Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

I know there have been some debates in the edublogosphere lately about political statements in/around the classroom. Personally, I don't think schools should tell teachers (whether K-12 or higher ed) that they can't wear political pins or have campaign bumper stickers or whatever. At the same time, I take my Obama pin off my bookbag when I'm at school, not because I think faculty shouldn't be allowed to wear such things, but because I don't want it to affect how my students perceive what I'm saying in the classroom. I talk about public policy a lot in all my classes but since I try to hew closely to positive (vs. normative) analysis of any issue, my students usually cannot tell what political party I belong to. I consider this A Good Thing. Perhaps my students are not as cynical as I am but as soon as I know what a person's political beliefs are, it affects how I perceive what they say about policy issues, particularly if I do not agree with them. That is, ...

For some reason, I wasn't able to use the clickers yesterday. CPS for PowerPoint seemed to be working but when I started the slideshow, I got an error I'd never seen before. Since it didn't go away when I closed and re-started the application, I decided to just get on with the lecture. But I did announce that the clickers weren't working and if anyone wanted to leave (since I knew that some students would), to please leave now so as not to disturb everyone else later. Well, quite a few more students left than I expected (seriously, about one quarter to one third). There were still probably about 250 students who stayed but it's amazing how empty a 500-seat classroom feels when it's only half full! But what was really striking was how wonderfully quiet the rest of the class was! With over 400 students, there is always a lot of chatter around the room - I try not to let it get too bad but there's only so much I can do so there's always a low-level buzz i...

Here's my problem with having students do evaluations: I tend to put more weight than I probably should on the negative comments students make. Over 300 students responded to my online evaluation; of those, 120 made comments; of those, about 70 were critical (while the others said they think the class is going well), and of those, probably only 40 were truly critical (with the others more along the lines of "I'd prefer X but I do like Y"). So I've got less than 10% of the class actively being critical (about the same as being actively complimentary), and a not-small proportion of the critical comments overall are the sorts of things you would expect from relatively immature freshmen and sophomores - my favorites are the "you try to trick us with questions where there's more than one right answer" and "you should do X" where X is something I already do (provide study guides, give them questions from last year's exam, etc.) but for whatev...

In a post a few weeks ago, about some of the assumptions around the financial crisis , I wondered what proportion of foreclosures and mortgage defaults are homeowners who honestly got screwed by greedy brokers and bankers, versus informed buyers who knowingly took risks and simply lost that gamble. I wasn't even really thinking about outright fraud but a recent post on Citizen Economists certainly has me thinking about it now. It's a fascinating post about the increase in mortgage and foreclosure fraud , including a very nice explanation of exactly how such fraud can be perpetrated. In the comments, SteveP claims to have reviewed hundreds of foreclosures in Florida and Georgia and found that over 70% were fraud scenarios. I'd like to see more rigorous and comprehensive analysis but thought this anecdotal data was certainly interesting.

It's Week 8 of our 15-week semester (yes, I keep track, though that's largely because my syllabus is laid out by week), so we're halfway through and this is usually around the time when I ask my students to do a mid-semester evaluation. This year, I'm a bit hesitant because honestly, I don't have the time or energy to make any real changes and my patience has already been stretched so thin by student demands that I'm loath to invite them to tell me what they think is wrong with the class. But I do think it's worth taking some time to reflect on how the semester is going. In my Principles class, my main concern is that the pace of the class is too slow, that we are not "covering" as much material as we should. I'm sort of having a hard time assessing this because I switched around the order in which I'm presenting topics so things are a bit jumbled up. Judging from the responses to clicker questions, students seem to be grasping the materia...

I think that for many people, the idea of teaching young children about money feels a bit odd. I can understand that, because at first glance, I think that's how I would feel and I'm an economist saying this! Unfortunately, a lot of people associate money with greed, selfishness and other "bad" values that we generally don't want to pass on to our children. But money itself, and the role it plays in the world, carries none of those values inherently; all of those negative associations arise from people spending money in particular ways. One thing I find interesting is that there are also plenty of values that most people consider "good" that could also be associated with spending money in other ways (such as 'frugal', 'generous', 'good provider') but I don't think that's the first thing that comes to most people's minds. At any rate, however you feel about money, I think most people would agree that those who have a be...

Awhile back, Freakonomics posted a bleg from an econ grad student looking for jokes to impress his professor. Although I had heard many of them before, this one had me laughing out loud (which either tells you something about me, about economists, or about how punchy I can be after teaching): A therapist, a priest and an economist go golfing. The group ahead of them is extremely slow, leading to some frustration among the three. Their complaints are overheard, and a man from the group ahead walks over to them. He introduces himself as an aide because the group of golfers he is with is blind! The aide thanks the three in appreciation for their patience for the blind golfers. The priest goes, “Oh no, all my life I’ve preached for all to be better to my fellow man and here I am complaining about the blind!”. The therapist says, “I’ve been trained my whole life to help others and here I am complaining about the blind, shame on me!” The economist says, “Oh no! They should be playing at nigh...