Eastern professor Linda Ghent has received national attention for a website created to show the economic theories in everyday life using “Seinfeld” as the link between the two.

From the New York Daily News to bloggers from the Wall Street Journal, the Economics of Seinfeld website which began at Eastern has been pushed into the media spotlight. The idea began when Ghent spoke with a friend who used movie scenes to teach economics at Penn State.

From this concept, Ghent developed the senior seminar Pop Culture Economics where movies and TV shows are used to teach the basics of economic theory.

“I think one of the things that is important about the class is it allows students to see how much economics is in the world around them,” Ghent said. “We try to keep it fresh and rotate in new things, but there is something special about ‘Seinfeld.'”

After discussing this idea, Ghent and Allen Grant, a former Eastern economic professor, decided to use scenes from “Seinfeld” to explain most economic concepts.

“The idea behind the website is that we would get the word out to let people know they could use ‘Seinfeld’ when teaching economics,” Ghent said.

Grant, who now teaches at Baker University, owned every season of “Seinfeld.” To find scenes that mirrored economic theory he would watch an episode while he ate breakfast and take notes, Ghent said.

With this information, George Lesica compiled the information and created the website; however, the site was receiving less than 100 hits per day.

The website did not take off until Ghent gave a lecture at Berry College in Rome, Ga. to 150 freshmen about “Seinfeld” and economics.

The chair of the economics department, Frank Stephenson, at Berry College wrote about the presentation and the website in his blog, “Division of Labour.”

“We didn’t know how many actually looked at his blog,” Ghent said.

From there other economists around the country started blogging about the site. When The New York Times blogged about the website, traffic to the website reached about 30,000 page hits a day. Ghent and Grant went on to give interviews for radio shows and received a book proposal.

“It’s a trade book with a working title,” Ghent said. “It will be along the lines of “Everything I’ve ever needed to know about economics I’ve learned from Seinfeld.”

Now the traffic has fallen off a bit, but it is still in the 100’s.

Ghent said society has a special connection with “Seinfeld.” While the show went off the air in 1999, it is still aired on TBS everyday and is still relevant to today’s society a decade later.

“For me, economics isn’t about money or business, it’s about behavior and to that extent it’s really important to focus on how we make decisions,” Ghent said. “That’s why ‘Seinfeld’ works so well, it’s about four people making decisions– they could be lying to their uncle, ordering illegal cable, and all kinds of situations that relates directly to economic concepts.”

Kayleigh Zyskowski can be reached at 581-7942 or dennewsdesk@gmail.com