ИСТИНА

The study of economics rightfully occupies a special place in the curriculum of future managers and public administrators. In her report the author suggests a somewhat unorthodox tool for perceiving and clarifying basic economic notions through analysing literary works. For this purpose the author chose O.Henry’s short stories where the issues of scarcity of resources, economic choice and opportunity cost come to the fore. Students are asked to define the level of economic analysis, to categorise economic benefits and needs (also using Maslow pyramid), to estimate what is happening from the point of view of game theory. This practice achieves at least two goals: it allows students to refresh in memory the economic theory and to apply it to the analysis of literary works. The short stories are read in the original, the perusal of terms occurs virtually in one breath.