A Statistical Interpretation of Student Evaluation Feedback

This article deals with the same basic subject—student evaluation of teaching—covered by Marlin and Niss in this issue. Dilts's approach is quite different, however. Readers will want to compare the model he used with that suggested by Marlin and Niss. One of Dilts's major findings is that “student course evaluations are directly associated with grade expectations and inversely associated with the degree to which the course is required.” In his paper he proposes a method that should help “to control for factors that distort evaluation.”     

Evaluations and Grades: A Simultaneous Framework

Using a simultaneous framework and on the basis of data for a single institution, the author concludes that the “oft reported positive effect of student's expected grades on [student evaluation of teaching] in a single equation regression has been misinterpreted” and that “the link between grades and [student evaluations] works in the opposite direction: better faculty improve student performance.”     

Some Implications of Student Evaluation of Teachers

Professor Mirus asserts th at there is a need to explore the extent to which student evaluation of teachers is subject to manipulation by the instructor. He comments on the possible impact on teacher ratings of increasing section sizes, scheduling of classes during “odd hours,” the type of material taught, and whether or not the course is required. His statistical analysis revealed that requiring a course had no negative impact, nor did class size, scheduling classes during odd hours, or giving courses a quantitative orientation. There was a “strong indication,” however, that the expected grade was a major determinate of the professor's rating.     

Some Evidence on the Value of Instructors in Teaching Economic Principles

Using data collected from three universities, the authors of this article attempt to show that student attitude is “an important dimension of learning” and that the quality of instruction is indeed associated with attitude. The attitude referred to here is that of student opinions toward economics (as measured by Karstensson's “Questionnaire on Student Attitude Toward Economics”) rather than opinions on economic issues. Posttest scores on the TUCE and the attitude instrument were the dependent variables, while scores on the TUCE pretest, ACT scores, sex, major field, economics background, university attended, and quality of instruction were used as independent variables.     

The Relative Effectiveness of Three Methods of Teaching Principles of Economics

Research on the impact of learning style preferences is very rare in economic education. This article reports the results of a project in which the student's preferred learning style and the instructor's teaching style were included as variables in a regression model. Those favoring independent styles achieved significantly more than students favoring dependent styles. Changes in student attitudes towards economics were also taken into account. The researchers assert that the addition of these variables also “greatly increases the power of the model to explain variation in student achievement and attitudes concerning economics.”     

A Preliminary Report on the Efficiency of Introductory Economics Courses

This article is the first report of a project in which the efficiency of the introductory economics course at Queen's University in Canada is being examined. Finding that the TUCE “relies too heavily on a knowledge of U.S. institutions,” Crowley and Wilton assembled a set of questions from several sources (including TUCE items adapted to the Canadian situation). Taking into account the student's initial understanding of economics, sex, major field, student year, the instructor's ability to arouse and maintain interest, and the amount of time spent on the course, the authors employ a regression model with student score on the posttest as the dependent variable. Their findings, although preliminary, add to the growing body of research on the introductory course and suggest some interesting possibilities. Among these possibilities is the fact that some “natural” learning may occur among students not exposed to a formal economics course.     

A Note on Attitude as a Factor in Learning Economics

Although one might naturally assume that students interested in economics will learn more in an introductory course than those not interested in the subject, this assumption had to be tested. Using a specially designed “Questionnaire on Student Attitude Toward Economics” on a pretest and posttest basis, and accounting for previous course work, the student's verbal and quantitative skills, and student program requirements, Karstensson and Vedder employed linear multiple regression analysis and found a positive relationship between precourse attitude and course grade. Changes in student attitude which occurred during the course were also analyzed.     

End-of-Course Evaluations as Indicators of Student Learning and Instructor Effectiveness

There are two aspects of this article that readers should find particularly interesting. First, Marlin and Niss provide additional data on the question of student evaluations of professors and courses. Second, they suggest the use of canonical correlation as an ideal way of facing the problems confronted in analyzing the educational production function. The authors assert that “canonical correlation would seem to answer many of the problems encountered in previous single-equation models….” Their research suggests that student evaluations can be used as surrogates for direct evaluations and that the former “do indeed measure the level of teacher input.”     

Introduction: Postnational Politics in the European Union

During the Cold War, “buffer” or “bastion” seemed a popular metaphor to describe Turkey. After the Cold War, “bridge,” (and, to some extent, the “crossroad”) metaphor started to dominate the Turkish foreign policy D??course. This article traces the use of “bridge” metaphor in this D??course in the post-Cold War period by the Turkish foreign policy elite. It develops two arguments. First, the word bridge is a “metaphor of vision” combining Turkey's perceived geographical exceptionalism with an identity and a role at the international level. As a “metaphor of vision,” the employment of the word “bridge” highlighted Turkey's liminality and justified some of its foreign policy actions to Eurasia and then to the Middle East. Second, because the bridge metaphor was used in different context to justify different foreign policy choices, its meaning has changed, illustrating that metaphors are not static constructs. It concludes by Say?ng that the continuous use of “bridge” metaphor might reinforce Turkey's “liminality,” placing Turkey in a less classifiable category than the regular “othering” practices.     

A Discrete-Time Hazard Analysis of the Role of Gender in Persistence in the Economics Major

So much has been done in terms of measuring the impact of economics courses on student knowledge and understanding of facts, concepts and principles, and so little research has dealt with the possible effects on student political attitudes, that this study by Scott and Rothman should be of great interest to economics instructors. The authors address themselves to George Stigler's assertion that “the education of an economist makes the person who receives it more conservative.” They report on the use of their own “Social Opinion Questionnaire” and how it was employed to investigate “the different effects, if any, introductory economics and introductory psychology have on opinions related to economic issues.”     

IS ECONOMIC GROWTH GOOD FOR THE POOR? TRACKING LOW INCOMES USING GENERAL MEANS

We propose the use of an alternative methodology to track low incomes based on Atkinson's “equally distributed equivalent income” functions or “general means” and present a new characterization to justify their application. To evaluate the effects of growth on lower incomes, growth rates are compared for two income standards: the ordinary mean and a low‐income‐sensitive general mean. The question is: How closely related are these two variables? After estimating the growth elasticity, we find that it is not significantly different from zero. Thus, it cannot be concluded that poorer incomes grow proportionately to increases in the average income.     

Book Reviews

The evaluative function of local public actors has been exacerbated in recent years with the individualisation of social policies. One of their tasks is to select the appropriate informational basis in order to assess welfare claimants. Amartya Sen's capability approach offers a theoretical and normative framework to analyse this evaluative function. In particular, it insists on the importance of “objectivating” people's preferences with reference to their capabilities. The weight that is to be attached to individual preferences in the course of public action can be a matter of controversy. Claimants “capability for voice”, we argue, should be developed. This capability refers to their effective possibility to express their concerns with regard to the choice of the informational basis. It is argued that local institutions prohibiting capability for voice will produce adaptive preferences, whereas procedural institutions promoting reflexive public evaluation and capability for voice will result in a fairer wording of individual preferences. At a situated level, the way to connect subjective and objective information when assessing people very much depends on the position of the evaluator. Several illustrations show that the fairness of evaluation, and its impact on the people's capability set, depend on this positional perspective.     

Adding links,adding persons,and adding structures: Using Sen's frameworks

Abstract

This essay is a comment on “Sen on Freedom and Gender Justice,” by Mozaffar Qizilbash, which appeared in Feminist Economics Volume 11, Number 3, November 2005.

Building on the 2003 double special issue of Feminist Economics entitled “Amartya Sen's Work and Ideas,” this paper responds to the review essay by Mozaffar Qizilbash. It identifies and illustrates various possible evaluations of a theoretical system, including that it has acknowledged strengths, unrecognized strengths, remediable gaps or failings, or structural faults. The paper then looks at Sen's system as a theoretical basis for “human development”– in particular in relation to personhood, emotions, and psychological interdependence – and argues that it points in directions required for economic and social analysis, including towards theories of care, but is not itself a sufficient treatment. The paper suggests deepening Sen's system by connecting to other important languages of analysis concerning the structuring of attitudes, emotions, felt well-being, public reasoning, and politics.     

Student Evaluations of Teaching and the Cognitive Level of Economics Courses

The Journal of Economic Education of Fall 1973 was devoted to the subject of student evaluations of teachers. That issue has engendered a great many papers, only a few of which can be published in the JEE because of space limitations. Michael Everett's report is not a mere replication of previous research on the subject, but adds a new dimension—the possible effect of student evaluations on the cognitive level of college economics courses. His finding that students may favor professors who emphasize lower level cognitive material will surely be distressing to many teachers, and should cause sober reflection on the part of administrators and others involved in establishing faculty evaluation procedures and policies.     

EU Banks Rating Assignments: Is There Heterogeneity between New and Old Member Countries?

We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether “old” and “new” EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether “new” ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than “old” ones. We find that country‐specific factors (in the form of heterogeneous intercepts) are a crucial determinant of ratings. Whilst “new” EU countries typically have lower ratings than “old” ones, after controlling for financial variables we also discover that all countries have significantly different intercepts, confirming our prior belief. This intercept heterogeneity suggests that each country's rating is assigned uniquely, after controlling for differences in financial factors, which may reflect differences in country risk and the legal and regulatory framework that banks face (such as foreclosure laws). In addition, we find that ratings may respond differently to the liquidity and operating expenses to operating income variables across countries. Typically ratings are more responsive to the former and less sensitive to the latter for “new” EU countries compared with “old” EU countries.     

Marx's critique of “eternal” political economy: how Mill is alien to Marx's attacks

Marx deplored political economy's claims to establish “eternal” – or “natural” – laws. This paper seeks to defend John Stuart Mill from his critique. It argues that, contrary to what Marx alleged, these two economists have a great deal more in common on this topic than is frequently realised. Both on the theoretical level and on the political one, Mill's views about the relativity of capitalism seem very close to Marx's. This paper also suggests that Marx may have ignored Mill's insistence on the relativity of economic theories because it may have challenged his own “scientific socialism”.     

Teaching Marginal Cost,Supply, and Efficiency with an English-Auction Experiment

Using a discrete time control model, the authors suggest that faculty may be able to improve their teaching effectiveness by a reallocation of the inputs devoted to teaching (e.g., using student evaluations early in the course), by increasing the level of the resources used in teaching, or by changing the characteristics of the inputs (possibly through such things as teaching practicums, seminars, or sabbaticals). Alternatively, reducing the instructor's opportunity cost of the resources devoted to teaching may increase teaching effectiveness (i.e., reducing the research requirements for promotion). Empirical estimates of the effectiveness of these strategies are not presented.     

Political Economy of Course Evaluations

Professors Hansen and Kelley suggest practical guidelines for implementing course evaluation systems, drawing upon their experience at the University of Wisconsin. They develop a model to conceptualize course evaluations in the context of the professor's decision-making framework, focusing upon the allocation of time between teaching and research. Costs and benefits associated with collecting evaluations are considered, and ways of minimizing the former and maximizing the latter are suggested.     

A note on Johansen's cointegration procedure when trends are present

This note discusses some issues that arise when Johansen's (1991) framework is used to analyze cointegrating relationships among variables with deterministic linear time trends. We cistinguish “stochastic” and “deterministic” cointegration, arguing that stochastic cointegration is sufficient for the existence of an error correction representation and that it is often the hypothesis of interest in empirical applications. We show that Johansen's (1991) method, which includes only a constant term in the estimated regession system, does not allow for stochastic cointegration. We propose to modify Johansen's method by including a vector of deterministic linear trends in the estimated model. We present tabulated critical values of the maximal eigenvalue and trace statistics appropriate for this case. We discuss the circumstances under which our modification may be useful.     

Intersectoral default contagion: A multivariate Poisson autoregression analysis

This paper analyzes credit rating default dependencies in a multisectoral framework. Using Mergent's FISD database, we study the default series in the U.S. over the last two decades, disaggregating defaults by industry-sector group. During this period, two main waves of default occurred: the implosion of the “dot-com” bubble and the global financial crisis. We estimate a Multivariate Autoregressive Conditional Poisson model according to the biweekly number of defaults that occurred in different sectors of the economy from 1996 to 2015. We discuss the contagion effect between sectors in two ways: the degree of transmission of the probability of default from one sector to another, i.e., the “infectivity” of the sector, and the degree of contagion of one sector from another, i.e., the “vulnerability” of the sector. Our results show differences between the sectors' relations during the first and second part of our sample. We add some exogenous variables to the analysis and evaluate their contribution to the goodness of fit.