As a microeconomist, I don't spend much time talking to my students about price indices but once a year, I wish I did. That's because I always get such a geeky kick out of the Christmas Price Index, PNC's annual update of the cost to actually buy all the items in the song 12 Days of Christmas. The "cost of Christmas" is up 8.1% this year, to over $21,000 (driven again by the cost of swans-a-swimming). What I hadn't realized is that PNC's website also has some cool tools for teachers, including a Pin the Price Tag on the Gift game and and an Economics Trivia quiz. Definitely worth checking out...
I came across an interesting discussion about a 19-year-old intern who was fired from The Gazette in Colorado Springs for plagiarism. There appears to be some controversy over the fact that the editor publicly named the girl in a letter to readers (explaining and apologizing for the plagiarism), with some people saying that doing so was unduly harsh because this incident will now follow her for the rest of her career. I was intrigued by this discussion for two reasons - one, it seems pretty clear to me that this was not a case of ignorance (as I have often encountered with my own students who have no idea how to paraphrase or cite correctly) and two, putting aside the offense itself, I have often struggled with how to handle situations where there are long-term repercussions for a student, repercussions that lead the overall costs to be far higher than might seem warranted for the specific situation. As an example of the latter issue, I have occasionally taught seniors who need to p
The Economics Trivia quiz is pretty nice, although I think that the answers to a couple of the questions are at best debatable. Question 4 asks which of three things is not an example of capital, and the correct answer is a college degree. One can at least argue that obtaining a college education, of which the degree is the indicator, is an investment in human capital. And (I think it's) question 10--the implication is that an increase in the price of bread (between the 1920s and now) is an example of inflation; in fact, that could simply be a change in relative prices.
ReplyDeleteI know, picky, picky, picky...
Happy holidays, Jennifer.
I agree! I thought that capital question was really weird - I got that one wrong and their definition of capital as anything with value in and of itself was just odd. With the inflation question, I thought all the answers were not quite right (I know my students would want to argue that your wage going up could be because you're more productive or something like that) but I think the main point was that only one option was a DECREASE in nominal prices and I assume they defined inflation as an increase in nominal prices. But clearly, these questions have not been vetted by lots of whining students! :-)
ReplyDeleteHappy holidays to you too!
Hi
ReplyDeleteThere are so many people decrease the prices of goods on christmas.
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ReplyDeleteI think this inflations is coming soon is Pakistan.