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.     

The Lasting Effects of an Introductory Economics Course: An Exploratory Study

The author advocates the application of experiential learning in economics courses at the tertiary level. The author evaluates a range of learning methods, both passive and active, in a student survey that provides data on under-graduate attitudes to various class activities. The results indicate a clear student preference for learning activities in economics that can be described as experiential. Analysis of reported student preferences also detects differences according to gender and day or evening class attendance.     

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.     

主流经济学中的“经济人”:内涵演变及其缺陷审视

经济人概念经历了一个逐渐演变的过程:早期是内含特定社会伦理关系的自利人,后来由抽象原子化的经济人所取代,接着演变为更中性的理性人;理性的原意也仅仅体现为实现特定目的的有效手段选择,后来却蜕变为行为的一致性问题.正因为理性内涵的不断演变及其外延的不断扩大过程,以致经济人概念成了一个同义反复;结果,经济人假设在强化经济学分析框架的同时,也使得经济理论与现实之间越来越相脱节.     

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.     

The Effect of Information Technology on Economic Education

The author evaluated the effect on student performance of using a new information technology (IT) enhancement that permits students to participate in the recording of lectures that can be downloaded later from the Internet. The author compared two sections of the same Intermediate Microeconomics class and observed the sample students to be representative; the empirical model accounted for any differences in student characteristics between the comparison and test groups. Model results show that students exposed to the IT enhancement performed about 2 percentage points better on their final exam than did the comparison students; however, the difference was not statistically different from zero. The author concluded that the use of IT appears to not have any substantive influence on student performance.     

The Economic Problem of Happiness: Keynes on Happiness and Economics

By stressing the substantial continuity of vision between John Maynard Keynes’s early unpublished essays and his more mature writings, the paper discusses Keynes’s ethics and focuses on his thoughts about happiness. In particular, we emphasize the anti-utilitarianism of Keynes’s vision and his belief that material wealth is but a precondition to enjoy the possibilities of a good life, and direct attention to problems of incommensurability raised by the multidimensional nature of happiness as considered by Keynes. We then argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect may be a precious counterweight to the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.     

The Economic Problem of Happiness: Keynes on Happiness and Economics

By stressing the substantial continuity of vision between John Maynard Keynes’s early unpublished essays and his more mature writings, the paper discusses Keynes’s ethics and focuses on his thoughts about happiness. In particular, we emphasize the anti-utilitarianism of Keynes’s vision and his belief that material wealth is but a precondition to enjoy the possibilities of a good life, and direct attention to problems of incommensurability raised by the multidimensional nature of happiness as considered by Keynes. We then argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect may be a precious counterweight to the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.     

The Effect of Macro/Micro Course Sequencing on Learning and Attitudes in Principles of Economics

Most of us naturally assume that the more courses a student takes the more he or she will learn. Little has been done, however, to determine just how much additional knowledge or understanding is acquired from economics courses above the introductory level. David Hartman, Director of Undergraduate Economics at Harvard, has taken an important step in attempting to measure the impact of the higher level courses. This atticle reports the results of a study of the effects of intermediate micro and macro courses, field courses, a “graduate-type highly theoretical course,” and a policy-oriented micro course. The report should be of great interest, and will probably engender additional research in other colleges.     

马克思经济学与西方经济学经济危机理论的比较研究

马克思经济学与西方经济学对经济危机都有论述。本文对这两大学派的相关理论进行了梳理,从研究背景、研究方法、研究结论及解决危机的对策等方面进行了对比分析,尤其针对危机产生的根源问题,结合此次国际金融危机进行了剖析。比较马克思经济学与西方经济学的经济危机理论有助于我们更全面、透彻地认识经济危机,尽力避免危机带来的危害。     

The Principles of Economics Course: A Historical Perspective

The author's research provides an amusing and thoughtful account of what has happened to the teaching of the beginning course in economics over the past century and should cause the profession to reflect upon what is known for sure about the relative effectiveness of various methods of presenting the subject to students. As one example, what is the role of close personal contact between teacher and student (as indicated by class size) in providing a favorable environment for learning the art and/or the science of economics?     

演化经济学与新自由主义截然不同的经济政策观

“北京共识”的精髓是试验、创新和因时因地而制宜的经济政策,它与演化经济学的经济政策观之间存在着惊人的联系,但与“华盛顿共识”的新自由主义经济政策观截然对立。本文以“北京共识”的政策经验为背景,通过与新自由主义的比较,较为系统地总结了演化经济学经济政策观的六大原理历史重要与最小限度打乱原理;创造力原理;不确定性与意外原理;复杂与质量型的经济政策主张;系统政策观;试验与政策学习原理。这些原理对转型经济和发展中国家的经济政策制定具有重要的理论指导意义。     

网络组织的经济学分析及其经济优势

网络组织是现代企业参与竞争常常采用的一种组织形式,而传统的竞争法则已逐渐被合作所取代. 在系统分析网络组织相关文献的基础上,应用经济学理论对网络组织进行探源,并结合演化增长理论对网络组织的经济优势进行分析,得出了网络租金的来源.     

畜禽养殖业的环境影响及经济分析

畜禽业污染是我国农业面源污染的主要来源。本文估算了我国畜禽养殖业污染物排放量,阐述了畜禽养殖的环境影响,分析了畜禽污染内在的经济原因,并提出了防治畜禽污染的经济政策和措施,包括发展循环畜牧业、建设现代化的畜禽业物流体系、采纳各种环境经济手段、界定农村公共资源产权、实施优质畜禽产品品牌化战略、鼓励发展环保产业。     

Economic Reforms in Socialist Economics: A Comment on Petr

Abstract:

The pre-WWII approaches to trade unions were mainly based on the theoretical and methodological viewpoints of early institutional economics. Trade unions were conceived of as politico-economic organizations whose members were motivated by relative comparisons, and also were concerned with issues of equity and justice. In the post-war period, there was a major theoretical and methodological shift toward the idea of unions as optimizing economic units with well-defined objective functions, which are optimized subject to purely economic constraints. This conceptual transformation took place mainly through the Dunlop -Ross debate, in which John Dunlop conceived of unions as analogous to business firms, as opposed to Arthur Ross’s institutional and political approach. However, after decades of analytical developments, the current state of trade union theory has not produced very impressive theoretical results. We trace the historical development of the economic analysis of trade unions from a methodological perspective. We also examine the methodological reasons for the dominance of Dunlop’s approach, and the current state of – and the contemporary criticism toward – the established theory. Furthermore, we discuss the contemporary efforts to build a more comprehensive approach to trade union theory and trade union objectives, also incorporating Ross’s institutional and political insights.     

The Doctoral Origins of Economics Faculty and the Education of New Economics Doctorates

For the open economy, the workhorse model in intermediate textbooks still is the Mundell-Fleming model, which basically extends the investment and savings, liquidity preference and money supply (IS-LM) model to open economy problems. The authors present a simple New Keynesian model of the open economy that introduces open economy considerations into the closed economy consensus version and that still allows for a simple and comprehensible analytical and graphical treatment. Above all, their model provides an efficient tool kit for the discussion of the costs and benefits of fixed and flexible exchange rates, which also was at the core of the Mundell-Fleming model.