Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

Over on Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok has a post about the discomfort humans sometimes feel in following computer algorithms because they don't understand the underlying logic. He starts with the following anecdote: Once the boss told me to deliver package A then C then B when A and B were closer together and delivering ACB would lengthen the trip. I delivered ABC and when the boss found out he wasn’t happy because C needed their package a lot sooner than B and distance wasn’t the only variable to be optimized... It isn’t easy suppressing my judgment in favor of someone else’s judgment even if the other person has better judgment (ask my wife) but once it was explained to me I at least understood why my boss’s judgment made sense. My first thought upon reading that was that my husband would definitely say I am the same way - whenever he suggests doing something a certain way that is different from how I would have done it, he says I make my "87 percent face" - t...

In the classroom, that is - since I was on sabbatical last year and then working on CTL stuff in the fall, it's been over a year and a half since I taught my last class. I'm teaching my writing class this spring and I definitely feel rusty. I'm looking at my notes from the last time (two years ago) and trying to make sense of my scribbles, and everything seems to be taking me twice as long as I dust off the cobwebs in that part of my brain. But it feels good to be working directly with students again... One thing I have NOT missed is having to deal with crashers at the beginning of the semester. The first couple weeks of the spring semester, in particular, has to be my least favorite time of year, both as an instructor and as an undergraduate advisor. My general policy is that I will take almost everyone who wants to crash* AND who shows up for the first class meeting, but that is it. I simply don't give out add codes to anyone who wasn't there on the first day,...

I won't be in Boston but for those who will be, here's the round-up of sessions related to teaching... (if I missed any, please let me know!) Jan 03, 2015 8:00 am , Sheraton Boston, The Fens   American Economic Association Curriculum and Assessment of Economic Principles   (A2) Presiding :  CARLOS ASARTA (University of Delaware) Modeling and Measuring of Economics Knowledge among Freshman Students in German Higher Education MANUEL FOERSTER (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) OLGA ZLATKIN-TROITSCHANSKAIA (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) ROLAND HAPP (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) SEBASTIAN BRUECKNER (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) Grades, Coursework, and Student Characteristics in High School Economics WILLIAM WALSTAD (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) KEN REBECK (St Cloud State University) Motivating College-Level Immersion: The AP Economics Programs and Exams DAVID A. ANDERSON (Centre College) Economics Assessment in the I...

If you need to procrastinate from end-of-semester responsibilities... PNC's Christmas Price Index is out and Christmas is a little more expensive this year. If you're looking for gift ideas for stat geeks, this Etsy page is worth checking out (I totally want to get some of the stuffed normal distributions to give out in my data class!). Before you read your student evaluations, read this post from Faculty Focus to help keep any negative comments in perspective. And if grading has you in despair about your students, another good post from Faculty Focus has some nice reminders of the reasons we really do love teaching.

For anyone who was wondering: yes, I'm still alive! But the last few months have certainly been interesting! In July, I was asked to be the Director of our Center for Teaching and Learning, so August was mostly a blur of meetings (and extreme stress!) as I tried to get up to speed and ready for the start of the school year. It's taken me this long to feel like I have some clue about what I'm doing (or at least, to feel like I can fake having a clue with reasonable credibility :-)). It's definitely been an adjustment. The position is sort of halfway between administration and faculty, which turns out to mean that when I'm in a room with mostly staff and administrators, I find myself speaking as a faculty person, and when I'm in a room with mostly faculty, I tend to find myself speaking as an administrator. That's not always fun but on the plus side, I feel like in both situations, I have an opportunity to move the conversation in productive directions. I...

Amazon’s explanation of their dealings with Hachette provide a great, highly-specific example of the connection between elasticity and total revenue. You could ask students to use the provided data to calculate what Amazon thinks is the price-elasticity of demand for e-books. In addition, this InsideHigherEd post raises some good points about substitutes and pricing strategies across books. All Things Considered aired a story this week entitled “Why are theater tickets cheaper on the West End than on Broadway?” In discussing the price difference between tickets in New York and London, the story touches on multiple economic concepts, including economies of scale, product differentiation, price discrimination, subsidies and substitutes. The next time your students ask you what they can do with an economics degree, you may want to share this article with them. It’s about how economists are increasingly being hired by tech companies to talk data and PR to customers and the media. I ...

Back in April , I mentioned that the Journal of Econ Ed  had several articles providing advice for those who submit papers to the JEE. Two other recent publications may also be useful, particularly for grad students and those at the beginning of their academic careers: In The Art and Science of Scholarly Publishing , the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management , Maureen Pirog, provides some great do’s and don’ts for getting published in peer-reviewed outlets. She also summarized her main points for Inside Higher Ed . The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) has a wonderful guide for academics about how to write for non-academics, called Going Public: Writing about research in everyday language . Although the focus is on education research, Mark Dynarski and Ellen Kisker’s advice applies to anyone doing policy-relevant research. And of course, younger scholars should not miss the Primer for New Teachers of Economics i...