Basic Economic Research Articles

The River Trip Packing Lesson: Engaging High School Students in Basic Economic Principles on Day One

The River Trip Packing Lesson: Engaging High School Students in Basic Economic Principles on Day One

BOPPPS Instructional Model Applied to a Basic Economics Course in Higher Education: Design and Assessment

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of applying and evaluating the BOPPPS teaching model in the economic foundation courses of higher education. Methods: Through experimental methods, the BOPPPS model is compared with traditional teaching methods so as to test the teaching effectiveness of the BOPPPS model. Conclusion: 1) The BOPPPS model highlights the learner's subject position, triggers students' interest through interesting and challenging tasks or problems, clarifies the learning objectives, stimulates students' desire for inquiry, tests and feeds back students' learning outcomes in a timely manner and prompts them to self-evaluate the learning process. 2) The BOPPPS model enhances the educational quality of the basic economic theory course, and it fosters deeper learning and critical thinking skills, and also promotes the cultivation of innovation and problem-solving abilities. However, there are some challenges in applying the BOPPPS model, such as teachers need to spend more time and effort on instructional design and preparation, teachers need to have certain educational theories and practical experience, and students may need some time to adapt to this new teaching model. For this reason, this study puts forward some improvement strategies and suggestions, with a view to providing some reference and inspiration for the teaching reform of basic economic courses in higher education.

An Interactive Teaching Tool Describing Resistance Evolution and Basic Economics of Insecticide-Based Pest Management.

Simple SummaryTo attract bright, creative, and curious students to the academic fields of applied entomology and sustainable food production, instructors of undergraduate and graduate student courses should discuss experiences with lectures and lab sessions and share effective interactive teaching tools. This communication describes how a simple population model in an Excel spreadsheet can be used in teaching both insecticide resistance evolution and basic economics of insecticide-based pest management. A tutorial video and the model as an Excel spreadsheet are freely available. Through hands-on experience with this and similar interactive teaching tools, students will acquire fundamental knowledge about basic structures population models and they will acquire experience with quantitative data interpretation. Teachers can use this tool and accompanying tutorials to demonstrate how models can be used to describe and visualize complex interactions between insect genetics and crop management. Furthermore, data from published studies can be analyzed and discussed using this interactive teaching tool.Effective teaching of complex concepts relies heavily on the ability to establish relevance of topics and to engage students in a constructive dialogue. To connect students with abstract concepts and basic theory, instructors foster and facilitate an engaging teaching environment. Population modeling is a cornerstone in applied entomology. However, it is also a topic and skill set that requires both basic mathematical and biological knowledge, and it may be perceived by students as being abstract and exceedingly theoretical. As a way to introduce entomology students at both that undergraduate and graduate levels to hands-on experience with population modeling, a well-established and widely used deterministic genetic population model is presented as an interactive teaching tool. Moreover, the general model describes three genotypes (SS = homozygous susceptible, SR = heterozygous, and RR = homozygous resistant) during 30 discrete and univoltine generations under a shared population density dependence (carrying capacity). Based on user inputs for each genotype (survival, fitness cost, reproductive rate, emigration, and immigration) and an initial resistance allele frequency, model outputs related to resistance evolution are produced. User inputs related to insecticide-based pest management (pest density action threshold, crop damage rate, insecticide treatment costs, and profit potential) can also be introduced to examine and interpret the basic economic effects of different insect pest management scenarios. The proposed model of resistance evolution and basic economics of pest management relies on a large number of important simplifications, so it may only have limited ability to predict the outcomes of real-world (commercial) scenarios. However, as a teaching tool and to introduce students to a well-known and widely used genetic population model structure, the interactive teaching tool is believed to have considerable utility and relevance.

Transforming the modern Latin American city: Robert Moses and the International Basic Economic Corporation

In 1950, Lineu Prestes, the then mayor of São Paulo, commissioned the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC), a commercial corporation headquartered in New York and owned by Nelson Rockefeller, to draw up a detailed report concerning the general planning of public works for the municipality of São Paulo. The urban planner Robert Moses was appointed Director of Studies and another 10 advisors were appointed to work in the ‘Program of Public Improvements’. The improvement plan for São Paulo was not an isolated initiative among those developed by IBEC, but it was very different from the other planning studies that had been conducted to date in that it was actually a consultative assignment. While performing technical studies, IBEC also identified opportunities for American companies to operate in Brazil; hence, the plan aroused great controversy. This paper seeks to establish how the Program emerged from the political and economic context of the post‐Second World War period in relation to Nelson Rockefeller’s activities in Latin America and Brazil, and it seeks to analyse, from the point of view of urban planning, the role played by the Program in the planning and development of the city of São Paulo.

Is Antitrust Too Complicated for Generalist Judges? The Impact of Economic Complexity and Judicial Training on Appeals

AbstractThe recent increase in the demand for expert economic analysis in antitrust litigation has improved the welfare of economists; however, the law and economics literature is silent on the effects of economic complexity or judges’ economic training on judicial decision making. We use a unique data set on antitrust litigation in federal district and administrative courts during 1996–2006 to examine whether economic complexity impacts antitrust decisions and provide a novel test of the hypothesis that antitrust analysis has become too complex for generalist judges. We also examine the impact of basic economic training on judges. We find that decisions involving the evaluation of complex economic evidence are significantly more likely to be appealed, and decisions of judges trained in basic economics are significantly less likely to be appealed than are decisions by their untrained counterparts. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that some antitrust cases are too complicated for generalist judges.

Collective Norms in Basic Research and Economic Growth

In this paper we have put forward a model of basic research and long-run economic growth in which the system of incentives to scientific work may produce positive feedbacks and increasing returns. The organization of basic research presents both real and non-real incentives to workers. The state organizes production of new knowledge - a public good that improves firms' technology - with resources taken from the private sector. Scientists compete with one another to attain priority over a discovery and be awarded both a real prize and prestige in the scientific community. Also, scientists derive job motivation from their search for status in the community. The model shows interesting dynamics and we focus on two locally stable steady-states. The picture that emerges shows, on the one hand, an economy endowed with a small science sector where researchers have high relative income but low prestige, and competition for discoveries is weak. On the other hand, the high growth steady-state describes an economy with a large science sector. The scientific community rewards members who obtain new findings with high prestige, but as the effect of creative destruction is strong, there is fierce competition among researchers. Comparative statics shows that if the scientific infrastructure is poor, policies that increase tha marginal benefits from a discovery have perverse effects, while policies aimed at improving the selection mechanism of the science sector work well. The same policies have opposite effects at the high steady state.

Development and Use of an Economic Evaluation Model to Assess Establishment of Local Centralized Rural Biogas Plants in Greece

An economic evaluation model was developed in the Laboratory of Agricultural Structures (LAS) of the Agricultural University of Athens-the Modified Basic Economic Evaluation Model (MBEEM). This model is an improved version of the original Basic Economic Evaluation Model, available in LAS, and it is used to assess the cost-effectiveness of biogas production systems. Because of the parameters involved, a computer model was developed to facilitate the application of the MBEEM. The model was used in this work to determine the cost-effective size of a local centralized biogas production system fed with pig wastes.

Basic Education and Economic Development: A Comparative Study of Japan, China and India

Basic Education and Economic Development: A Comparative Study of Japan, China and India

Assessing the Economic Understanding of U.S. High-School Students

Economics instruction in U.S. high schools is basically delivered in two ways. About half of high-school students take a required or elective course in economics, according to transcript data. The great majority of these students (about 95 percent) enroll in a regular course that focuses on basic economic concepts with applications. The remaining small percentage of students take a college-oriented course that is often called “honors” or Advanced Placement (AP) economics. Economics instruction for the other half of high-school students, if it is provided at all, is typically delivered in the context of other courses in the high-school curriculum in what is sometimes called the “infusion” or “integrative” approach. These courses would most likely be required courses taught in the social studies, such as U.S. history or American government, or in elective courses taught in business education. This study investigates what high-school students know about basic economics given the different types of economics instruction. The primary focus is on the achievement of students who complete a basic course in highschool economics. These results are important because they supply insights into what highschool students who have received direct instruction in economics know about the subject. For comparison purposes, the achievement of students who have not taken a formal course in economics will be investigated to identify what they know about economics. The comparison of those students with and without instruction in a separate course in economics gives the best estimate of the importance of direct instruction in economics to the economic understanding of most high-school graduates. In addition, similar comparisons between those students with and without direct instruction in economics will be made for two groups of higher-ability students: those who enroll in honors or AP courses in economics and those who enroll in such courses for other social-studies subjects.

The Relative Effectiveness of Economics Instruction for Teachers and College Students

Most studies in economic education have evaluated different instructional treatments using similar groups of students assigned to a control or an experimental group. Rarely are comparisons made across different groups using common achievement and attitudinal measures. This form of evaluation may be necessary in the growing number of special economic education programs that have basic economic learning objectives and in cases where traditional control-experimental evaluations are not feasible or meaningful. This study examined the relative effectiveness of a Masters of Instruction (MI) program in economic education for practicing teachers conducted at the University of Delaware over a two-year period. This new program was designed to (1) improve teachers' knowledge of basic economics to at least the intermediate theory level, (2) develop positive attitudes towards the subject, (3) train teachers in the methods of teaching economics, and (4) build organizational skills for conducting economic education projects. Given the measurement problems involved with the last two objectives, only the first two were examined in this study. To determine the extent to which the program improved achievement and attitudes, comparisons were made using the MI sample and six other groups: two groups of basic teachers taking courses in economic principles, two groups of college students taking intermediate theory courses, and two groups of college students taking principles of economics. The MI program appeared to meet or exceed its basic objectives-the participants showed a mastery of economics comparable to intermediate students and significantly more positive attitudes towards the subject. The MI group also held an orientation to economic issues similar to that held by the advanced economics students. A disturbing finding of the study concerned the comparison between the

Performance in theBasic Economics Test(BET) and “Trade-offs”

Chizmar and Halinski use data obtained in norming the Basic Economics Test to examine the impact of “Trade-offs” in the teaching of economics in elementary schools. The sample used for the study included approximately 13,800 children in grades 4–6 drawn from 23 states. Analysis of the data indicates that the use of “Trade-offs” leads to an improvement of student performance (over that of students not exposed to the television/film series) and that a significant difference in scores between boys and girls, which persists in classes not using “Trade-offs,” disappears when the instruction includes the series. Additional analysis links grade-level and teacher training to performance on the Basic Economic Test.

Basic Needs and Economic Systems*

Basic Needs and Economic Systems^*