The literature on active learning and engaging pedagogy has grown since the turn of the century when William Becker challenged the economics education community to be “sexier” in order to attract more majors. While the effectiveness of teaching methods has been understudied, the available resources to an interested educator has grown substantially. We survey the literature of active teaching techniques and resources as well as provide sources for aspiring educators wishing to enhance the relevance of their coursework.
This paper presents a method of teaching about the economic impact of building a professional sports arena in a metropolitan area. Designed for an upper-division, undergraduate course in Sports Economics, this teaching method is an application of the context-rich teaching strategy. It also uses a jigsaw cooperative learning technique in preparation for an individual assignment actually performing a simple economic analysis in a plausible situation. The students must decide what is and what is not important to consider, what relevant information is missing, and then use that information to advise an elected official on a proposal to use tax money to help build the sports arena.
The award-winning film Moneyball is considered one of economic educators’ top movies for teaching economics, but resources to teach with the film are scant. We summarize eight key scenes in the movie that are closely tied with economics topics, many of which can be used in a principles-level course. For each scene we provide the corresponding topic, a brief summary, and a follow-up question to ask students.
This study analyzes the impact of income, unemployment, and climate on county level suicide rates in the United States. In order to ensure a robust measure of climate is applied, average temperature and average maximum temperature are analyzed. The data set used in the investigation includes observations from 1999 to 2018 for 2,892 counties. Our results show that increases in income lower the rate of suicide while increases in unemployment raise it. Higher mean and max temperatures are predicted to lower the rate of suicide.
There has been a proliferation of capstone experiences in economics. These experiences often require that students complete original research and write a lengthy paper, a task that many undergraduates find intimidating. This paper explores methods that reduce anxiety and incentivize undergraduate students to create new knowledge through quality research by examining our capstone seminar experience at a small Midwestern university. The paper recommends encouraging high-quality student research by breaking projects into manageable parts, having explicit grading criteria, and using peer review. Students also benefit from sharing their work with others through oral presentation and publication in undergraduate journals.
Economists and other scholars have long explored the role of envy in personal and social decision-making processes. The construct envy functions both as a motivator and deterrent in a variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology, politics, economics, and business. While many studies indicate that envy plays a role in individual and societal behavior, its extent and exact definition remain a source of debate in academic literature. Additionally, most research studies the construct in Baby Boomer and Generation X populations. Using exploratory and descriptive research methods, we investigate current college-aged students’ perceptions of envy to discern its pervasiveness and influence on personal, social, and political values.
In this study I evaluate the importance of physically attending lectures in a business statistics course when an online digital learning companion is used. A sample of five sections of business statistics that used the exact same text, lecture format, and algorithmic assignments are used. Overall, I find that students who attend all lectures perform significantly better on exams when compared to students who have been absent. On average, students with multiple absences perform significantly worse on the online component of the course, and students who perform better on the online component tend to score significantly higher on exams.
Economic educators have been teaching with pop culture for decades, but the idea of using foreign-language teaching resources to create a more inclusive and diverse classroom has only recently been taken up. This paper builds on the work of Wooten et al. (2020), who have shown how K-pop can be integrated into an English-language classroom. We expand on that work by compiling a set of 12 teaching guides using material from 12 different countries that demonstrate economic concepts commonly taught in a principles of microeconomics course. Al-Bahrani (2020) has called on educators to take a deliberate approach to diversifying their lecture material. It is our hope that, with time, broadly diverse and inclusive media will be ubiquitous when students are introduced to economics.
Teaching economics in undergraduate classes, particularly at the introductory level, while keeping the students engaged and interested in the subject matter is a challenging task. “Chalk and talk” is still the dominant teaching method in undergraduate economics. However, in such traditional lecture settings, students often lose interest in the subject matter particularly when the emphasis is on graphical exposition. Active learning strategies where students are engaged in their own learning are regarded as more effective in generating and retaining student interest. In this paper, I demonstrate how to develop and use an active learning model using the visual interface of Excel that students themselves can control. The model in this paper shows how to teach acompetitive firm’s shutdown decision. The technique of developing such a spreadsheet-basedmodel is discussed in detail. Using this methodology, active learning models can be used to teach other topics in both microeconomicsand macroeconomics, such as tax incidence, deadweight loss or effectiveness of macroeconomic policies among others. Since both professors and students are familiar with Excel, these active learning models create a familiar teaching-learning environment.
Students are exposed to a variety of sources of information and entertainment during their formative years. While this has certain downsides to academic pursuits, it also presents opportunities since students are interacting with ideas and concepts in different settings. One of those settings is the comic book and the closely related graphic novel. Comic books are actually an older entertainment source but seem to have an enduring appeal and even occasional re-births as some get adapted into movies and video games. These relatively short, colorful, entertaining magazines have been popular for decades in many cultures,and some characters are very well known and, as a result, present an educational opportunity. Using comics to teach several different topics in economicsexpands the toolbox for the instructor to use either in schools or undergraduate classes.
The study seeks to determine the impact of various individual and academic characteristics on grades earned in introductory economics courses. Students enrolled in these courses in a regional state university during 2015-16 were asked questions on topics such as the number of hours they work per week, whether or not they live on campus, their marital status, the educational background of their parents, involvement in various campus activities, the utilization of various campus services such as tutoring andadvising, and their sources of funding for college. These data were then matched with registration and academic data available from the university for each of these students. The regression results show that high school (or college) GPA, standardized test scores, participation in an honors program, earned credit hours, and the use of own family funds or access to student loans were positively associated with academic performance. On the other hand, academic performance in introductory economics was negatively impacted by participation in the campus music and theater program and by taking classes in the afternoon or evening time slots. The results also show significant instructor effects on academic performance.
Secure property rights and the rule of law are crucial for economic growth, a topic included in every economics principles textbook and many upper division elective courses. SCOTUS decisions regarding property rights provide useful material for discussing these issues. Seventeenth century political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke offered very different views of the role of the state and therights of man. While also of historical interest, this framework sets the stage for debate regarding the proper role of the state, the judiciary, philosophical influences that determine judicial decisions and the implications for takings under the Fifth Amendment. This article provides a detailed outline of their views with a focus on their treatment of individual liberty and property rights. To facilitate instructor preparation for classroom discussion, extensive references to the original texts are included.
Economics courses are typically lecture-based. This paper provides an alternative to the traditional chalk and talk method of classroom instruction by outlining a class activity that illustrates the concept of diminishing marginal productivity. The activity incorporates an experiment-based learning approach with minimal direction from the instructor and offers an alternative or complement to traditional lecture-based instruction methods. Although the main lesson is the law of diminishing marginal productivity, other economic concepts can also be incorporated and learned from this experiment. Variations of the experiment and possible outcomes are also discussed.
The objective in this paper is to show how the textbook treatment of minimum wage can be enhanced. This is done by contrasting textbook material with that from the popular press and think tank analyses and by including a review of the empirical evidence. Three extensions of the standard model on minimum wage are delineated –the use of an inelastic demand curve for labor, incorporation of the boom and bust cycle,and the monopsony model. The debate around the profile of the minimum wage worker is introduced to show students how data can be marshalled by opposing sides of the debate. A simple exercise on the disemployment effect is also introduced in a bid to motivate students with real life data. These enhancements to the textbook material offer a more comprehensive understanding than the simplistic standard model.
A student’s perseverance and dedication to successfully completing their goals for academic success are studied to determine if grit may be a measurable qualifying factor used to predict a positive student outcome. This analysis examines how student grit in undergraduate economics courses, along with other control variables, contributes to student success, as measured by their average grade earned in the course. Our results indicate that grit has a statistically significant positive impact on student performance in the classroom.
This study seeks to determine factors that contribute to individual’s honesty in the marketplace and willingness to exploit market power. In order to identify these factors a survey was administered to undergraduate students enrolled in institutions across the United States. We find that perception of others has a multifaceted relationship with honesty and exploiting market power. Respondents that believe others are likely to be honest are more likely to be honest themselves. But the relationship is symmetrical, believing others are dishonest leads to dishonest behavior. An increase in the perception of firm’s taking advantage of market power leads to respondents being more likely to do so themselves. In terms of expressing market power, individuals that believe raising the price of a good in response to a demand shock is fair will do so. Business education is found to lead to more honest behavior but does not influence an individual’s propensity to exploit market power. Individuals that believe others are altruistic are more likely to forego self-interested behavior. Lastly, religiosity is found to increase honesty but not the use of market power. These findings suggest that educators ought to pay attention to the ways in which students form their perceptions of how individuals behave in the marketplace.
This paper describes classroom discussions that will help students understand the sense in which economics may be regarded as a science and the role of subjectivity in analyzing economic questions.
This paper collects the data on mathematics requirements and recommendations for admission to Ph.D. programs in economics. There are several differences between this paper and Milkman and Marjadi (2017). This paper includes Ph.D. programs in Canada and compares them with the programs in the United States. Then, we split our sample based on whether we had obtained the mathematics course requirements directly from the programs through the questionnaire or phone interview or from the programs’ websites. We then analyzed the data to find that there are differences in those requirements and recommendations between programs in Canada and the United States. We also found that there are differences in those requirements and recommendations among different quality tiers.
Regression analysis is used to investigate the relationship between GDP per capita and several variables that capture gender norms in 91 countries. Our results largely mirror the literature in that characteristics of more flexible gender roles are associated with higher per capita national income. Nevertheless, some anomalies arise and we discuss some routes for their investigation in future research.
Although field trips have been recognized as effective for bridging the gap between theory and practice, instructors rarely step out of the classroom with their students. One reason is that it is unclear how those trips can be efficiently incorporated into the traditional classroom. In this paper, we discuss the motivation, organization and outcomes of field trips in our Managerial Economics and International Business classes. We use cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the pedagogical value of field trips, and suggest that many of the benefits are non-pecuniary. Although the benefits are subjective and difficult to quantify, pre-and-post tests administered to students suggest that field trips improve their knowledge, as well as enable them to apply classroom learning to practical problems. The paper identifies factors that should be considered when planning and organizing field trips in economics and business.
