Undergraduate Economics Class Research Articles

Hooked on podcasts: evidence from a quasi-experimental approach

The podcast is a tool that economic educators can employ in the classroom as an alternative approach to convey content. Using a unique quasi-experimental approach in four undergraduate economics classes, we measure student perceptions of podcast use and the effectiveness of the podcast as a pedagogical tool in the economics curriculum. This experiment controls for demographic characteristics, educational background, learning styles, instructor fixed effects, and class fixed effects while measuring the impact of podcast use on student learning outcomes. We find that exam scores of students assigned podcasts to supplement their learning were statistically no different than those of students assigned printed news articles to supplement their learning. However, in terms of perception, students believed they were learning more from podcasts than news articles.

Exploring adaptive learning, learner-content interaction and student performance in undergraduate economics classes

This study explores the pedagogical use of adaptive learning to foster learner-content interaction, and its subsequent impact on student performance in a large first year Macroeconomics course in an Irish University. To increase student-content interaction, an adaptive learning tool (LearnSmart) is employed to create five weekly adaptive reading assignments, over a six-week period. We include two separate indicators of learner-content interaction (the amount of time spent and number of completed adaptive assignments) in our analysis. Results indicate that student performance is enhanced by the number of completed adaptive assignments, which captures learner-content interaction and adaptive learning. However, the amount of time spent studying was negatively associated with performance. This surprising result comes as a novel contribution, which extends our knowledge of how adaptive learning technology can be potentially used to drive learner-content interaction and student performance. Pedagogically, our findings suggest the need for more intentional design and personalisation of learning activities to enhance student-content interaction and subsequent performance.

Teaching economics of climate change and sustainability as an introductory interdisciplinary elective using critical reading of supplementary sources

Critical thinking skills are widely considered to be important transferable skills gained from taking college-level economics courses that are also highly valued by employers. Yet, the literature on intentionally teaching critical thinking skills in undergraduate economics classes is still relatively sparse. The author of this article outlines an innovative approach to teaching critical thinking skills through class participation activities designed to promote critical reading of outside sources in an interdisciplinary climate economics course. The course goal is to equip students with the skills to articulate how economists contribute to the thinking on climate change and apply basic economics tools to explain and evaluate climate policy.

Collaborative learning in economics: Do group characteristics matter?

While the positive impacts of collaborative learning are well recognized, relatively little is known about how group characteristics (e.g., group size and composition) affect learning outcomes. Consequently, this article explores how group characteristics affect learning. We leverage a random assignment of students into groups of predetermined sizes to explore the effect of group size on learning outcomes in an undergraduate economics class. Though confirming the benefits of collaborative learning, our results indicate smaller group sizes (i.e., groups of about 5 or 6 members) are preferred to enhance learning, in our study context. We also find group learning effects tend to be limited for students with cultural and/or language barriers that limit participation. This is an important consideration for many US institutions with increasing enrollments of international students, particularly from Asian countries.

Economic Sanctions and North Korea

The United States has enacted economic sanctions against North Korea since the early 1950s when North Korea attacked South Korea. Can North Korea be pressured into giving up its nuclear weapons? This article discusses the role of economic sanctions as a tool of international diplomacy with North Korea. Using concepts and tools taught in undergraduate economics classes, the article discusses the operation of sanctions and then it applies this analysis to the case of North Korea. The article examines the success that sanctions have achieved in bringing Kim Jong Un to the bargaining table and the difficulties that sanctions encounter in promoting a lasting resolution of the conflict between North Korea and the United States. The article is written for a broad audience of economics students. JEL Classifications: F0, F1

Challenges and pedagogies for teaching inequality in undergraduate development economics

Students in undergraduate economics classes, bogged down by mathematical and statistical technicalities, often fail to connect classroom learning to real world experiences which would better help to understand concepts and to examine policy prescriptions for economic issues such as economic inequality. Through a combination of different pedagogies involving academic resources, media, data analysis and experiential learning, students in my economic development course are exposed to the challenges of measuring and combating inequality. By looking at income inequality in conjunction with inequalities of health and education access, and understanding gender and racial differences across nations as well as locally, students grasp the complexities of public policies addressing inequality. Adopting a feminist methodology in class provides students a framework to analyse the heterogeneity of the human experience critical to the study of inequality.

Are We Teaching Outside the Box? A National Survey on Teaching the Minimum Wage in Undergraduate Economics Classes

The purpose of this paper is to study how professors in the US teach about the minimum wage. Results of a survey suggest that almost all instructors cover the topic of minimum wage in their introductory courses and tend to cover this topic in a similar manner to how it is covered in introductory textbooks: by focusing on the employment effects of the minimum wage in the neoclassical model. In addition, instructors have relatively conservative views about the minimum wage effect and tend to agree that the minimum wage negatively impacts low-skilled workers. Finally, there seems to be a small “liberal bias” where instructors who are in favor of the minimum wage are less likely to teach the standard labor supply-demand model, and a larger “conservative bias” where instructors who tend to believe in the negative impact of a minimum wage are less likely to discuss the assumption of monopsony in the labor market.

A classroom game to teach the principles of money and banking

AbstractThis paper describes how to implement and run a game for teaching the principles of money and banking to an undergraduate economics class. The game primarily deals with the market for loanable funds, but numerous extensions are provided to cover topics such as monetary policy, the tools of the Federal Reserve, shifts in the equilibrium of the market for loanable funds, and the quantity theory of money. The experiment can be used in principles, intermediate macroeconomics, or money and banking courses. The experiment takes approximately 45 minutes to run, depending on class size, and requires no computers.

Performance Determinants in Undergraduate Economics Classes: The Effect of Cognitive Reflection

Economics classes claim to develop students’ “analytical” abilities and problem-solving” skills. Assessment of such claims is rather difficult, since it requires measurement of advanced thinking processes. Aptitude tests, such as the SAT, ACT (standardised tests for college admissions in the U.S.), and GRE (a standardised test for post-graduate admissions), purport to provide measures of such processes, but their questions refer to relatively simple thinking processes. Frederick (2005) has developed the “Cognitive Reflection Test” (CRT) to measure human ability to think deeper. The test contains questions whose apparent answers are incorrect and therefore further reflection is needed to arrive at the correct answers. Many economic problems fall into such a category. Our results suggest that CRT scores are higher and have a significant positive effect on exam performance in upper-level economics classes. In these classes, students with the highest CRT score outperform, on average, students with the lowest CRT score by more than half a letter grade, everything else the same.

Teaching the Principles of Money and Banking Through Games and Experiments

This paper describes how to run and implement a game for teaching the principles of money and banking to an undergraduate economics class. The game primarily deals with the market for loanable funds, but numerous extensions to the base form of the game are provided that can illustrate things such as monetary policy, the tools of the Federal Reserve, shifts in the equilibrium of the market for loanable funds, and the quantity theory of money.

Payback Time: An Experimental Analysis of Teaching Evaluations and Grades

We tackle the identification problem of the causal effects of grades on teaching evaluations by implementing a quasi-experimental design on a sample of 100 students of an undergraduate economics class at NYU. A control group has to fill out the evaluations before getting the exams, and the treated group follows the reverse order. This way we can estimate average treatment effects, and in particular, estimate the causal effect that grades have on the evaluations. We find a strong negative effect, and we argue that this is indeed the lower bound of the real unobserved effect.

How To Teach Hicksian Compensation And Duality Using A Spreadsheet Optimizer

Principle of duality and numerical calculation of income and substitution effects under Hicksian Compensation are often left out of intermediate microeconomics courses because they require a rigorous calculus based analysis. But these topics are critically important for understanding consumer behavior. In this paper we use excel solver- a spreadsheet optimizer to demonstrate how these topics can be taught in an undergraduate economics class with appropriate rigor but without using calculus. We also demonstrate how our methodology can be applied to Slutsky Compensation and to complex utility functions.

What Determines Student Evaluation Scores? A Random Effects Analysis of Undergraduate Economics Classes

Student evaluation scores are a standard component of the way colleges and universities assess the quality of an instructor’s teaching for purposes of promotion and tenure, as well as merit raise allocations. This paper applies a feasible generalized least squares model to a panel of data from undergraduate economics classes. We find that instructors can ‘‘buy’’ better evaluation scores by inflating students’ grade expectations. Class size and instructor experience are important determinants of evaluation scores in principles classes, but not in upper-level courses. Male instructors get better scores than females, and younger instructors are more popular than older ones. Certain other factors are also important determinants of evaluation scores. Our results suggest that an adjustment to the usual departmental rankings may be useful. Eastern Economic Journal (2009) 35, 37–51. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eej.9050042

How To Teach Hicksian Compensation And Duality Using A Spreadsheet Optimizer

Principle of duality and numerical calculation of income and substitution effects under Hicksian Compensation are often left out of intermediate microeconomics courses because they require a rigorous calculus based analysis. But these topics are critically important for understanding consumer behavior. In this paper we use excel solver- a spreadsheet optimizer to demonstrate how these topics can be taught in an undergraduate economics class with appropriate rigor but without using calculus. We also demonstrate how our methodology can be applied to Slutsky Compensation and to complex utility functions.

Student Demand for Streaming Lecture Video: Empirical Evidence from Undergraduate Economics Classes

Real-time lectures recorded on video and streamed over the Internet are a useful supplement to non-classroom learning. However, because recording confines the instructor to the podium, the classroom experience is diminished when there is less social interaction. This study uses choice experiment data to estimate economics students’ willingness to pay for streaming lecture video and instructor movement away from the podium. Results show a divide between students who like the flexibility of catching up on missed classes with video and students who do not. For this former group, video enhances the learning experience and students are willing to pay an additional $90 per course for video. An important source of streaming lecture video’s value to students is its impact on performance. Knowledge equation estimates show a positive correlation between students’use of video and their cumulative final grade.

Plus/minus grading and motivation: an empirical study of student choice and performance

This paper considers whether student motivation might be impacted by the replacement of a straight (A, B, C, D, F) grading system with a plus/minus system (A, A−, B+ … D−, F). The data that are examined are from several undergraduate economics classes at a mid‐sized midwestern university in the United States. The data includes student characteristics, student performance and students’ choices of either a plus/minus or a straight grading system. In this admittedly small‐scale study students, who chose plus/minus grading, were not significantly more motivated than students who opted for straight grading.

A Participatory Classroom Demonstration: Student Demand for 'Going to the Movies'

With the trend toward teaching introductory undergraduate economics classes as part of a College's general education requirements, classroom experiments are one way of engaging students in applying economic principles, apart from traditional lecture based methods. This paper describes a participatory classroom demonstration where students are taught the Law of Demand and at the same time given a review of the mathematical linear functional form. The demonstration can also be used to teach fundamental spreadsheet skills including simple linear regression. The author has been conducting this demonstration for a number of years and as such has gathered data from a number of classes. The growing dataset allows for a comparison between any given class of students weekly demand for 'going to the movies', and a larger college sample.

Economic Man in the Classroom

Economic Man in the Classroom