Introductory Economics Research Articles

Testing Math Competency in Introductory Economics

In this paper, I examine how a math-competency requirement affects student performance in an introductory economics course. Students were given a basic math-competency quiz at the beginning of the semester. Those who did not pass could receive remedial-math tutoring and retake the competency quiz. The results of this study indicate that students who passed the math-competency quiz, regardless of the number of attempts, performed significantly better in the class than students who did not attain basic math skills.

Verbal Abilities, Gender, and the Introductory Economics Course: A New Look at an Old Assumption

Verbal Abilities, Gender, and the Introductory Economics Course: A New Look at an Old Assumption

Verbal Abilities, Gender, and the Introductory Economics Course: A New Look at an Old Assumption

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsBenjamin GreeneBenjamin Greene is an associate professor of economics at Salisbury State University.

Estimating the Cost to Consumers of the U.S. Sugar Quota: An Exercise for Introductory Economics Classes

of the United States to estimate the economic costs imposed on consumers by the U.S. sugar quota. An exercise using real data can give concrete Andrew T Williams is an associate professor of economics at St. Mary's College of California. The author would like to thank James Hawley of the Graduate Business Programs at Saint Mary's College and four anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Slope Versus Elasticity and the Burden of Taxation

The incidence of the burden of a tax is usually presented as an application of elasticity in introductory economics. A more useful exposition of tax incidence results if slope is used rather than elasticity.

Discovering Diversity in Introductory Economics

Instructors can begin the process of integrating race and gender issues into introductory economics by reexamining their courses with a new lens of diversity. The content of introductory economics can be expanded by ‘adding and stirring’ race and gender data from standard statistical sources or from the students themselves. This paper offers some ‘add-and-stir’ macro- and microeconomic examples. To discover the appropriate mix of these examples and how to present them, this paper also offers ways of getting to know who your students are and how better to teach them with their diverse interests and learning styles.

Collaborative teaching pedagogy used in conjunction with a simulation economy

In order to enhance the interest and motivation for students to learn introductory economics, the authors have initiated the creation of a simulation game in which the students are the actors in a self-contained class economy. The students are placed in competitive groups in which they have the role of a firm that produces a good and a household that consumes products. A collaborative learning pedagogy with the simulation was also instituted. Using collected data that measure the impact of this alternative approach, compared to a class taught without the collaborative exercises or the simulation game, it was found that students enjoyed the simulation game and found it worthwhile. Overall, the simulation game and this new approach to teaching introductory economics did not have a negative impact on academic achievement.

Personality Type and Student Performance in Principles of Economics

The relationship between students' personality types, as measured by the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, and their performance in introductory economics is explored. In addition to comparing a student's learning style with a professor's teaching style, options are suggested for improving instruction by offering a variety of different teaching and grading strategies that better accommodate student personality types and learning styles.

Resource-based learning strategies: implications for students and institutions

In its strategic plan, the University of Greenwich envisages a significant shift to resource-based learning (RBL). Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE) has funded five pilot RBL projects during the past year, including one in introductory economics. The project was managed by three lecturers in the School of Social Sciences, supported by an Academic Development Officer. Learning outcomes were completely revised, and a range of assessment strategies, including computer-based tests, was identified. A resources guide was produced which identified the materials and activities that would enable students to achieve the learning outcomes. A number of innovations were adopted, including: • computer-based curriculum delivery, assessment, and student evaluation of the course; • an open approach to assessment; • abolishing lectures in favour of a diverse range of teaching and learning activities.DOI:10.1080/0968776960040114

The Impact of Integrating Scholarship on Women into Introductory Economics: Evidence from One Institution

The Impact of Integrating Scholarship on Women into Introductory Economics: Evidence from One Institution

The Impact of Integrating Scholarship on Women into Introductory Economics: Evidence from One Institution

Integrating the latest scholarship on women into the principles of microeconomics course calls for modifying the content and exams to cover economic issues in a gender-inclusive fashion. The empirical evidence that is provided suggests that all students do significantly better in such a gender-inclusive economics course.

TEACHING TOOLS: HOW IS INTRODUCTORY ECONOMICS TAUGHT IN AMERICA?

We describe the faculty, students, teaching methods, and assessment instruments used in 180 introductory economics classes taught by 122 different instructors at 53 different colleges and universities. Despite variation in class size and types of institution, both introductory macroeconomics and introductory microeconomics are taught predominantly as lecture courses, with the largest part of students' course grades determined by performance on multiple‐choice question tests. There seems to be little experimentation with alternative pedagogies or assessment techniques despite an in‐creasing amount of attention to these issues in recent years.

Tourism Economics: Life after Death?

Paul Omerod's recent book, The Death of Economics, provides the background to this paper. As Omerod's book laments the state of mainstream economics it seems an appropriate time to subject economics for tourism degrees to similar critical scrutiny. There has been a rapid growth in institutions offering degrees in tourism, from none in 1985 to 40 and rising by 1995, and economics has generally been part of the package on offer to students. This paper starts by outlining three serious challenges to economics both as a discipline and as educational knowledge for tourism students. It then examines how the educational package of economics is framed, and from this concludes that economics courses may arise more from accident (or inertia) than design, or that the design may not be appropriate for current needs. It therefore suggests that there is considerable scope for the re-framing of introductory economics for tourism students. In the light of the criticisms of economics expressed in the first section, a model curriculum for tourism economics is proposed, and ways in which such a model might be promoted and developed are explored.

Economics: WinEcon—A New Generation Computer Package for Introductory Economics

In October 1992 the U.K. Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCs) provided grants totalling £22.5 million (approx. $34 million)1 for the development of technology-based learning materials for undergraduate education through the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP). Under this initiative a consortium of economics departments was granted £640 thousand (approx. $1 million) funding to produce a computer-based learning package for teaching introductory economics. This program, called WinEcon , will be provided free of charge to all U.K. higher-education economics departments in September 1995 and will be the first such package to cover the whole syllabus for first-year courses in economics. The consortium is committed to sharing the outcomes of its work with colleagues m other countries. In particular the consortium plans to develop a U.S. version of the software in collaboration with American coauthors.

The Underrepresentation of Women in Economics: A Study of Undergraduate Economics Students

Although women are underrepresented in the field of economics, many see little need for intervention, arguing that women are inherently less interested in economics, or are less willing or able to get the math skills skills needed to do well in the subject. At the same time, others support active efforts to increase the number of women in the field, citing other possible causes of their current underrepresentation. These people argue, for example, that women are deterred from entering the field because of a lack of female role models, or that women are discouraged by an unappealing classroom environment. This study assesses these hypotheses by examining factors that influence undergraduate students' decisions to become economics majors using a survey of students in the introductory economics course at Harvard University as well as data on an entire class of students from Harvard's registrar. We find that although women in the introductory economics course at Harvard tend to begin the course with a weaker math background than men, math background does not explain much of the gender difference in students' decisions about majoring in economics. The class environment and the presence or absence of role models also do not explain much of the gender gap. On the other hand, women do less well in economics relative to other courses than men do, and controlling for this difference in relative performance significantly diminishes the estimated gender gap. An economically large but statistically insignificant difference between sexes in the probability of majoring in economics remains, however, which may be due to differing tastes or information about the nature of economics.

Changes in Attitudes among College Economics Students about the Fairness of the Market

The study presents evidence that students' opinions change as they take introductory economics, with a greater percentage of students coming to regard market outcomes as fair. This change in opinion is especially pronounced for women.

A Paradox of Thrift or Keynes's Misrepresentation of Saving in the Classical Theory of Growth?

Every year thousands of introductory economics students are made to accept as valid one of Keynes's lasting inversions of classical economics, namely the proposition that saving may be a private virtue, but is a public vice. According to Keynes, a community that seeks to increase its rate of saving would end up impoverishing itself and actually saving less, but the community that increases its consumption at the expense of saving would end up being richer and saving more. This proposition, frequently stated in macroeconomics textbooks as the paradox of thrift, arises mainly from Keynes's definition of saving to include the hoarding of cash, contrary to the classical definition and language of the marketplace, but has received little recognition or criticism as such.' Rather than emphasizing Keynes's misrepresentation of the classical theory of income determination and growth in which hoarding constitutes a reduction in saving, most critics have pointed out only that saving may take other forms besides hoarding.2 Thus, several reviewers of the General Theory [22], in which Keynes fully develops the argument, criticized it mainly for having assigned too much importance to the hoarding of cash, e.g., Pigou [37], Robertson [40], Viner [51], and Hawtrey [11]. Some modern textbook writers employ the loanable-funds view of savings to show the lim

Reading Economics in English: Aspects of Course Development in a Japanese University

This paper discusses aspects of the planning and implementation of a course in reading Economics in English for students in a university in Japan. The course introduces students to introductory economics textbooks and print media which deal with current economic issues. Instructional strategies attempt to strike a balance between developing the students' ability to cope with economics texts, extending their general academic reading skills, and increasing their basic knowledge and understanding of economics. An analysis of the kinds of instructional strategies used is presented, with reference to a specific topic area studied.

The Determinants of Success in University Introductory Economics Courses

Performance in and propensity to complete the college introductory economics courses are shown to be related to student preparation and performance in high school, with calculus and overall grade average being especially important.

Retrospectives: The Law of Diminishing Returns

From introductory economics to theoretical papers, the law of diminishing returns is a part of every economist's tool kit. But the evolution of this law in the history of economic analysis reveals more complexity than is perhaps generally understood. Even among those most responsible for its evolution, the law has been loosely defined, and many so-called “proofs” of the law have been weak and incomplete. Moreover, those who expounded the law and its economic implications rarely offered empirical evidence to support it. In fact, economists have offered alternative explanations for rising short-run marginal cost curves and other implications of the law of diminishing returns. This last point raises an interesting question: Have economists used the law of diminishing returns simply for convenience, or is the law fundamental to economic analysis?