Category Teaching
Time-shifting planned demand vs. permanently increasing actual demand
Most policies aimed at increasing demand merely time-shift planned demand. Does that mean they don't really work? Does it mean we get recovery now at the expense of an even bigger recession later? Do we just have to cross our fingers and hope that something else eventually comes along to increase demand in future? A […]
Why “everyone” should be forced to take Intro Economics
The reason is not what you are expecting. It's because maybe if he had been forced to take Intro Economics, the 12th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, who holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, who is a specialist in money and macro, who has a CV that creams […]
Why economics textbooks are (sometimes) ideological
In a recent comment on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative Tom Slee shared this experience: …{W]hen my son comes back from an Economics 101 course at an Ontario university and shows me bald statements like these from his textbook (Parkin and Bade) then I have no problem with using a broad brush to criticize the profession:… "Arguments […]
Is plastic surgery a human capital investment?
Tetesaclaque's little video "The Secretary" or "La Secretaire" poses a rarely asked question: is plastic surgery a human capital investment? Human capital is typically defined as any investment in education or training that increases a person's productivity.
The market for textbooks: do economics professors practice what they preach?
Economics textbooks extol the virtues of competition. But the market for textbooks is anything but competitive. A professor typically requires students to buy a specific textbook. Even if that text is available from sellers such as amazon.com, students may not discover which books are required until the first day of classes, by which time it […]
Should teaching evaluations be public?
Every economics undergraduate learns that competitive markets are efficient. But efficiency requires information. In a competitive market, a store that sells rotten apples for $2.00/lb will likely go out of business. Yet if people do not have information about the quality of apples they are buying, a store can sell bad produce and make a […]
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