Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

A story on NPR caught my ear the other night - it was about how San Diego used to be the country's top supplier of avocados but producers here are facing increased costs for water and labor, and increased competition from other countries. What really caught my attention was the very end of the story: "Ironically, 2011 was the best year ever for San Diego avocado growers. High market prices pushed the monetary value of the crop up, even as the acreage shrank." This isn't as bad as some examples I've seen but to some, it could sound like the speaker is suggesting that the higher prices are somehow surprising or inconsistent with acreage shrinking. This would be a great example to have students show, using a supply and demand graph, how the higher prices are exactly what we should expect, because of the shrinking supply.

In discussing incentives or cost-benefit analysis, any good Principles textbook will mention that not all costs and benefits are monetary, and a whole lot of the behavioral economics field is built around the fact that people respond to incentives other than money.  But we economists (and an awful lot of non-economists) still seem to have a strong tendency to only count those costs and benefits that we can, well, count. Case in point: I recently installed solar panels on my house and as I was researching options, a big focus of everything I read was whether going solar would be 'cost-effective'. But what 'cost-effective' generally seemed to mean was that the monthly payment to cover the panels would be offset by the drop in the monthly electric bill; the prevailing opinion seems to be that if it's not, then you shouldn't bother switching (in fact, one company would not even give me a quote for a system because once I gave them my consumption information, they sa...

We discussed supply and demand in my Econ for Teachers class this week. This is usually one of my favorite weeks in this class because we do an in-class double-oral auction , which I don't get to do in principles anymore (since I'm not brave enough to try it with 500 students) - I use Aplia for that class instead and while it's better than not doing it at all, it's just not the same. I love watching the students get into their buyer and seller roles. There is always a few who surprise me, some students that I think of as being relatively quiet but they end up being enthusiastic negotiators. And students always tell me at the end of the semester how memorable the auction is for them. But as I was preparing the materials for class, it dawned on me that no where in the California content standards, or in the national standards, are supply and demand curves mentioned. That is, standard 12.2.2 of the California standards says, "Discuss the effects of changes in supply...

Mankiw has a blog map to complement his textbook. As the author himself explains : Go to the blog map and click on the chapter you are teaching. The blog map will give you a list of recent blog posts related to the material in that chapter. If that is not enough for you, click on "Archived Posts" and you will get even more. You can use this resources to find recent examples in the news to help spark class discussion.

(This is the email I sent to my Principles students, all 500 of them, this week) Welcome to Economics 102, Principles of Microeconomics! I’m looking forward to seeing you all in class next Wednesday and hope that we will have a productive semester together. There are just a couple things I wanted you to know/think about before our first class meeting. The course website on Blackboard is now available and I encourage you to take a look around; in particular, please look over the syllabus before our first meeting (it is posted under “Course Information”). We will discuss the syllabus in class but I will not have copies so feel free to get it off the website and bring it with you. If you are not familiar with Blackboard, go to https://blackboard.sdsu.edu/ to log in. Your username should be your Red ID and your password is your University PIN (i.e., the same information you use for WebPortal). If you do not know your Red ID number or you want to change your University PIN, contact SDSU e-...

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...

In addition to preparing the Economics for Teachers course, I’m also re-vamping my Principles of Microeconomics course. Partly because of the work I’m doing on the Teachers course, I’ve decided to spend considerably more time talking about the basic principles of individual behavior that everything else builds on. For those familiar with Mankiw’s textbook , I'm talking about his first four principles, focusing on the No Free Lunch Principle and opportunity costs, rational people decide on the margin, and incentives matter. In the past, I’ve sort of glossed over this first chapter of the text, basically telling students that all that stuff will become clearer as the semester goes on. But doesn’t it make more sense to spend the time upfront to make sure students have a solid grasp on these principles first, before getting into the more sophisticated tools that rely on them? Part of what has convinced me of this is the recent explosion of popular books showing economic thinking in eve...