August 23, 2024

The Robyn Hood story It depicts a legendary figure in English folklore as a heroic, talented outlaw who rebels against tyranny. It lionizes Robyn as a noble figure who champions the cause of the downtrodden and stresses his quest for justice and reducing social inequality. As the story goes, Robyn redistributes income by taking from the rich to give to the poor. In order to carry out his agenda, Robyn must fight the greedy and corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham and the cruel Prince John. To do so, Robyn and his Merry Men engage in clever schemes that outsmart them, while capturing resources to be later redistributed among the oppressed. Many of us feel a great deal of sympathy for the underlying themes of the story and consider Robyn Hood’s objectives to be desirable policy objectives. Yet, we consider the story to be a really bad economic lesson. Our conclusion is based on the fact that we believe the story implicitly assumes that the actors do not change their behavior. That people and merchants would continue doing the same thing even after Robyn successfully robs them. But such action is the epitome of insanity defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In formal economic analysis, such behavior assumes what economists call a static analysis or a lack of substitution effects. Simply put, the people getting robbed by Robyn do not alter their behavior in any significant way. But if they do the story could change in a dramatic way.

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