Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

Thanks to the Problogger Social Media Love-in , I have a number of new friends on Twitter and other socialnetworking sites (hello new friends!). As I've been exploring the blogs of all these new friends, I'm surprised by how many money-oriented and personal-finance-related blogs there are out there (yes, I realize that this is a sample selection issue since I'm sure that these folks are more likely than others to have been interested in connecting with an economist, but still...). Seeing all these blogs strikes me as particularly great given a recent Freakonomics post in which Dubner asks whether we are a nation of financial illiterates and the answer is a pretty scary yes. But I also have to say that the Freakonomics post raised an old issue for me about whether we should be teaching 'personal finance' in schools. In many places, high school economics courses already ARE courses more in personal finance than real economics. That is probably not so much a consciou...

There's a particularly timely post on Blogher about the cost of the Iraq war - and I say 'timely' because I was in the middle of thinking about how to talk about the war in my class when the post appeared in my reader. The post links to a calculator from Progressive Future that tells you how much of your 2007 taxes went to pay for the war and what that money could have bought in terms of days of health coverage, Head Start, renewable power or education for a veteran. The calculator highlights the dollar value of these alternatives but the post on Blogher also points out that it's hard to put a dollar figure on some of the other costs. That was going to be my point in talking about the war in class - I'm planning to use the war discussion to tie together cost-benefit analysis with the positive-normative distinction (i.e., how much you value certain costs, like the loss of American lives, versus the benefits, like increased safety, is really a normative assessment)....

Even before reading the comments from the first time I taught the 500-seater micro principles class, I was working on re-designing the class to cover less material. But of course, that requires thinking hard about what to drop. I have particularly struggled with the balance between material that I think students may need for upper-division classes (like cost curves) and material that I think students may not see anywhere else if they don't actually become econ majors (like externalities and public goods). I tend to prefer keeping the latter and dumping the former, since I strongly believe in the liberal arts, general education aspect of economics. I'm not as concerned that some business majors might not have a stellar grasp on average versus marginal costs, as I am that they won't understand there are good reasons for government intervention in certain markets. So I was really intrigued by a conversation I had yesterday with a friend who teaches in an econ department that...

This article from the New York Times Business section talks about how people with a 'growth' mindset (i.e., who believe talent is not fixed but can grow over time) are more innovative and successful in the corporate world. Given that the majority of students in my Principles class are wanna-be business majors, maybe I should have them read this... Related posts: Intrinsic vs. extrinsic incentives Cultivating optimism

[warning: this post doesn't really have a point, I just need to vent!] Sigh. Because I've been on leave since January, I never read my evaluations from Fall 2007, the first time that I taught the 500-seat Principles Micro course. But now I'm back in San Diego and was foolish enough to look at them. They aren't all bad - a number of my students are very sweet and made comments such as, "Professor Imazeki really did the best she could with a class this size," and "I don't think she needs to do anything to improve except not have so many slacker whiners in her class" (I may have to have that one framed to re-read every semester when I'm going through my evaluations!). Of course, there are the typical contradictions that I try to ignore (e.g., a bunch of students HATE Aplia and just as many LOVE it). There are also the perennial (for me) "she goes way too fast" and "her exams are crazy hard". I can accept those because I think...

Lifehack has a review of StudyRails , a web-based service that helps students manage their time and their studying. It costs $10 a month but for students who really need help with their time management skills (I'm particularly thinking of new college students), this looks like it could be a really useful service. I was particularly interested when I saw this post because I make it a point to tell students in my introductory courses that my objectives for the course include both subject knowledge and life skills - the first is econ-specific but the second is not. By 'life skills', I mean critical thinking (which I consider most important) but also the more mundane but clearly-important-for-success-in-life skills like teamwork, communication and time management. I began naming these skills as specific objectives for the course because I got tired of dealing with students who would turn in work that was incredibly poorly written but who would complain when I marked them down ...

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...