The undergraduate economics coursework of elementary and secondary school teachers

Abstract

In this study, the authors analyze the undergraduate economics coursework of U.S. college graduates who became pre-college classroom teachers. The results show that teachers successfully completed on average the equivalent of about half an economics course in their undergraduate coursework. About 6 in 10 teachers earned no course credits in economics. Of teachers certified to teach social studies—the ones most likely to teach economics—40 percent did not take an undergraduate course in economics. The percentages are 19 percent for high school teachers, 48 percent for middle school teachers, and 76 percent for elementary school teachers. High school teachers certified to teach social studies completed an average of only about one and a half economics courses as undergraduates.     

Change and Continuity

Although there is considerable evidence that efforts to teach economic concepts to elementary school children are increasing, little research is being done at this level. William Walstad's article is, then, one of those rare pieces that reports the results of a controlled study in the elementary grades. In addition, it includes a discussion of research design and statistical techniques, and considers some of the problems one encounters in this type of research (such as problems in parameter estimation). The author measured the effects of a teacher in-service program that provided instruction in economics as applied to the Unified Sciences and Mathematics for Elementary School program. The new Test of Economic Literacy was administered to the teachers, while their pupils took the Test of Elementary Economics. Control groups were also tested. Pupil attitudes toward economics were measured, and it was found that achievement in economics had a direct influence on attitude toward economics. Walstad concludes that “teachers and students gain substantial benefits from the in-service program in practical economic problem solving.”     

民族地区高等院校区域经济学教学方法探讨

民族地区高校经济学专业普遍开设有区域经济学课程,在其教学过程中存在着教材选择与补充的问题、师资力量弱、教法与考核简单、缺乏实践教学,应结合实际科学设置课程,着力补充教材实践案例提高学生学习的积极性、建立一支结构合理的师资队伍、加大现代化教学硬件设施的投入,努力改进教学方法、加大实践教学的力度,不断提高教学质量,培养民族地区经济和社会发展的适应型人才。     

Narrativity and identity in the representation of the economic agent

We critically survey explicit discussions of the narrativity of economic agents by economists. Narrativity broadly refers to the way humans construct and use stories, notably to define their personal identity. We borrow from debates outside of economics to provide the critical dimension of our survey. Most contributions on the narrativity of economic agents do not discuss one another. To establish communication, we suggest a structure of oppositions that characterize these contributions taken as a whole. These oppositions are notably characterized by three tensions: in terms of methodological attitudes (‘scientism’ vs. ‘humanism’), of underlying theories of personal identity postulating the existence of a unique sense of self or not (‘diachronicity’ vs. ‘episodicity’) and of the normative implications of narrativity (‘welfare-increasing’ vs. ‘welfare-decreasing’). The main goal is to clarify the structure of opposite positions within a more or less explicit debate about the identity of individuals in economics.     

The economic agent as rule maker and rule user: <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus</Emphasis>

The paper discusses the micro foundations of evolutionary economics, introducing a unified concept of the economic agent as a rule maker and rule user. Based on recent findings of the neuronal, cognitive and behavioral sciences, Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus emerges as an alternative to Homo Oeconomicus. A taxonomy of rules distinguishing between cognitive, behavioral and blueprint rules and a set of theoretical propositions related to the structure and evolution of those rules are suggested.JEL Classification: A 12, B 41, B 52, B 53, D 00, D 64, D 80, D 83, E 11, L20The present paper had its origin in a research project on The Interdisciplinary Foundations of Economic Decision Making supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation during 1978-1980. The core of that work was a brain model whose architecture also serves as a corner stone for this paper. Since then there have been substantial developments in the respective areas; some of the major findings of the more recent research in the neuronal, cognitive and related sciences are discussed and integrated into the present paper. - I gratefully acknowledge insightful comments and criticisms from Georg D. Blind. Some ideas were discussed during my tenure as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Queensland, in fall 2003, and I wish to record my appreciation of the hospitality during that visit. Particular thanks for the inspiring discussions go to Peter Earl, John Foster, and, as always, Jason Potts. Special thanks are due to Juli Lessmann and Charles R. McCann for their thoughtful corrections of my English prose and their editorial help. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Why Excel?

Advanced Placement economics leaves thousands of high school students with a misleading impression of modern economics. The courses fail to cover key sources of growth and prosperity, including private ownership, dynamic competition, and entrepreneurship. The tools of public choice economics are totally ignored. Government is modeled as a corrective device available to impose ideal solutions. Market failure is covered, but there is no such thing as government failure. The macroeconomics course reflects the simplistic 1960s Keynesian view of stabilization policy. Time lags, incentive effects, secondary effects of budget deficits, and other factors that complicate effective use of stabilization policy are almost entirely ignored. In contrast, the 20 Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics of the Council for Economic Education illustrate what a balanced course in modern economics would look like.     

On Closed Systems and the Language of Economic Discourse

This article addresses a few of the major points identified by Tony Lawson in his book Reality and Economics(Routledge 1997). Traditional economic models are profoundly closed, emanating from reasoning processes that are both deductivist and positivist by nature. Here, individuals are prescribed to behave according to mechanical, socially abstracted fashions that, in fact, belie any semblance of real human choice. Moreover, as Lawson observes, relationality in these models is strictly external, in that the natures of individuals are not affected by their participation in market activity. Under these conditions, models can be easily constructed by which markets yield unique equilibrium outcomes, whereby the constancy of the conjunctions of events yield law-like economic assertions.

Instead, Lawson embraces a critical realist perspective that posits human behavior to be both structured and internallyrelational, i.e., where interactions with others can affect the very natures of those individuals. As such, human relations can be temporally situated in the context of structured social contracts, while still embodying the organic elements from which those agents and structures can be reproduced and transformed.

From these principles, this essay explores some recent work in Keynesian and Post Keynesian thought. In addition, this critical realist framework considers some developments in New Keynesian Economics and Endogenous Growth Theory.     

Promotion and Coevolutionary Dynamics in Contemporary Capitalism

We characterize the dynamics of contemporary capitalist societies as emerging from the coevolution of five different subsystems: the intimate realm of individuals, the market, the state, civil society, and nature. We highlight a specific coevolution mechanism between some of these subsystems, which we call promotion. The insights from this coevolution approach are twofold. On one hand, from the ontological and heuristic perspectives, we argue that our proposal opens the possibility for constructing a general, interpretative framework in evolutionary economics. On the other hand, from a theoretical-explanatory perspective, we detect certain coevolution paths that may engender global pathologies in capitalist societies. We also suggest that future research may explore some normative implications of this approach, as well as alternative methodological strategies to develop it.     

University education in future studies— a mark III critique: Part II

In 1970 an initial survey was made of futures courses at university level based on forty courses that could be located in the United States and Canada [Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 2, 133–148 (1970)]. This was replicated during 1970–1972 on approximately 200 North American courses and reported changes in the field at the Third World Future Research Conference in Bucharest, September 1972 (Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change, 4, 387–407 [1973]). A third interation was funded by the World Institute Council and published in abstracted form with their permission here. The conclusions to be drawn from some six years of analysis of such courses, and drawn especially from the specifics of the 300 courses in the third iteration, can be lumped under five main headings: (1) All disciplines are to some degree finally alerted to the future implications of both their research and their teaching. (2) There remains still much “froth and nonsense” in futures courses. How to control this and encourage lively creativity is a complex problem-especially since the intellectual image of futurism today is not that high! (3) There appears to be no reliable sociocultural change theory backing future studies and there is precious little solid theory backing future studies and there is precious little solid theory in the field itself-offset by some progress in methodology. (4) Despite these strictures, if all future-oriented courses in American/Canadian universities were lumped together (future Studies per se; technology forecasting/assessment; policy sciences; peace studies; demography; environmental/ecology courses; general systems theory/system analysis/system dynamics; mathematical modelling and game theory; eschatology; utopian literature and science fiction; even black studies and women's courses) the total might approach 5000 and it is still growing, as is popular and academic understanding of the necessity “to plan ahead” in this period of human malaise. (5) Informal education of varied worth, from free swinging communes to middle management cram courses conducted by think-tanks, may turn out to be more useful in future-oriented advanced education than that which takes place in formal “walled” traditional institutions.     

Cost and effectiveness of ciprofloxacin + hydrocortisone versus neomycin + polymyxin B + hydrocortisone in France for the treatment of acute otitis externa

Summary

The cost-effectiveness of two topical otic combinations, ciprofloxacin + hydrocortisone and polymyxin B — neomycin — hydrocortisone (PNH), was assessed in the treatment of acute otitis externa (AOE). Two randomised controlled double-masked trials compared their clinical and bacteriological efficacy and safety after 7 to 10 days of qid treatment. The treatment failure cost was established from a panel of ENT specialists and GPs. A decision-tree analysis was constructed to reproduce the results of empirical treatment. The most often encountered species were Pseudomonas aeruginosa (82.4%) and Staphylococcus aureus (9.7%). Patients documented with P aeruginosa had a better ciprofloxacin + hydrocortisone bacterial and clinical efficacy. The cost of AOE first-line failure was EUR 94.44 (Societal) and EUR 57.24 (Sécurité Sociale). The savings associated with ciprofloxacin + hydrocortisone (Cipro HC ®) were respectively EUR 3.87 and EUR 2.85. This model shows that topical ciprofloxacin + hydrocortisone could be a cost saving alternative in the treatment of AOE, provided its public price does not exceed EUR 10.60.

Cipro HC® is a registered trademark of Alcon, France.     

Conceptions of property rights and norms

The social norm literature in law and economics fails to account for the differences between the two major conceptions of property rights. The differences between the two conceptions affect people’s utility function by affecting how increases in property rights are perceived. This paper discusses how the modern, in rem, conception evolved from an older, in personam, conception; it also discusses how economics has absorbed the modern, in rem, conception. The paper demonstrates that if people do not perceive the benefits of modern property rights, they will follow their social norms if the government or planner imposes modern property rights on them. In the end, this allows one to make a fuller discussion of why norms economize information. This discussion has various consequences ranging from developmental economics to financial market economics and cannot be ignored.

Pigou on philosophy and religion

Abstract

This article discusses a group of essays on ethical issues written by Pigou between 1900 and 1908. It is argued that they contain the foundations of his economic philosophy. Pigou's research on the meaning and content of the good merged into his definition of welfare, and his interest in religion as a subjective experience resurfaced in the subjective framework of his economics. A methodological pragmatism informed his economics as well as his ethics; moreover, the endorsement of interpersonal comparisons of the good in the ethical texts was consistent with Pigou's adoption of utility comparisons in welfare economics. Pigou's philosophical pessimism was reflected in his analysis of the economic evils of society, eventually leading to his advocacy of governmental intervention to foster economic welfare. The article contends that Pigou's philosophy derived not only from Sidgwick, as commonly believed, but also from G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica.     

Philosophy of Economics Rules: introduction to the symposium

ABSTRACT

Economists have long been criticized for their use of highly idealized models. In Economics rules: Why economics works, when it fails, and how to tell the difference [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015] Dani Rodrik responds to this criticism by offering an account of models that emphasizes the diversity of models in economics. Rodrik’s account presents a rare opportunity for economists and philosophers of economics to engage in a mutually beneficial exchange that could improve our understanding of the power and limits of economics, and the rights and wrongs of the dismal science. The symposium on Rodrik’s Economics Rules is the first attempt to seize this opportunity.     

Holding back from theory: limits and methodological alternatives of randomized field experiments in development economics

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we critically and constructively examine the methodology of evidence-based development economics, which deploys randomized field experiments (RFEs) as its main tool. We describe the context in which this movement started, and illustrate in detail how RFEs are designed and implemented in practice, drawing on a series of experiments by Pascaline Dupas and her colleagues on the use of bednets, saving and governance in Kenya. We show that this line of experiments have evolved to address the limitation of obtaining policy-relevant insights from RFEs alone, characterized as their lack of external validity in the literature. After examining the two prominent responses by leading figures of evidence-based development economics, namely machine learning and structured speculation, we propose an alternative methodological strategy that incorporates two sub-fields, namely experimental economics and behavioral economics, to complement RFEs in investigating the data-generating process underlying the treatment effects of RFEs. This strategy highlights promising methodological developments in RFEs neither captured by the two proposals nor recognized by methodologists, and also guides how to combine different sub-fields of economics.     

Health economics of market access for biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars

Abstract

Background and scope: This article discusses health economic challenges of research and development, registration, pricing and reimbursement of biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars. A literature search was carried out of PubMed, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination databases, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and EconLit up to March 2009.

Findings: The development process of biopharmaceuticals is risky, lengthy, complex and expensive. Registration is complicated by the inherent variation between biopharmaceuticals. Also, as biopharmaceuticals are likely to be efficacious in a subgroup of the patient population, there is a need to select the most responsive target population and to identify biomarkers. To inform pricing and reimbursement decisions, the development process needs to collect comparative data to calculate the incremental cost effectiveness and budget impact of biopharmaceuticals. There is a role for innovative mechanisms such as risk-sharing arrangements to reimburse biopharmaceuticals.

Conclusions: Given that biosimilars are similar, but not identical to the reference biopharmaceutical, the development process needs to generate clinical trial data in order to gain marketing authorisation. From a health economic perspective, the question arises whether inherent differences between biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars produce differences in safety, effectiveness and costs: to date, this question is unresolved. The early inclusion of health economics in the process of developing biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars is imperative with a view to demonstrating their relative (cost) effectiveness and informing registration, pricing and reimbursement decisions.     

At the origin of post-war mainstream of economics: On pareto’s influence on economic theory

Allais (1968) maintained that Pareto’s influence on the development of economics was felt only after considerable delay and was confined to Italy and France. This paper provides a reconstruction of the intellectual dissemination of Pareto’s thought through Europe and the United States in the period 1900–1940, showing that it was influential in the period from c.1900 to the mid-1920s and that in the 1930s it was highly important in the foundation of mainstream post-war economic theory, although in a more elusive way than before.(JEL:B13, B16, B21, B23, B31)     

Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success

Abstract

This essay is a comment on“The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics”by Frances Woolley, which appeared in Feminist Economics, Vol. 11, No. 3, November 2005.

This contribution comments on Frances Woolley's recent Feminist Economics article, “The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics.” It points to two avenues through which Woolley's article could have better illuminated the extent of Feminist Economics' scholarly relationship with the communities of both heterodox and mainstream economists: first, she omits several important heterodox economic journals in her study, and second, she could have offered a more critical evaluation of mainstream journals and economists relative to Feminist Economics and feminist economists. This paper uses citation data drawn from ten heterodox and ten mainstream journals to identify and build on these gaps.     

A probabilistic ghost in the experimental machine

This paper focuses on the opposition between two contemporary research programs in economics: behavioral economics (BE) and experimental market economics (EME). Our claim is that the arguments of this opposition can be clarified through the lens of another opposition in the philosophy of probability and in probability theory, between Bayesianism and frequentism. We show how this probabilistic opposition has indirectly shaped a controversy in psychology that opposes two research programs – Heuristics and Biases and Ecological Rationality – which play respective roles in the foundations of individual rationality in BE and EME. To understand these theoretical interrelationships, we investigate the 1996 controversy between Kahneman, Tversky, and Gigerenzer. Those psychologists held different views on how probabilistic representations influence the context-dependency of rationality. This provides a rationale to suggest that a probabilistic ghost may be haunting the experimental machine in economics, and explains how and why the oppositions between BE and EME are structured around the interplay between the norms of rationality and the context in which rationality is exercised.     

The Status of Econometrics in the Economics Major: A Survey

In this article, the authors describe the place of econometrics in undergraduate economics curricula in all American colleges and universities that offer economics majors as listed in the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges 2010” guide (U.S. News & World Report 2009). Data come from online catalogs, departmental Web sites, and online course syllabi. About one-third of the schools require econometrics of all students majoring in economics, about half require it of none, and a sixth require it of some, but not all, economics majors. Among universities with economics PhD programs and liberal arts colleges, almost all those ranked in the top 10 require it. Below the top 10, there is little correlation between ranking and econometrics requirements. Liberal arts econometrics classes are much more likely to require research projects than their counterparts in universities.