Let’s play a word association game: I’ll say a word and you shout out whatever comes to your mind. Ready: "Economics.” If you are like many of my non-economics major friends, you probably responded with words like “money,” “supply and demand,” “Wall Street,” etc. I can almost guarantee that you did not respond with “spring term and summer term.”

Spring term and summer term are surprisingly good examples of how economics works. Economics isn’t only the study of money and graphs. It is the study — actually the complex science — of cause and effect. In economics, we replace the word “cause” with the fancy-sounding terms like “incentive” and “disincentive.” So let’s analyze the “incentives” for and effects of spring and summer term.

In order for spring and summer term to exist, students must want to take classes. In economics, that is demand. There are many incentives for students to take spring and summer classes. Ann Arbor has a great vibe in spring and summer and students want to stay here to enjoy a more kicked-back atmosphere. A student with a double-major may need to fulfill requirements. Perhaps a student wants to take one hard class by itself.

Courses also need professors. Professors and GSIs supply the service demanded by students, teaching us during the spring and summer in order to boost their income. The University pays professors and GSIs to teach so it can make money from students’ tuition. And students are willing to pay tuition for all of the incentives mentioned earlier. It’s one giant win-win cycle of overlapping incentives.

Each of these incentives have specific effects on the Ann Arbor area. The academic community — students, faculty and administrators — remaining in Ann Arbor is an added boon to the local housing market and business establishments. Many spring and summer students sublet housing from other students. If year-round students couldn’t find subletters for the spring and summer, they may not have leased housing for the year. If it weren’t for students subletting in the spring and summer, the off-campus housing market would be negatively affected.

Local restaurants and supermarkets continue to ring up sales and benefit from traffic generated by those staying in Ann Arbor. This traffic is an important buffer to business establishments that would otherwise suffer from an exodus of students and faculty.

These students and faculty pump up other local businesses with their disposable money. For example, in the past week I’ve bought a used textbook from Ulrich’s and an extension cord from Target and saw a movie at the Michigan Theater. My contributions to those businesses alone don’t have much of an effect. But even if a quarter of all students taking spring term and summer term courses buy their textbooks from Ulrich’s, spend money at local stores and occasionally indulge by going to the movie theater, it is easy to see how these students are vital to the local economy.

And as much as I like spending money, I like to earn it even more. This is probably true for many students. As a result, we students support the University and local businesses by providing the ideal type of labor: educated, energetic, eager and cheap. One of my friends is assisting a professor with cancer research for a mere eight dollars an hour. Only in a college town could a cancer researcher find an educated, productive assistant who is willing to work for barely above minimum wage.

However you slice or dice it, spring and summer terms are a win-win for local businesses, students and the University. Students gain knowledge, course credits and jobs. The University gains tuition money and its researchers gain a labor pool of the best workers in the state. Businesses, too, have access to that same labor pool and benefit from the money students infuse into the local economy.

Let’s play the word association game one last time. Ready: “Spring and summer term.” I bet that you either said “last week's miserable, rainy weather” or, hopefully, “economics.”

Eric Stulberg can be reached at estul@umich.edu.