Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

I don't usually mind missing the ASSA meetings - I hate to travel, I live in California so going to meetings almost always means going someplace a lot colder and an earlier time zone, and 90% of the economists I encounter at those meetings are the type of economists I dislike (and the other 10% are people I can see elsewhere). But there are occasionally sessions and papers that make me wish I had gone. One such paper in Atlanta is by Amanda Bayer, Syon Bhanot and Fernando Lozano, part of a session titled Gender in the Economics Profession I (the fact that there is more than one session with that title also makes me happy). The paper is " Does Simple Information Provision Lead to More Diverse Classrooms? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Undergraduate Economics " (link is to download the preview paper from the AEA conference site) and here's the abstract: Significant gender and racial/ethnic gaps have been observed in the economics profession, a reality with roots...

Economists, that is. For the first time in a couple years, I attended the ASSAs, and for the first time in even more years, I interacted with some economists who are not involved with either ed policy (my research home) or teaching. Ugh, lesson learned. I had somehow forgotten that the majority of people in this discipline (or at least, the majority of those who go to the ASSAs) are white male blowhards who actually think all the math they make grad students do is useful (NOTE: I am totally not talking about YOU, awesome person who reads my blog - I am absolutely certain that no one who is a math-obsessed blowhard would find my blog remotely interesting :-)). I guess I should take it as reassuring that I managed to forget what the 'typical economist' is like; certainly 20 years ago, when I was in my grad program at Wisconsin, I was very, VERY aware of it. But ed policy is one of those applied micro fields that is pretty equally gender balanced (particularly at the Association...

I teach in a department where the full-time tenure/tenure-track faculty is 43 percent female (6 out of 14); it's an even 50 percent among tenured associate (2 out of 4) and full (4 out of 8) professors (for anyone following the math, that leaves 2 assistant professors, both male). For any non-economists reading this, those percentages are highly unusual, even for a non-Ph.D.-granting institution. According to the 2010 Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (full disclosure: I'm on the Board), at Ph.D.-granting institutions, only 10.7% of full professors and 21.8% of tenured associate professors are women; at liberal arts institutions, those numbers are 25% and 32.7%, respectively. I also work in a sub-field (economics of education) that tends to have a lot of women, both economists and non-economists. And I spend a lot of time thinking about, and talking to people about, teaching economics, which tends to be an area that attracts relatively...

In my last post , I mentioned that one of my writing students referred to the specification checks in the article we read as the authors 'making excuses'. Along similar lines, another student was in my office yesterday and mentioned that he didn't like the article we read very much because he thought it was really arrogant of the author to refer to his own earlier work. I tried to explain that this is actually quite common, that most economists write several papers on related subjects because good research can often raise as many new questions as it answers, which leads to new papers. In this particular case, the author (Dan Hammermesh) had done earlier work establishing an empirical link between beauty and wages, and then this paper was looking more closely at what might explain that connection. So citing the earlier work was part of establishing the relevance of this paper. Again, it was just sort of fascinating to me how my students interpret things so differently beca...

A student asked me this a few weeks ago, and I was reminded of it again when reading a recent Freakonomics post in which Levitt points out that there are several economists among the 203 finalists for Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People: As I write this, my friend Roland Fryer is ranked 38th. Ben Bernanke is at 133, Tim Geithner is at 152 (does he count as an economist?), Nouriel Roubini is at 161, Paul Krugman is at 168, Nate Silver is at 181 (not an economist, but close enough), and Richard Thaler is at 184. I'm guessing that a lot of people read that and thought, "what does he mean 'does Tim Geithner count as an economist'? Isn't Geithner the Treasury Secretary, the one who is basically 'in charge' of the economy?" Well, yes, and given that some economists don't think Geithner is doing such a great job, it could be that Levitt is making a somewhat sarcastic swipe at Geithner's abilities as an economist. But it...

I hate the word 'smart'. To most economists, it is probably considered the highest compliment you can give/get, but whenever I hear an economist say that someone is really 'smart', I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes. This is because, in many cases, the person being admired is considered smart because they are great at doing complicated math or abstract theory. However, that same person may may be completely devoid of common sense, social skills, or any ability to communicate with 'regular' (i.e., non-economist) people. As an academic, it's simply ridiculous how often I hear the word 'smart' used in this one-dimensional way. It is used to describe students, other academics, politicians, random people one happened to meet at a party, you name it, and it's always intended in a highly complimentary way. But for reasons I have never understood, it almost always means only one kind of smart - the kind of smart that gets good grades and can tal...

Freakonomics has a Q&A with Sean Masaki Flynn , author of Economics for Dummies . The whole thing is interesting but I thought his response to a question about "why is economics considered more of a real science than psychology?" was one of the best explanations of this issue that I've seen. It's a long quote but I think worth repeating: The most important philosopher of science of the 20th century, Karl Popper , argued that economics was the only social science that had turned into a real science. To him, economics was the queen of the social sciences just as physics was the king of the physical sciences. But why did he think this? Because economics was, to him, the only social science that engaged in systematically testing hypotheses about how the world works. Doing so is actually much easier if you engage in a lot of mathematical modeling. Why? Because in a math model it is crystal clear what your assumptions are, and also what implications follow from those a...

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...

Somewhat related to my struggle to trust my students is my interest in intrinsic versus extrinsic incentives. Economistmom wrote a post about handling her daughter's allowance, which led me to comment that when I was growing up, my mom always said that our allowances were not 'payment' for doing household chores, we were supposed to do chores simply because it was our responsibility as members of the family. Tyler Cowen makes a similar point in Discover Your Inner Economist , arguing that if you pay your kids to do stuff that it can actually be a weaker incentive than relying on their sense of familial duty. But on the other hand, the ed policy world was buzzing a few weeks ago when New York City received a prestigious award for its "Million" Campaign, in which students receive cell phones and prizes as rewards for academic achievement. On the face of it, I wasn't thrilled when I first heard about the Million Campaign, precisely because I'm skeptical th...

Levitt points his readers to this wonderful speech by Bill Gates on 'creative capitalism'. It's clear that Gates is both a realist and an optimist and in the speech he makes a great case for a system that harnesses the power of capitalism to serve the greater good. Given the mistaken view of many people that self-interest is incompatible with altruism, it's really wonderful to hear someone give such an articulate explanation of why they are not. I'm definitely going to have my students all read this!

You don't have to read very many of my posts here to know that I'm a huge fan of Freakonomics . But Dubner's post on "locavores " (i.e., people who try to eat locally-grown food) versus the efficiency of specialization is a rare example of the type of economic thinking that drives me crazy (rare for that blog that is, though unfortunately not rare among economists in general). It's the view that efficiency must, or at least should, be the primary criterion for assessing whether something is 'sensible' or not. Dubner is partly trying to point out that proponents of buying local often try to use efficiency as an argument FOR buying local (e.g., it's cheaper, it's better for you and the environment, etc.) when it's much more likely that the gains from specialization make it less efficient. That's fine - I'm all for pointing out flaws in the positive analysis. And Dubner also points out that one person's labor is often another'...

Free exchange at Economist.com claims that "The economics blogosphere is now deeper and broader than that of any other non-technological academic field..." I have no idea if this is true, though given the number of economics blogs I know are out there and the general lack of interest in blogs that I've seen from academics as a group, I can certainly believe it. But what I find interesting/frustrating about the economics blogosphere is that it seems that the vast majority of econ blogs are macro-oriented (i.e., they talk primarily about fiscal and monetary policy, 'the economy', growth, etc.). There are some obvious exceptions, such as Freakonomics and Marginal Revolution . And I wonder whether those blogs are so popular because they focus more on the micro principles that lead economists to claim that 'economics is everywhere' (of course, I'm sure it doesn't hurt that the primary authors of these blogs have also written popular books - Tim Harfo...

In my post yesterday , I pointed out that economists are not trained in pedagogy. But I’ve also been thinking about the fact that most college professors, regardless of field, don’t really get any training in teaching. I wonder if college students are aware of that. It’s actually really weird when you think about it, given that we all know from the first day of grad school that if we want to go into academia, teaching will be part of the job. And yet, most graduate programs (at least in economics) don’t talk much about it. Fortunately, at most schools, teaching assistantships are one of the few sources of department funding so many grad students do get some experience teaching, and I think many departments have at least some kind of orientation or maybe a one-day training session to make sure their TAs aren’t completely inept. But that’s about it.* Students who are interested in teaching, and new faculty in general, are mostly left to develop their teaching skills on their own. Sure, t...

As I sat in the Course Design Institute the other day, it occurred to me that much of the language being used by the speakers would be completely foreign to many of my colleagues in economics. I’m not even talking about the vocabulary of educational technology (though that would likely be even more foreign) – I’m referring to the language of pedagogy. For example, I’m pretty sure that if I asked around my department, very few of my colleagues would know what Bloom’s taxonomy is. The recent focus on assessment at my University means that many faculty are now able to articulate specific learning outcomes for their classes but my impression is that coming up with these learning outcomes is seen as something we are required to do to satisfy the University, not as something that could actually stimulate deep thinking about our classes and help improve our teaching. This is not to say that my colleagues are not dedicated teachers; most have an earnest desire to teach well. But economists ar...

One of my eternal frustrations is trying to explain what I do to those outside the field. Misconceptions about economics and economists abound, whether it is people thinking economics is only about interest rates or the stock market, or simply believing that economics requires a lot of math (although that belief is probably justified at the graduate level, the core economic principles that define the field certainly don’t require any math to understand). I’d probably be bothered less if I were a macroeconomist (since most laypeople equate economics with macro), but I think that even most macro folks would agree that depressingly few non-economists really understand that at its core, economics is about human behavior. Apparently, even the non-economist faculty at Harvard are struggling with this . In his blog, Greg Mankiw reprinted his email to the Harvard Crimson in which he explains that the intro Economics sequence does not belong in the “Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning” categ...