Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

I know there have been some debates in the edublogosphere lately about political statements in/around the classroom. Personally, I don't think schools should tell teachers (whether K-12 or higher ed) that they can't wear political pins or have campaign bumper stickers or whatever. At the same time, I take my Obama pin off my bookbag when I'm at school, not because I think faculty shouldn't be allowed to wear such things, but because I don't want it to affect how my students perceive what I'm saying in the classroom. I talk about public policy a lot in all my classes but since I try to hew closely to positive (vs. normative) analysis of any issue, my students usually cannot tell what political party I belong to. I consider this A Good Thing. Perhaps my students are not as cynical as I am but as soon as I know what a person's political beliefs are, it affects how I perceive what they say about policy issues, particularly if I do not agree with them. That is, ...

For some reason, I wasn't able to use the clickers yesterday. CPS for PowerPoint seemed to be working but when I started the slideshow, I got an error I'd never seen before. Since it didn't go away when I closed and re-started the application, I decided to just get on with the lecture. But I did announce that the clickers weren't working and if anyone wanted to leave (since I knew that some students would), to please leave now so as not to disturb everyone else later. Well, quite a few more students left than I expected (seriously, about one quarter to one third). There were still probably about 250 students who stayed but it's amazing how empty a 500-seat classroom feels when it's only half full! But what was really striking was how wonderfully quiet the rest of the class was! With over 400 students, there is always a lot of chatter around the room - I try not to let it get too bad but there's only so much I can do so there's always a low-level buzz i...

Here's my problem with having students do evaluations: I tend to put more weight than I probably should on the negative comments students make. Over 300 students responded to my online evaluation; of those, 120 made comments; of those, about 70 were critical (while the others said they think the class is going well), and of those, probably only 40 were truly critical (with the others more along the lines of "I'd prefer X but I do like Y"). So I've got less than 10% of the class actively being critical (about the same as being actively complimentary), and a not-small proportion of the critical comments overall are the sorts of things you would expect from relatively immature freshmen and sophomores - my favorites are the "you try to trick us with questions where there's more than one right answer" and "you should do X" where X is something I already do (provide study guides, give them questions from last year's exam, etc.) but for whatev...

In a post a few weeks ago, about some of the assumptions around the financial crisis , I wondered what proportion of foreclosures and mortgage defaults are homeowners who honestly got screwed by greedy brokers and bankers, versus informed buyers who knowingly took risks and simply lost that gamble. I wasn't even really thinking about outright fraud but a recent post on Citizen Economists certainly has me thinking about it now. It's a fascinating post about the increase in mortgage and foreclosure fraud , including a very nice explanation of exactly how such fraud can be perpetrated. In the comments, SteveP claims to have reviewed hundreds of foreclosures in Florida and Georgia and found that over 70% were fraud scenarios. I'd like to see more rigorous and comprehensive analysis but thought this anecdotal data was certainly interesting.

It's Week 8 of our 15-week semester (yes, I keep track, though that's largely because my syllabus is laid out by week), so we're halfway through and this is usually around the time when I ask my students to do a mid-semester evaluation. This year, I'm a bit hesitant because honestly, I don't have the time or energy to make any real changes and my patience has already been stretched so thin by student demands that I'm loath to invite them to tell me what they think is wrong with the class. But I do think it's worth taking some time to reflect on how the semester is going. In my Principles class, my main concern is that the pace of the class is too slow, that we are not "covering" as much material as we should. I'm sort of having a hard time assessing this because I switched around the order in which I'm presenting topics so things are a bit jumbled up. Judging from the responses to clicker questions, students seem to be grasping the materia...

I think that for many people, the idea of teaching young children about money feels a bit odd. I can understand that, because at first glance, I think that's how I would feel and I'm an economist saying this! Unfortunately, a lot of people associate money with greed, selfishness and other "bad" values that we generally don't want to pass on to our children. But money itself, and the role it plays in the world, carries none of those values inherently; all of those negative associations arise from people spending money in particular ways. One thing I find interesting is that there are also plenty of values that most people consider "good" that could also be associated with spending money in other ways (such as 'frugal', 'generous', 'good provider') but I don't think that's the first thing that comes to most people's minds. At any rate, however you feel about money, I think most people would agree that those who have a be...

Awhile back, Freakonomics posted a bleg from an econ grad student looking for jokes to impress his professor. Although I had heard many of them before, this one had me laughing out loud (which either tells you something about me, about economists, or about how punchy I can be after teaching): A therapist, a priest and an economist go golfing. The group ahead of them is extremely slow, leading to some frustration among the three. Their complaints are overheard, and a man from the group ahead walks over to them. He introduces himself as an aide because the group of golfers he is with is blind! The aide thanks the three in appreciation for their patience for the blind golfers. The priest goes, “Oh no, all my life I’ve preached for all to be better to my fellow man and here I am complaining about the blind!”. The therapist says, “I’ve been trained my whole life to help others and here I am complaining about the blind, shame on me!” The economist says, “Oh no! They should be playing at nigh...

The way that most intro classes present the concepts of positive and normative is to say that normative statements are about the way the world "should" be while positive statements are about the way the world "is". I don't really like this because it's too narrow and students aren't able to see the bigger picture - if a sentence doesn't happen to contain the words "should" or "is", they get confused. So instead, I talk about normative statements as being based on values and opinion while positive statements can be empirically proven or disproven (they don't have to be true, you just have to be able to prove that they are true or not). I find that this gets them thinking beyond just whether a sentence is descriptive or prescriptive, and into actual analysis. So on the first midterm for my Principles class, I gave my students several sentences that they were supposed to identify as being either positive or normative. The one tha...

I have to serve up the requisite post about Paul Krugman being awarded the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (note that there isn't technically a 'Nobel Prize' in economics - it was established after the others). The award might surprise many non-economists who only know Krugman for his somewhat liberal op-ed column in the New York Times but politics aside, Krugman is widely known in the profession for his work on 'new trade theory'. I'm not a macro person so my grasp on his work is somewhat dim but The Financial Times sums it up nicely: Earlier trade theories suggested that a country would trade with partners that were different – rich would trade with poor, and capital-intensive would trade with labour-intensive. In practice, rich countries tend to trade with other rich countries. Mr Krugman’s analysis showed why this was to be expected: many products were most efficiently produced by large companies, but consumers wanted variety and would...

U. of Tennessee Student Indicted for Hacking Palin's E-Mail Account (Chronicle.com) Did they have to mention he's an econ major?

I can't remember when I first found Marshall Jevons ' (a.k.a. William Breit and Kenneth Elzinga) detective stories but as a budding economist, I got a huge kick out of the very thought of using economic analysis to solve a murder mystery. For those not familiar with these books, the protagonist is Henry Spearman, a professor of economics at Harvard who solves murder cases by applying economic reasoning. Even if you don't have the slightest interest in economics, they are fun and easy to read, which is part of what makes them such great tools for exposing students to economic thinking. They really make the point that thinking like an economist is about so much more than just money and markets. Which is why I was excited to see that Ms.Y at Osborne High School in Marietta, Georgia wants to have her AP Econ students read Jevons' first book, Murder at the Margin . This is one of the projects I'm promoting for the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge and Ms. Y seems like th...

This started out as a quick response to Jim's comment on a previous post but it started getting long and I decided I'd just make it a full post (and to give fair warning, it's quite a big longer than usual). First, a mini-econ lesson for anyone who hasn't taken econ in a while: "moral hazard" arises when people do not face the full costs or benefits of their actions and end up acting in disagreeable ways (that is, disagreeable to the people who DO face the full costs). The most common example is when people do not face the full costs of risky action (like because of insurance) and thus take more risks than they otherwise would. As I stress to my students, the name notwithstanding, moral hazard does not necessarily mean people are acting unethically (though it may) - it does mean they are responding to the incentives they face. The other important thing to know is that economists typically do not attach judgment when they see people acting in self-interested w...

One upside to the financial crisis is that it's generating some very funny bits. A few of my favorites: - Japanese Banking : In the last 7 hours Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches. Yesterday, it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song, while today shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived. Samurai Bank is soldiering on following sharp cutbacks and Ninja Bank is reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black. Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal. Shinto bank doesn’t have a prayer and it’s probably goodbye to Sayonara Banking too. - PhD Comics Economics Meltdown - Investment tips for 2008 (via email): With all the turmoil in the market today and the collapse of Lehman Bros and acquisition of Merrill Lynch ...

This is a great site for teachers. The author, Jake, creates charts and graphs of various economic data - or as the tagline says, "Darn nice economic eye candy". There's always the usual economic indicators but also random data related to current events. The amount of commentary or explanation varies a lot but there is a post this week that I thought was a really excellent, very simple explanation of how the Bailout Can Work and At No Cost to Taxpayers .

As someone who does research on school finance, particularly in California, I am all too aware that many of our public schools are seriously under-funded (I say 'many', not all, because there are also quite a few that are just fine, thanks to inequities in the way schools are financed, but that's a whole other discussion). While my research focuses on the systemic funding, I've always been most heart-broken by the stories about the impact on individual classrooms. We've all heard horror stories about teachers buying school supplies with their own money simply to make sure their students have basic items like paper and pencils. But even in situations where the school and students are relatively well-off, teachers will often reach into their own pockets in order to buy little things that can vastly improve their teaching - to use a simple example of my own, just last week I bought a bunch of candy to use for a classroom exercise on gains from trade and allocation of r...