Teaching Economic Concepts Using American Novels: John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden

Abstract

This article demonstrates how literature can portray different economic concepts and be used to teach such concepts in undergraduate economics and financial engineering courses. The authors examine John Steinbeck’s novels, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden in light of some economic concepts such as property rights, mass production, specialization, futures trading, and distribution of wealth. The authors argue that instructors can use novels to teach their students about the abovementioned economic concepts and students can benefit from reading novels and understand economic concepts in literature. The authors also present quantitative analysis using statistical methods such as Box and Whisker plot, Shapiro-Wilk test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and one-sample t-test by using R as a way for teachers to enable their students to quantify economic concepts from literature.