Love and Economics
Richard Marmorstein, a member of Washington and Lee’s Class of 2014, has parlayed his interests in economics and music into a third-place prize in an unusual competition — the economics music video contest sponsored by Fayetteville State University.
The topic for the second annual contest was “Economic Value is Subjective.” Three judges —economists from Duke and Brown universities and a music video producer — selected winners, along with viewer votes, on the contest’s YouTube channel.
Richard shot his song, “Econ Love Ballad,” on the W&L campus and in the classrooms. It features his original lyrics and guitar performance; he won second place in WLUR’s solo acts competition last fall.
The video features Sara Hardman, of the Class of 2013, as the “Creeped Out Girl” to Richard’s “Creepy Economist.” Tyson Janney, also of the Class of 2013, directed and filmed the video.
A native of Aberdeen, S.D., Richard told his hometown newspaper, Aberdeen News. That he wanted to to highlight the parallels between love and market value. As he explained, in his ballad: “This economist is trying to tell this girl he loves her, but he can’t find a quantitative way to value love. He tries to find a way to describe his love in numbers. However, none of this is any good because, ultimately, it is meaningless.”
Richard is an economics and computer science major at W&L. Watch his video below:
