Ellington

While teaching undergraduates near the end of his graduate school studies, Yoram Bauman decided to take a lighthearted look at economics, a subject normally considered to be dry.

Bauman, now a professor in the College of the Environment, wrote his parody of Gregory K. Mankiw’s “Ten Principles of Economics.” He now balances his job as an instructor and his stand-up act, in which he describes himself as “the world’s first and only stand-up economist.”

“I think that when you are a graduate student you spend all day, everyday, thinking about the same little thing, and in my case, it was environmental economics,” Bauman said. “And so when [Mankiw’s book] came across my desk, [my parody] was just something that happened to blow off some steam. I don’t know why I was doing it, I just sort of thought it was funny.”

Bauman’s parody was passed around the department, even being parodied by other graduate students. His comedic work was eventually published in the “Annals of Improbable Science,” a magazine of scientific humor. Then, in 2004, the American Association for the Advancement of Science hosted its annual convention in Seattle and invited Bauman to host the humor session.

“It was a packed house with Ph.D.’s and it was so long ago that we had transparencies,” Bauman said. “At that point, two things happened. One, I got really into stand-up comedy and decided I was going to start going to open-mic nights and actually try to do some stand-up comedy as a hobby. The other thing that happened … was that, to be perfectly honest, my academic career wasn’t going so great.”

Bauman recalled wanting to stay in the Pacific Northwest and being uninterested in venturing out to work at a university in the middle of nowhere.

After having majored in mathematics in his undergraduate years at Reed College, Bauman’s approach of taking time to figure out what he really wanted led him to an internship at Sightline Institute, working on environmental taxes. It was then that Bauman realized what he wanted to do with his life.

“The thing that led me to graduate school and led me to do academic work was environmental tax reform, so things like carbon taxes, cap and trade systems, using economic instruments to protect the environmental,” Bauman said. “That’s basically what I do, that is my passion in life. I do advocacy work on this, I talk about it in my classes, I do research on it. It’s one of my goals in life because I think economists really have a lot to contribute to dealing with climate change and environmental issues more generally.”

He estimates that he splits half his time between his environmental research and comedy. Bauman recently taught a course about local and global environmental issues at the UW this past fall.

“I really like how he tries so hard to educate students as much as he can, but still leaves room for them to develop and hold onto their own opinions,” said Ann Fu, a UW sophomore. “He is an incredibly enthusiastic person, always upbeat and cheerful, and it helps a lot to know that he is eager to be in the classroom. Yoram’s class (Envir 100) was no cakewalk, but if you made an attempt, so much knowledge was gained from that class.”

On the comedic front, he recently co-authored “The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume 1: Microeconomics” with cartoonist Grady Klein. He continues to perform stand-up comedy routines, mainly for universities and corporate events. The YouTube video of his Mankiw’s “Ten Principles of Economics” parody has over 840,000 views.

When asked about Bauman’s advice for students searching to find their ways and places in the world, Bauman emphasized thinking about one’s values and goals.

“If your life goal is to have a house in the suburbs, with a three-car garage and that sort of thing, you are going have to make some choices that will move you in that direction,” he said. “I feel like one of the things that was valuable for me was that I didn’t have that strong of a constraint. Really think of what your constraints are and really try to keep them as loose as possible.

And, like a true man of his field, Bauman recommended also thinking in terms of economics as well.

“It is important to think of what your value added is for the world, and that is true whether you want to make money or whether you want to do other things,” he said. “But really thinking about what you can do to contribute, like what contribution can you make to a company, to an organization, to make the world a better place, to your community and thinking about that is important.”

Bauman added that he didn’t have any regrets and that having time to think about what he wanted to pursue was important to him.

“A lot of my life I like to categorize as a trade-off between adventure and stability,” he said. “I like to think that in my life I have a little more weight on the adventure side.”

Reach reporter Evelyne Kolker at lifestyles@dailyuw.com.