Does Teaching Enhance Research in Economics? A Few More Thoughts

Abstract

William Becker and Peter Kennedy have assembled a series of entertaining anecdotes about ways teaching has complemented the research of successful scholars. The examples are numerous, varied, and interesting. There is no doubt that the research productivity of many serious scholars has been stimulated by their teaching responsibilities.There is a danger, however, of drawing unwarranted conclusions from these interesting vignettes. The successful scholars surveyed by Becker and Kennedy may be individuals of such innate curiosity and creativity that they are stimulated by virtually anything and everything. These may be people, to steal unabashedly from the title of Dan Hamermesh's (2004) wonderful little book, who see economics everywhere. If that is the case, the role of teaching in their research cannot be distinguished from the roles of reading, listening, watching, pondering, eating, drinking, smelling, singing, running, golfing, driving, and perhaps even dreaming.The individuals surveyed by Becker and Kennedy may have been stimulated at least as much, or perhaps even more, by spending time in informal discussions with colleagues, scanning the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, viewing CNN and C-SPAN, or gazing out the window of their office, but Becker and Kennedy did not ask them how they perceived the research productivity of discussing, reading, watching, and looking. These may be people, like Hamermesh, who, if he spent a week at the zoo, probably soon would be writing about the economics of butterfly beauty, the labor supply of elephants, and the economics of bear hibernation.A control group with a level of curiosity and imagination similar to those surveyed would be needed to tease out the distinctive effect of teaching on research. Matching curiosity and imagination across individuals would be challenging because there is no accepted measure of curiosity or imagination. It might be reasonable to assume that attributes like curiosity and imagination remain constant in individuals across time and then to compare the stimulation successful scholars received from different working environments--some teaching and some not--they have experienced throughout their careers. The experiences of Herb Grubel and Peter Lloyd reported by Becker and Kennedy suggest the potential value of asking economists who have spent a considerable amount of time in environments both with and without teaching responsibilities, say at a university and at a research think tank, to reflect on which portions of their careers were more intellectually productive, and whether they believe the productivity differences were caused by their environment.One cynical interpretation of the survey results is that they show that there are smart, exciting, and intellectually curious students at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford, where many of those surveyed work. Of course, Becker and Kennedy understand this as thoroughly as the rest of us. The interesting question, however, is whether the same scholars, were they not to have enjoyed the privilege of teaching the highest quality students in the world, would have had as productive research careers as they did while rubbing shoulders with the best students in the world. …