The Macro Pedagogy Debate: Teaching DSGE to Undergraduates Symposium

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models have become the workhorse of modern macroeconomics and the standard way to communicate ideas among applied macroeconomists. Undergraduate students, however, often remain unaware of their existence. The lack of specialized knowledge can hurt them if they decide to attend graduate school. Indeed, many first-year PhD students discover that the material they are currently learning differs significantly from what they mastered in college. But this can change. In this article, the author describes how to teach a full-fledged macroeconomics course where DSGE models take center stage. He discusses how to arrange such a course within a one-semester time frame, details the main components of instruction, and finishes with some thoughts based on his teaching experience at Macalester College.     

Teaching Macroeconomics After the Crisis: A Survey Among Undergraduate Instructors in Europe and the United States

The Great Recession raised questions of what and how macroeconomists teach at academic institutions around the globe, and what changes in the macroeconomics curriculum should be made. The authors conducted a survey of undergraduate macroeconomics instructors affiliated with colleges and universities in Europe and the United States at the end of 2010. The results show that courses feature very much the same lineups of models as they did before the crisis. A notable exception concerns public debt dynamics, which receives considerably more emphasis. The finer fabric of undergraduate macroeconomics teaching, however, shows substantial shifts: A host of topics related to financial markets has entered the curriculum, and there is more interest in economic history, the history of economic thought, and case studies.     

Class Debates in Intermediate Microeconomics: Social Economics and Pluralist Perspectives

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of class debates in an intermediate-level microeconomics course to introduce early to mid-career undergraduate students to socially embedded and pluralist perspectives, political-economic processes, and policy analyses. Using data from three semesters of class debates in an intermediate microeconomics course, we argue that this activity is a beneficial way to stimulate student interest in social economics, especially in the ethical, political economy, and economic justice aspects of economics and policy. We carried out three allied activities: participation in the debate, a learning self-assessment survey, and a five-page memo providing a balanced analysis of the policy conundrums surrounding the issue under discussion. We discuss three aspects of these class debates relevant to social economists: student attention to processes of knowledge construction, cognizance of power in socioeconomic life, and engagement with economic justice and ethics.     

Undergraduate Economics Education in English and Welsh Universities

A professor experienced in both the United Kingdom's and the United States' educational systems, the author describes and compares the two countries' economic education objectives and practices.     

Research in Economic Education and the Teaching of Economics

Input cost and output value are depicted in a diagram of vertical slices of the production function surface.     

Teaching Methods in U.S. Undergraduate Economics Courses

In 1995 and 2000, the authors surveyed academic economists in the United States to establish how economics is taught in four types of undergraduate courses. The authors report overall findings from the 2000 survey and compare these results with the aggregate findings for respondents from all types of colleges and universities in the 1995 survey. The basic finding is that, despite some indications of increased emphasis and interest in teaching over this period, the teaching methods in these courses have changed very little over the past five years and are still dominated by “chalk and talk” classroom presentations.     

西方经济学本科教学改革探讨

西方经济学是经济管理类本科专业的基础性必修课程,其教学效果的好坏直接影响学生对其他相关课程的掌握程度。然而当前一些本科院校西方经济学课程的教学效果并不理想。如何对该课程进行科学革新,更好地发挥其基础性地位,进而帮助学生更好地掌握专业知识,是本课程教学改革的主要目标。     

《产业经济学》教学内容改革探索

针对学生经常反映《产业经济学》理论性太强、比较难理解的现状,在重新修订课程教学大纲、培养目标的基础上,我们选定了合适的教材,重点对课程内容进行了甄选。同时,在教学过程中突出重点、讲透难点,以案例讲解、产经新闻解读方式,使课程主要理论内容与现实产业发展紧密结合,有效地提高了学生学习兴趣,改善了教学效果。     

The Financial Crisis and the Death (or Hegemony) of Development Economics

Development economics was the study of how to create the plumbing that would allow developing economies to become developed. The financial crisis leads us to question whether industrialized countries have the plumbing problem solved and thus leads us to question whether we need a development economics that is separate from macroeconomics. Indeed, it even leads us to question whether development economics should take as its goal the creation of the institutional plumbing that industrialized countries currently have. The consequence will be a blending of concerns that have been central in developing economies with the standard macro models. The blending can be seen as either the death of development economics or the hegemony of development economics.     

Women and Minorities in Introductory Economics Textbooks: 1974 to 1984

The authors conducted a painstaking review of widely used economics textbooks to determine if or how issues relating to race and gender are treated. In doing so, the authors also shed light on the nature of the treatment of these issues.     

Trends in Undergraduate Economics Degrees, 1991 to 2001

The author reviews and recommends Alan S. Blinder's Hard Heads, Soft Hearts: Tough-Minded Economics for a Just Society.     

Economics Goes to Hollywood: Using Classic Films and Documentaries to Create an Undergraduate Economics Course

The authors describe an interdisciplinary approach to teaching economics that uses a powerful contemporary medium, the motion picture, to establish the context for teaching elementary economics concepts. The plots and subplots in many films can be used to illustrate problems and issues that are amenable to economic analysis. They suggest how these films can be sequenced to create a general studies course for nonmajors.     

基于能力拓展的财经类本科生《营销学》教学改革研究

从拓展学生专业能力的角度而言,财经类本科生《市场营销学》教学改革首先要重视对学生的以“态度”、“细节”和“习惯”为基础的学习规划能力的培养。在此基础上,《营销学》教学内容要适应服务型经济对市场营销人才的要求;教学模式要突出互动性;应从现实可能性出发,切实加强《营销学》教学的实践环节;必须建立和完善本科生《营销学》学习成绩评价系统。     

完善教学设计 提高本科教学质量——以《国际金融》教学设计为例

完善的教学设计包括教学的版面设计、内容设计和方法设计三个环节。多年的国际金融本科教学实践证明，完善的教学设计是促进教师提高本科教学水平的重要途径，是激发学生学习动力的重要手段，是提高本科教学质量的关键。     

Using Field Experiments to Change the Template of How We Teach Economics

In this article, the author explains why field experiments can improve what we teach and how we teach economics. Economists no longer operate as passive observers of economic phenomena. Instead, they participate actively in the research process by collecting data from field experiments to investigate the economics of everyday life. This change can be shown to students by presenting them with evidence from field experiments. Field experiments related to factor markets, behavioral economics, and discrimination are presented to explain how this approach works across different economic content. The three questions that are highlighted are the following: (1) Why do women get paid less than men in labor markets? (2) How can we use behavioral economics to motivate teachers? (3) What seven words can end third-degree price discrimination?     

Alternative Ways to Teach and Learn Economics: Writing,Quantitative Reasoning,and Oral Communication

The authors describe an interesting attempt by one university to require of students demonstrated competencies in the areas suggested by the title—writing as freshmen, quantitative reasoning as sophomores and juniors, and oral communication as juniors or seniors. Quantitative measures of the effectiveness of the program are not provided.     

A Simple Model to Teach Business Cycle Macroeconomics for Emerging Market and Developing Economies

The canonical neoclassical model is insufficient to understand business cycle fluctuations in emerging market and developing economies. The author reformulates the model proposed by Aguiar and Gopinath (2007 Ahumada, I., and F. Butler. 2009. La enseñanza de la economía en México. Working Paper 672. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. [Google Scholar]) in a simple setting that can be used to teach business cycle macroeconomics for emerging market and developing economies at the undergraduate level. The simplified model is employed for qualitatively explaining facts such as the highly countercyclicality of the trade balance and the higher volatility of output and consumption compared with those observed in advanced countries.     

Revisiting unemployment in intermediate macroeconomics: A new approach for teaching Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides

The authors present a version of the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model of unemployment that is accessible to undergraduates and preserve the dynamic structure of the original model. The model is solvable in closed form using basic algebra and admits a graphical representation useful for illustrating a variety of comparative statics. They show how to use the model to teach the effects of labor market policies, advancements in Internet technology, and labor market dynamics. Supplementary materials such as teaching tips, a classroom experiment, and online resources including a JavaScript-based simulation tool, U.S. data used to make figures, and practice problems are provided.     

The BMW Model: A New Framework for Teaching Monetary Economics

Abstract: Although the IS/LM-AS/AD model is still the central tool of macroeconomic teaching in most macroeconomic textbooks, it has been criticized by several economists. Colander (1995) demonstrated that the framework is logically inconsistent, Romer (2000) showed that it is unable to deal with a monetary policy that uses the interest rate as its operating target, and Walsh criticized that it is not well suited for an analysis of inflation targeting. The authors present a framework that develops the Romer approach into a very simple but, at the same time, comprehensive macroeconomic model. In spite of its simplicity, it can carry the main insights of the New Keynesian macroeconomics to an intermediate level and deal with issues like inflation targeting, monetary policy rules, and central bank credibility.