The Economics of Seinfeld and how he uses it for course material. For example, Jerry was teaching us all a lesson when he gave Elaine cash as a gift for her birthday; he wasn’t acting like her “uncle,” he was just trying to avoid the deadweight loss of gift giving (read The Economist’s Is Santa a deadweight loss? —yes, economists are an insufferable bunch). At the end of the episode Alloway says she can’t wait for an analysis of the economics in Game of Thrones — she probably missed the review of Westeros’ sovereign debt crisis by The Economist’s sister magazine, 1843.