Analogies, social contracts, and teaching

As many of you now know, I like to use analogies in lecture to illustrate concepts that may seem abstract and technical in the original context, and my favourite analogies often draw on our everyday social lives. These stories may seemingly have little to do with economic development policy, but this week I'm feeling kind of vindicated and pleased with myself (!). An article in the Economist Magazine (on, oddly enough, sociopaths) made the very interesting point that our brains are hard-wired to instinctively comprehend social contracts, so abstract problems redefined in social- contract-space will be much easier to solve and understand. So, now all I have to do is figure out how to map instrumental variable estimation into a love triangle scenario!