Introductory Macroeconomics Research Articles

Pedagogical practices and the gender gap in economics education

AbstractSince the 1970s, economists have regularly documented that women tend to underperform otherwise comparable men in introductory economics courses. Hypotheses as to why this finding is so persistent often target economists' pedagogical practices. In this paper, we leverage the changes forced by the COVID‐19 pandemic to explore several hypotheses. Leveraging a sample of more than 3000 students enrolled in introductory micro‐ and introductory macroeconomics across seven semesters, we examine the interaction between gender and course modality, returns to effort, and the composition of the final grade. We find the size of the gender performance gap, as measured by course grade, fluctuated significantly across pre‐, during, and post‐pandemic semesters. We conclude this variation is not explained by course modality or student effort measures; instead, we argue that assessment strategy may drive much of the gender gap. This suggests the de‐emphasis of multiple‐choice exams in grade composition may go a significant way to closing the gender gap in introductory economics performance.

Grading policy, email nudges, and grade outcomes

We estimate how much the average grade of students enrolled in introductory macroeconomics changes when the professor sends a reminder email. We utilize observational data to implement a difference-in-differences strategy and identify the plausibly causal effect of email nudges on the student’s grade. The professor’s reminder email boosts low-performing student grades by 22–28 points per 50 points.

Factors Associated With Economics Course Performance at a Large Associate Degree-Granting Institution

Economics courses are often offered at community colleges and other institutions that primarily confer associate degrees. Despite this, little research has been conducted on performance in economics courses focusing on students attending these institutions. I use multinomial logistic models to determine which factors are related to performance in both introductory macroeconomics and introductory microeconomics at a large institution that primarily confers associate degrees and finds several factors associated with performance in these courses. Among the findings are that citizenship status, foreign-born status, and gender are associated with academic performance in economics courses as noncitizens, foreign-born, and male students outperform their citizen, U.S.-born, and female counterparts in certain circumstances. Additional results show that in-person classes are associated with higher pass rates and lower withdrawal rates.

Improving introductory economics course content and delivery improves outcomes for women

The presentation of economics in introductory courses has been highlighted as potentially exacerbating the underrepresentation of women in economics. The authors study the impact of a gender-neutral change in content and instruction in introductory economics courses intended to increase student engagement. By implementing meaningful applied problems and structured group work, their intervention focuses on the students’ perceptions of “what” economics is and “how” economics is used. Using institutional data from 8,727 students over nine semesters, they find that the intervention improved women’s grades relative to men’s in both Introductory Microeconomics and Macroeconomics and eliminated underperformance by women in Introductory Macroeconomics relative to men at baseline. These effects are evidence that course content and delivery impact the experiences and outcomes of female students in economics education.

Instructor as coach: strategies for engaging diverse students in introductory macroeconomics

Instructor as coach: strategies for engaging diverse students in introductory macroeconomics

Instructor as Coach: Strategies for Engaging Diverse Students in Introductory Macroeconomics

Instructor as Coach: Strategies for Engaging Diverse Students in Introductory Macroeconomics

Teaching economics of monetary union with the IS-MP-PC model

This paper explains how the three-equation IS-MP-PC-model can be adapted to discuss macroeconomic adjustment in a monetary union. It introduces a two-country version that is used to illustrate the difficulties of macroeconomic adjustment in the presence of asymmetric demand and financial shocks. The level of analysis does not go beyond the level of a course in introductory macroeconomics. The adaption can be used by instructors in euro area countries to bridge the gap between the standard model and the macroeconomic issues that these countries face or by any instructor who wishes to analyze shocks in regions sharing the same currency. It also allows instructors to debate current policy issues with their students and thus motivate them for the field.

Significant learning in introductory macroeconomics: Addressing misconceptions about “others”

Misconceptions hinder optimal student learning. They need to be addressed explicitly and formally to achieve effective teaching of economics. The author of this article outlines an activity that is designed to address misconceptions about “others” using a backward course design framework. Fink’s significant learning categories, specifically human dimension, and caring, are used to create learning outcomes that target misconceptions. The Predict-Observe-Explain teaching strategy is used to translate these learning outcomes into learning activities.

One nation under stress: A cooperative learning exercise to promote diversity and inclusion in introductory macroeconomics

The author of this article discusses a cooperative learning exercise designed for introductory macroeconomics that was completed by 44 groups of three or four students during the spring 2021, fall 2021, and spring 2022 semesters at a private U.S. liberal arts college. The exercise aims to foster an active learning community where students collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds and discuss economic issues with sensitivity and open-mindedness to promote mutual understanding. It provides students an opportunity to apply the concepts they learned in class to a real-world example and to integrate economic insights with those from other disciplines. The article details the exercise’s design and implementation process so that its structure can be adapted to a different content or course.

The extremely overconfident and extremely dissatisfied: a case study of an introductory macroeconomics college course

ABSTRACT In this paper, I first provide additional evidence of the prevalence and severity of the problem of student grade overconfidence. I do so by documenting the level of overconfidence that exists in an introductory macroeconomics course. In this course, 75% of the 614 students earned a grade that was below what they expected. I also find that students who expect that their actual grade will fall significantly below their original expected grade are dramatically more likely to report that they had the worst overall experience in this course relative to their experiences in all other concurrent courses.

Students’ comprehension of the Greek economic crisis through an introductory macroeconomics course

The purpose of the paper is to report on the effectiveness of macroeconomic courses in informing and educating Greek students during an actual economic crisis. To achieve this end, we rely upon an introductory macroeconomics course that focuses upon the severe Global Financial Crisis that got underway in 2008. We conducted a survey for examining how well Greek students understood the effects of this deep and prolonged crisis. What is innovative about our testing is that we undertook a statistical evaluation of responses of two cohorts of students drawn from Spring, 2014 and 2015 - as the crisis intensified from one year to the next. To the very best of our knowledge, such an exercise had not yet been attempted; namely, of measuring students? comprehension of a crisis and comparing the valuations of two cohorts of students as this particular crisis grew increasingly severe. Our findings suggest that students were confident that they achieved a comprehensive understanding of the variables underlying the Greek Economic Crisis. As the crisis escalated, students place increased importance on their university as a main source of information that influenced and helped in forming their perceptions of the economic crisis. However, our findings suggest that the university courses did not serve as their primary source of their information. In conclusion, the crisis helps to exposed gaps in the undergraduate curriculum that could be remedied through bringing in a better selection of up-to-date class materials.

Learning in the time of Covid-19: Some preliminary findings

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, universities closed to face-to-face learning, shifting entirely to online instruction midway through the spring 2020 semester. In this paper, we compare student performance in the Covid-19 affected semester to that of the previous three unaffected semesters. We consider both student grades and student performance on standardized post-tests in introductory macroeconomics, microeconomics, and statistics courses. We conclude that there were no significant differences in performance across the semesters. Despite concerns that low-income, first-generation, and minority students could suffer disproportionately, we identify no measurable effect for these population subgroups. Women are found to overperform in the Covid-affected semester when compared to previous terms. Women at our institution could be expected to earn 0.15 of a grade-point less in introductory economics courses than otherwise comparable men in pre-Covid semesters. In the Covid-affected semester, this difference disappeared, with women earning higher grades, on average, than men.

Orthodox macroeconomic textbooks: A critical evaluation using institutional practice as a benchmark

Many heterodox economists advocate the adoption of pluralist teaching strategies in universities, citing the benefits of developing the capacity of students to engage in critical thinking. However, with the dominance of orthodox macroeconomic thinking and increasing career pressures associated with the need to publish in leading mainstream journals, many teachers have become reliant on a limited number of orthodox macroeconomics textbooks. This paper explores how a small sample of leading introductory macroeconomics textbooks have responded to the challenges to orthodox macroeconomic thinking in the last decade or so since the Global Financial Crisis. We focus on the definitions of concepts and the consistency of the theoretical and policy frameworks, in the light of the insights about what we define as Institutional Practice. This concept refers to the way that the Central Bank, Treasury and commercial banks actually operate in modern monetary economies, as described by employees of international agencies such as the IMF and the European and national Central Banks. We also draw implications of our work for the teaching of undergraduate macroeconomics.

Economics 101-ism and the Dunning-Kruger effect: Reducing overconfidence among introductory macroeconomics students

In numerous subjects, people with the least knowledge also lack the ability to assess how much they don’t know. Specifically, the less competent the individual, the greater is their overconfidence in their knowledge - the Dunning-Kruger effect. However, in order for the incompetent to overestimate their knowledge, they must satisfy a minimal threshold of knowledge that suggests to themselves that they can generate correct answers.Many students, perhaps the majority, who study any economics complete no more than a single credit of Principles. Perhaps out of necessity, most introductory textbooks describe a set of basic theories which are often presented as absolute truths. Unfortunately, this may leave students overconfident with the impression that complex real-world problems can be analyzed using the simple theories of Economics 101.The challenge faced by economics educators is to identify how to help students who lack the technical skills and knowledge to conduct appropriate analyses and understand the uncertainty and complexity of economic problems and policies. This article describes an experiment designed to determine whether including readings and discussions around economic complexity reduces overconfidence among introductory macroeconomics students. The results suggest that the Dunning-Kruger effect is present among introductory economics students, and that the level of overconfidence is significantly reduced by the introduction of such readings and discussions.

The Effects of Online Assignments and Weekly Deadlines on Student Outcomes in a Macroeconomics Course

This study examined how weekly, externally set deadlines affected the completion of adaptive learning assignments and student outcomes in an introductory macroeconomics course. We imposed different deadline schemes for the same adaptive learning assignments in two sections of the course. One section was given flexible deadlines and the other section was given rigid weekly deadlines. We found that weekly deadlines did not affect assignment completions or total points earned on unit exams. We investigated how the adaptive learning assignments affected student retention of material. A measure of staying on pace in the course provided a positive effect on the comprehensive final exam for students with weekly deadlines. The weekly deadlines may not have influenced assignment completions but consistent engagement with the flow of topics through the course increased student knowledge retention. Regardless of deadline type, completions of adaptive learning assignments positively affected outcomes on the unit exams and final exam. JEL Classifications: A20, A22

Reimagining the introductory material in teaching money creation and monetary policy

The money creation and monetary policy chapters in the leading introductory textbooks commonly present an outdated and misleading approach that is now largely irrelevant. A preferable model would help students understand that money and monetary policy are about bank and household motives, the importance of capital, and the role of credit. An updated approach would move beyond the current orthodoxy, which assumes both that the mechanical base-multiplier explains monetary policy and the quantity theory explains inflation. Monetary policy has evolved dramatically in the last 40 years. Therefore, textbook authors and teachers of introductory macroeconomics might consider some of these suggestions to help explain recent events.

Integrating data analysis into an introductory macroeconomics course

Data analysis and applying knowledge to real-world settings rank among key skills of college graduates. This paper shows how to completely integrate data analysis and application of knowledge to real-world settings into an introductory macroeconomics course. Every class meeting is structured as a series of activities that students work through using free, publicly available data. Time can be allotted to these activities during class because the course takes advantage of two previously documented active learning pedagogies (flipped classroom and team-based learning). Students benefit by gaining data analysis skills, applying knowledge to real-world settings, digging deeper into the material and contentious topics, and learning that results from combining the data analysis approach with the active learning approaches.

Teaching the Greek financial crisis in an introductory macroeconomics course: university students' perceptions

The same survey of a self-administered questionnaire was handed out to introductory macroeconomics students in Spring 2014 and Spring 2015 at the University of Macedonia in Greece, to determine students' perceptions of how including the Greek financial crisis (GFC) in the teaching of introductory macroeconomics benefits students. The methodology of the survey is quantitative in nature based on descriptive statistics and t-tests were carried out for each variable of interest. The research questions under examination are: 1) Did the incorporation of the GFC in the teaching of introductory macroeconomies influence university students' perceptions about the course?; 2) Did the evaluations of the course by the two cohorts of students change as the crisis intensifies in a statistically significant manner? The innovation of the study is determining students' perceptions of the value of incorporating the GFC in the teaching of macroeconomics and the statistical evaluation of responses of two cohorts of students as the crisis intensifies. Overall, students evaluated positively the incorporation of the GFC in their learning in the introductory macroeconomics course. From 2014 to 2015, the student level of understanding of the GFC incorporated in the teaching of introductory economics increases. Nevertheless, students are not interested in employment as economists.

Learning in the Time of COVID-19

I In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities closed to face-to-face learning, shifting entirely to online instruction midway through the spring 2020 semester. In this paper, we compare student performance in the COVID-19 affected semester to that of the previous three unaffected semesters. We consider both student grades and student performance on standardized post-tests in introductory macroeconomics, microeconomics, and statistics courses. We conclude that there were no significant differences in performance across the semesters. Despite concerns that low-income, first-generation, and minority students could suffer disproportionately, we identify no measurable effect for these population subgroups. Women are found to overperform in the COVID-affected semester when compared to previous terms. Women at our institution could be expected to earn 0.15 of a grade-point less in introductory economics courses than otherwise comparable men in pre-COVID semesters. In the COVID-affected semester, this difference disappeared, with women earning higher grades, on average, than men.

Teaching the Greek financial crisis in an introductory macroeconomics course: university students' perceptions

Teaching the Greek financial crisis in an introductory macroeconomics course: university students' perceptions