Learning by Trial and Error: A Case for Moot Courts

This article describes the development of a computer tutorial for use in a history of economic ideas class. An early version of the tutorial contained ten topics, ranging from early Mercantilist thought to Jevons's marginal utility analysis. These concepts were presented in three ways: verbally, graphically, and in summary form. Student critiques were used to extend the content and revise the mode of presentation.     

Joint Profit Maximization,Negotiation, and the Determinacy of Price in Bilateral Monopoly

Many economists teach that joint profit maximization leads to a determinate quantity and indeterminate price of the intermediate good traded. Using isoprofit curves, the Truetts argue that only one price is consistent with rational behavior and the goal of profit maximization.     

On the concepts of returns to scale

We clarify various concepts of returns to scale scattered in the literature by presenting their six different concepts. We find the global relationship among them and apply some of the results to determine the shape of the average cost curves.     

The Economics of American Higher Education,ed., William E. Becker and Darrell R. Lewis

The author describes a protocol for classroom experiments for courses that introduce undergraduates to signaling games. Signaling games are conceptually difficult because, when analyzing the game, students are not naturally inclined to think in probabilistic, Bayesian terms. The experimental design explicitly presents the posterior frequencies of the unobserved events. The protocol's emphasis on the posterior enhances convergence to the equilibrium prediction, relative to a treatment in which posterior frequencies are not explicitly computed. This convergence reinforces the development of the theory in subsequent lecture periods.     

药品使用评估的介绍及其借鉴意义

利用文献材料介绍药品使用评估（drug utilization review,DUR）的主要内容。在过去的几十年中,DUR改变了美国的药品使用模式,使之演化为一个控制费用并提升医疗质量的有效的工具。DUR对我国药品监管部门的工作,特别是医疗保险制度的实施和药品安全监督工作具有借鉴意义。     

Using a Simple Contest to Illustrate Mechanism Design

This article describes a simple classroom activity that illustrates how economic theory can be used for mechanism design. The rules for a set of contests are presented; the results typically obtained from these contests illustrate how the prize structure can be manipulated in order to produce a particular outcome. Specifically, this activity is designed to show how changing the prize structure can impact both the contestants’ average efforts and the effort level of the hardest-working contestant. The activity can be run in a 50-minute class, has instructions that fit on a single piece of paper, and, although it can be run in large classes, requires only six students.     

Measuring resource inequalities: The concepts and methodology for an area-based Gini coefficient

Although inequalities in income and expenditure are relatively well researched, comparatively little attention has been paid, to date, to inequalities in resource use. This is clearly a shortcoming when it comes to developing informed policies for sustainable consumption and social justice. This paper describes an indicator of inequality in resource use called the AR-Gini. The AR-Gini is an area-based measure of resource inequality that estimates inequalities between neighbourhoods with regard to the consumption of specific consumer goods. It is also capable of estimating inequalities in the emissions resulting from resource use, such as carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, and solid waste arisings from material resource use. The indicator is designed to be used as a basis for broadening the discussion concerning ‘food deserts’ to inequalities in other types of resource use. By estimating the AR-Gini for a wide range of goods and services we aim to enhance our understanding of resource inequalities and their drivers, identify which resources have highest inequalities, and to explore trends in inequalities. The paper describes the concepts underlying the construction of the AR-Gini and its methodology. Its use is illustrated by pilot applications (specifically, men's and boys' clothing, carpets, refrigerators/freezers and clothes washer/driers). The results illustrate that different levels of inequality are associated with different commodities. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some possible policy implications of the AR-Gini.     

Teaching the Concept of Demand: Another Approach

Using a market with which the students themselves are familiar, the author describes a lecture exercise that helps explicate the concepts of demand, elasticity, and price setting.     

Inverting the Classroom: A Gateway to Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment

Asserting that “elementary teachers are going to become increasingly involved with economic concepts, and that economic education at the elementary level is at an important developmental state,” Professor Ramsett explains how economics can be included in the elementary school curriculum without taking other subject matter out, and suggests approaches to the training of elementary teachers. He describes some innovative techniques being used at North Dakota's New School of Behavioral Studies, illustrates methods for motivating pupils, shows how economic concepts can be related to other subjects (such as arithmetic), and calls for cooperation between educators and liberal arts faculties in preparing the elementary teacher.     

The Use of Course Evaluation Scores to Influence Teaching and Research Activities

The issue of course and teacher evaluations is one which continues to engender great interest. In this article, Paul Kipps comments on the Hansen-Kelley model as presented in the Fall 1973 issue of this journal, and then presents his own modifications and extensions of the model. These modifications deal mainly with the shape of the indifference curves and the slope of the output possibilities curve. The Kipps analysis casts doubts on the effectiveness of efforts to make significant improvements in the teaching output of research-oriented professors, and in the research work of teaching-oriented faculty members through voluntary incentive systems.     

Competitive Equilibrium and Classroom Pit Markets

Efforts to show the relevance of economic concepts early in a student's education can prevent the “economics is not very useful” attitude from setting in. The author extends the work of Holt to describe a pit-market experiment used to illustrate the concept of competitive equilibrium. In addition to detailed instructions as to how to set up and conduct a pit-market experiment, the author discusses features of the data and provides accompanying materials, including software for the display of the data.     

Your Place in Space: Classroom Experiment on Spatial Location Theory

The authors detail an urban economics experiment that is easily run in the classroom. The experiment has a flexible design that allows the instructor to explore how congestion, zoning, public transportation, and taxation levels determine the bid–rent function. Heterogeneous agents in the experiment compete for land use using a simple auction mechanism. Using the data that is collected, a bid–rent function is derived, and the experimental treatment is altered over the course of three sessions to uncover core concepts in urban economics. Moreover, this provides a tangible experience that can be used to help undergraduates relate to urban issues such as the steep rent gradient found around many larger colleges and universities.     

Economic Education in Japan at the University Level

The author describes from personal experience and observation economic education in Japan at the university level. As is true almost universally, Japanese students pursue higher education with different motives and aspirations and have a variety of institutions from which to choose. What they obtain in return depends upon the faculty with which they study and their own perseverance.     

Factor price equalization and a factor offer analysis of international trade

This paper presents a general equilibrium analysis of international trade which exploits the univalence condition of the factor price equalization theorem to derive such concepts as factor trade indifference curves, factor offer curves, and factoral terms of trade in the factor space, parallel to the traditional development in the commodity space. The analysis accommodates some instances of variable factor supplies. It also serves to synthesize the comparative statics of factor growth in the standard two-factor as well as the multi-factor models of trade.     

Literature-related discovery (LRD): Water purification

Literature-related discovery (LRD) is the linking of two or more literature concepts that have heretofore not been linked (i.e., disjoint), in order to produce novel, interesting, plausible, and intelligible knowledge (i.e., potential discovery). LRD has two main components that differ in their methodological approach to discovery: Literature-based discovery (LBD) produces potential discovery through analysis of the technical literature alone; Literature-assisted discovery (LAD) produces potential discovery through both analysis of the technical literature and use of selected authors of that literature. These authors generate potential discovery as proposers, workshop/panel participants, or in other active roles.The open discovery systems (ODS) component of LRD starts with a problem to be solved, and generates solutions to that problem through potential discovery. We have been using ODS LRD to identify potential treatments or preventative actions for challenging medical problems, among myriad other applications. The previous four papers in this Special Issue describe the application of ODS LRD (specifically, the ODS LBD variant) to Raynaud's Phenomenon (RP), cataracts, Parkinson's Disease (PD), and Multiple Sclerosis (MS).One goal of the present study was to determine whether LRD could be successfully applied (for the first time) to a challenging non-medical technical problem to generate potential discovery. The second goal was to explore the use of both LRD variants (LBD and LAD) to a non-medical technical problem. We selected the problem of water purification (WP) because of universal applicability and sponsor interest.We used LRD to identify purification concepts, technology components and systems that could lead to improved water purification techniques. We accessed many disparate disciplines to identify purification concepts from literatures not normally associated with water purification. We used two LBD approaches, Cluster Filtering and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), to search for potential discovery. We generated voluminous amounts of potential discovery, and believe we have only scratched the surface of what is possible. We also ran a short experiment using LAD to identify experts associated with potential discovery concepts, and use their expertise to generate potential discovery for water purification.     

The automobile industry and new trade theory: A classroom experiment

In this study, the author describes a classroom experiment on new trade theory appropriate for undergraduate international economics and trade courses. Students portray U.S. and Japanese automobile manufacturers with different average cost schedules. There are five rounds in the experiment, starting with autarky in the 1960s and ending with the Great Recession of 2008–9. In each round, the instructor announces a market price and quantity and then each producer calculates its market share, average cost and profit; and makes its shutdown decision. By varying the market price and size, the experiment illustrates the gains from intra-industry trade and also how efficiency gains and economic recession impact individual firm performance.     

Framing biomimetics in a strategic orientation perspective (biopreneuring)

This paper discusses how design originally rooted in biology can be translated into applications outside its original domain (biomimetics), and thus become strategically important for commercial organisations. This paper will also discuss how concepts from organisation and management theory can help conceptualise opportunity exploration and exploitation of bio-inspired designs to commercial applications (biopreneuring). Until now, research on biomimetics has primarily focused on translating design from biology to technology, leaving the application of biomimetics for business purposes somewhat overlooked. This paper fills some of that void. Business orientation literature is applied to identify some of the key strategic aspects associated with commercial translations. In closing, this paper briefly sketches out some key implications for business research and for affected decision-makers.     

Multilevel assessment of diversity,innovation and selection in the solar photovoltaic industry

We undertake an empirical study of the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry using evolutionary-economic concepts. Experts regard solar energy as a realistic option for sustainable energy provision in the long run. We identify the innovation and selection forces that drive the changes in the solar PV industry. In addition, a quantitative analysis using diversity indexes is performed at four levels of the solar PV industry: countries, technologies, applications and companies. Richness (number of alternatives) and evenness are calculated in order to describe and identify the changes that have occurred over time at each level. Most remarkable is that evenness has increased at the company level and decreased at the other three levels. We draw a number of policy conclusions.     

On the continuity of expected utility

Summary We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for weak (semi)continuity of the expected utility. Such conditions are also given for the weak compactness of the domain of the expected utility. Our results have useful applications in cooperative solution concepts in economies and games with differential information, in noncooperative games with differential information and in principal-agent problems.Work done while visiting the Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.     

Improving the industrial anticipation of current scientific activity

There is now widespread realization that new scientific findings are the foundations of much of tomorrow's technical and economic growth. How might one shorten awareness of scientific progress and possible applications? Several concepts are suggested—a) speculations of scientists involved, b) analysis of current government funding of research projects (per Klingman), c) retrospective analysis of the evolution of a scientific field to identify precedent influential factors, d) normative forecasts of scientists reviewing their field (“what could be”), e) normative forecasts of scientists seeking support for new work (“what should be”), and f) analysis of current “artifacts” of science. It is argued that vigorous study along these lines could speed some industrial and governmental response to ongoing work on scientific frontiers.