Category Education
Why have double rooms in residence?
One of the little known differences between Canada and the U.K. is the design of university residence rooms. Rooms in British university residences are usually singles. Canadian universities typically have a mix, including a good number of double rooms, with the percentage of doubles varying from campus to campus. Students, typically, prefer singles to doubles. […]
British Tuition Hikes: A Canadian Opportunity?
Last Thursday, about 300,000 British secondary school students (England, Wales & Northern Ireland) received their A-level results, which are a key determinant of whether or not they will receive a place at a university of their choice. This year, the number of applicants to British universities was about 684,000 but the number of spaces was […]
An academic integrity policy for faculty?
Carleton University has a 14 page academic integrity policy governing student conduct. It describes in detail the various types of unacceptable behaviour, the process for investigating allegations of misconduct, and the various consequences a student might face. There is no parallel policy for faculty. Perhaps that's because no such policy is necessary. After all, faculty […]
Thinking About Economics
As part of my fall teaching load, I will be teaching what economists sometimes refer to as “History of Thought” but which is more correctly termed the “History of Economic Thought” or perhaps “Evolution of Economic Theory and Analysis”.
The Economic Journal of Negative Research Findings
There are inevitably times in the career of any academic when an original hypothesis is not supported by subsequent research findings. In the past this has often meant that such findings went unpublished and did not therefore contribute either to personal advancement or departmental research rankings. All that has now changed. The European Journal of […]
Republican profs give out less egalitarian grades. So what?
A number of bloggers (for example Mark Perry, Catherine Rampell, Greg Mankiw) have picked up Bar and Zussman's recent paper on Partisan Grading. (Downloadable here, forthcoming here) Bar and Zussman take data on student grades, student SAT scores, and professor political affiliation, and find that: …student grades are linked to the political orientation of professors: […]
Adverse selection and single-blind peer review
The American Economics Association has announced that, as of July 1, 2011, its journals will be moving from double-blind to single-blind peer review. The identity of a paper's author will now be revealed to any potential referees. The Association gives three reasons for its decision: "Easy access to search engines increasingly limits the effectiveness of […]
What do you think of the American Economic Association’s decision to end double-blind peer review?
The American Economic Association's decision to switch from double-blind to single-blind reviewing has attracted much attention, for example: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/06/05/should-the-american-economic-review-drop-double-anonymous-review/ http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/leading-economics-journals-drop-double-blind-peer-review/33462
The mathematics generation gap
Here's my theory: Some students struggle with economics because they do not fully understand the mathematical tools economists use. Profs do not know how their students were taught mathematics, what their students know, what their students don't know – and have no idea how to help their students bridge those gaps.
Should economists be licensed?
In the US, as in most other OECD countries, unionization rates have been falling for decades. Yet this decline has been counter-balanced by a rise in professional licensing. This picture, taken from Kleiner and Krueger (ht Thomas Lemieux), says it all:
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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