The water contamination issue in West Virginia sounds terrible for those living in the area but it’s a gold mine for econ teachers! In addition to the obvious implications for teaching externalities and regulation, you could also use this Marketplace interview with the owner of a chain of grocery stores as a jumping-off point to talk about price controls and shortages, or demand for complements and substitutes. Mark Maier and I have set up a site and blog to accompany our book, The Data Game: Controversies in Social Science Statistics . In addition to a help page for instructors, we’ll be posting relevant links and examples from current events. If you teach any type of statistics course or other course that uses data, check it out! James Tierney’s site Teach Me Econ has some great ideas for teaching economics. He also does a podcast series about the economics classroom; the most recent is an interview with Eric Chiang , the author of the latest edition of the Cor...
Observations and ramblings of an economist with a passion for teaching...