Intermediate Microeconomics Research Articles

Failure, withdrawals, and retakes in intermediate microeconomics

Using data from 11 institutions, the authors investigate enrollments in intermediate microeconomics to determine characteristics of successful and unsuccessful students and follow the retake behavior of unsuccessful students. Successful students are significantly different from unsuccessful ones, and unsuccessful students differ by type (unsuccessful completers vs. withdrawers). Aptitude is a strong predictor of success but not of retake. Having taken or concurrently taking intermediate macro reduces the likelihood of withdrawal and increases that of retake. Proficiency in calculus reduces the likelihood of unsuccessful completion but is uncorrelated with withdrawal and retake. Predictors of unsuccessful completion, withdrawal, and retake are similar in direction and significance for males and females, although magnitudes differ. URM students are more likely than white and Asian students to earn less than a C−.

Requirements of the undergraduate economics major: An update and comparison

The undergraduate economics curricula for most of the 793 U.S. colleges and universities that conferred an economics bachelor’s degree in 2019 are described in this article. Besides updating the prevalence of the economics major core requirements and their differences by institution type, the authors record new information on requirement variations across economics degree types, as classified by the National Center for Education Statistics, including STEM-designated degree types. They also investigate the prevalence of calculus-based intermediate courses and find that 63 percent of economics degrees require calculus for intermediate microeconomics and macroeconomics. In addition, 67 percent of degrees require single-variable calculus, 10 percent require multi-variable calculus, and 54 percent require basic econometrics (up from 41% in 2010). These requirements also vary highly by degree type.

Are we doing homework wrong? The marginal effect of homework using spaced repetition

While assigning homework in college courses is supported by both psychological research on memory and studies of economics classes, research examining the marginal effect of homework scores on exam performance generally shows insignificant results. These weak marginal effects may be due to the number of times students repeat the work and how spread out they are; the few studies that show positive marginal effects of homework performance use at least three spaced repetitions. This study evaluates a spaced repetition model of short homework assignments repeated at increasing intervals in intermediate microeconomics. Results show a positive significant marginal effect; students who did better on the homework assignments scored higher on both in class exams and a cumulative final. The implication is that the simple change of structuring homework assignments with additional spaced repetitions may significantly improve learning.

Gender composition and team performance: evidence from a randomized experiment

ABSTRACT This research aims to explore the impact of gender composition on team project performance in a college intermediate microeconomics course, using a randomized experiment approach and applying a rich database spanning over 14 years at an elite public university in Taiwan. The estimation results demonstrate a significantly negative relationship between the team male ratio and team project performance. In addition, we find a U-shape relationship between gender ratio and team performance after controlling for students’ prior GPA, midterm performance, individual project performance, and semester fixed effects. It implies that gender-unbalanced teams perform relatively better than gender-balanced teams. These results suggest potential communication and coordination failures across gender and less knowledge spillover and skill specializations for gender-balanced teams. The relatively large team size and the short time for teamwork in this experiment are plausible explanations for our findings.

Integrating Advertising into Duopoly Simulations for Intermediate Microeconomics Courses Using Python

Integrating Advertising into Duopoly Simulations for Intermediate Microeconomics Courses Using Python

Exploring Bilingual Instruction for Intermediate Microeconomics in the Context of Sino-Foreign Collaborative Education

With the establishment of intermediate microeconomics courses in an increasing number of economics majors at universities, its importance is becoming more prominent. This article analyzes the current situation and existing problems of bilingual teaching in intermediate microeconomics. It also proposes improvement suggestions for bilingual teaching in intermediate microeconomics under Sino-foreign collaborative education, addressing aspects such as teaching mode innovation, teaching team building, bilingual teaching differentiation, and diverse process assessments.

Gender and Intermediate Microeconomics Course Performance: Does Course Type Matter?

This study examines the effects of gender on performance for students taking one of two different intermediate microeconomics courses: a quantitative, calculus-based course and a non-quantitative, non-calculus-based course. We also assess how gender differences in students’ math and verbal abilities and college achievement affect intermediate microeconomics course grades. Our results indicate gender is not a significant indicator of intermediate microeconomics course performance. Math SAT scores and principles of microeconomics course grades are significant predictors of performance for non-quantitative course students only. Cumulative GPAs have strong, positive correlations with grades for students in both course types. These findings have implications for students’ economics major selection and are positive in the context of closing the gender gap in economics degree attainment. JEL Codes: A20, A22

Does studying economics make you selfish?

AbstractIt is widely held that studying economics makes you more selfish and politically conservative. We use a difference‐in‐differences strategy to disentangle the causal impact of economics education from selection effects. We estimate the effect of four different intermediate microeconomics courses on students' experimentally elicited social preferences and beliefs about others, and policy opinions. We find no discernible effect of studying economics (whatever the course content) on self‐interest or beliefs about others' self‐interest. Results on policy preferences also point to little effect, except that economics may make students somewhat less opposed to highly restrictive immigration policies.

Approaches to Intermediate Microeconomics

Approaches to Intermediate Microeconomics

Finding a Simple Solution to the Problem of Student Evaluations: An Index of Traditional Evaluation Questions

Literature commonly finds student evaluations of economics instruction do not assess true teaching effectiveness. Many techniques improving learning outcomes result in lower student evaluations because students must work harder. Still, we often rely on a single overall rating for assessing teacher quality. We construct a model of student responses that indicate likeability of the instructor and difficulty of the instruction. We test the predictive power of these indicators using teaching evaluations of intermediate microeconomics instructors over five years alongside data on student grades in future courses that depend on intermediate microeconomics. Using these questions to construct a more meaningful evaluation of how well the intermediate microeconomic instructors prepare students to recall and use important concepts in the future improves our ability to evaluate instructor effectiveness.

Identifying Students at Risk Using a New Math Skills Assessment

Math skills are critical for success in economics courses. However, instructors often lack information about the level and extent of their students' underpreparedness in mathematics. In this paper, we describe the development of two new assessments of math skills relevant for introductory and intermediate economics courses. The assessments may be used early in the semester to evaluate students and identify those with weak math skills. With data from introductory and intermediate microeconomics courses, we employ two different methodologies, a simple threshold analysis and a more sophisticated LASSO logit approach, to illustrate how our assessments identify students at risk of underperforming.

Do Cooperative-Based Learning Groups Help Students Learn Microeconomics?

As many college students voluntarily form cooperative-based learning groups to study course materials, this article investigates whether or not such type of learning improves their academic performance. This is the first research using Taiwan’s higher education data to study cooperative learning in the field of economic education. The data used herein are from 10 intermediate microeconomics courses from 2006 to 2016 at a public university in Taiwan. The sample size is 1,389, which encompasses 120 to 150 enrolled students in each semester. We use an instrumental variables (IVs) approach to remedy the potential endogeneity problem associated with forming cooperative-based learning groups, and the key IV employed is the number of students with the same academic major. The IV estimation results show that forming cooperative-based learning groups does significantly improve college students’ learning outcomes. In addition, the cooperative learning effect is heterogeneous across groups. Students with poor attendance records benefit more from voluntarily formed cooperative learning groups in learning microeconomics. Moreover, it is worth noting that the magnitude of the cooperative learning effect from our analysis is greater than the typical class attendance effect.

Monopoly and Monopsony Power in a Market for Mud

This article describes an unusual market I use in my intermediate microeconomics courses to illustrate characteristics of monopoly and monopsony power. For over sixty years the ...

What should students learn in intermediate microeconomics? To think conceptually from the fundamentals of the discipline

What should students learn in intermediate microeconomics? To think conceptually from the fundamentals of the discipline

What should we teach in intermediate microeconomics?

Intermediate micro is as close to the core of economics as any course in the field. It is the canon. There’s fairly widespread consensus over what that means should go into the class. But that does...

An Intuitive Derivation of a Simple Giffen Good

This brief paper describes an intuitive way to derive a utility function that produces a demand function with Giffen properties. The solution is surprisingly simple and the necessary algebra is suitable for introductory and intermediate microeconomics.

An endogenous equilibrium game on traffic congestion externalities

Traffic congestion and road tolls are familiar economic concepts for most undergraduates; however, students often have difficulty explaining exactly how theoretical principles like externalities and social welfare are related to their real-world experiences, such as driving. The authors present a classroom exercise to demonstrate how congestion externalities are generated, the effects on private and social welfare, and how appropriately priced tolls can address congestion externalities. Students are asked to evaluate outcomes in five different driving scenarios, with and without congestion or tolls. The authors offer discussion questions to make the activity engaging and informative. They report the results of their efforts to administer the exercise. This 75-minute exercise is appropriate for introductory or intermediate microeconomics, political economy, or environmental economics classes of various sizes.

Teaching economics outside the box: using the circular-flow diagram to indicate efficient resource allocation in intermediate microeconomics

This paper uses the circular-flow diagram to illustrate the efficiency of resource allocation at market equilibria. This diagram not only depicts the circulation of goods and money within a market economy but also suggests the efficiency of resource allocation at market equilibrium. However, economics instructors usually invoke the Edgeworth box diagram to demonstrate efficient resource allocation. Therefore, for an intermediate economics class, this paper proposes a simple method to describe the efficiency of resource allocation: the circular-flow diagram.

Teaching economics outside the box: using the circular-flow diagram to indicate efficient resource allocation in intermediate microeconomics

This paper uses the circular-flow diagram to illustrate the efficiency of resource allocation at market equilibria. This diagram not only depicts the circulation of goods and money within a market economy but also suggests the efficiency of resource allocation at market equilibrium. However, economics instructors usually invoke the Edgeworth box diagram to demonstrate efficient resource allocation. Therefore, for an intermediate economics class, this paper proposes a simple method to describe the efficiency of resource allocation: the circular-flow diagram.

Effects of the tax burden on the production of fattening pigs

Received: 2018-05-07 | Accepted: 2018-05-14 | Available online: 2018-11-26 https://doi.org/10.15414/afz.2018.21.04.142-144 The paper analyses how much tax burden affects production volume and budget revenues. The projections show what happens when a government increases the tax rate (added value tax), i.e. how it reflects on the volume of fattening pig production on the one hand and how it reflects on the level of tax revenue. Fiscal policy represents a complex area through which the state sets out the operating conditions through various instruments. In this paper, the simulation of the tax rates and the effects on the produced quantities is made on pig meat production. By imposing large taxes, taxpayers feel less incentive to make money, because whatever they earn, they go to the state. A more detailed analysis was made on a sample of fattening production of 100,000 animals. Some implications of established empirical links between variables are presented in the paper. The change in tax rate of 10% multiplies an increase in tax reported in cash in amount of 44.4%. Keywords : added value tax, production of fattening pigs, tax rate, tax revenue References Alfaro, L. (2001) Foreign Direct Investment and Growth: Does the Sector Matter. Harvard: Harvard Business School. Barro, R. J. (1987) Macroeconomics. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Baumol, W. J., Blinder, S. A. (1991). Economics – Principles and Policy. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Dorbusch, R., Fisher, S (1987). Macroeconomics. London: McGraw-Hill. Messere, K. (2009) Tax Policy in OECD Countries. Amsterdam: OECD. Samuelson, P. A., Nordhaus, W. D. (1992) Economics: McGraw Hill, New York. Hal, V. R. (2015) Intermediate Microeconomics A Modern Approach. Harvard: Harvard Business School.