The field is moving beyond research experiments to classroom exercises that can help students learn economics. For example, the Journal of Economic Perspectives now carries a regular feature written by Holt that discusses the use of classroom experiments. The Fall 1997 entry outlines a card game that introduces students to the free-rider problem.

A new workbook, Experiments with Economic Principles (McGraw-Hill, 1997) by Ted Bergstrom and John Miller, provides self-contained material for running experiments in class. The book, which sells for $24 at my bookstore, can be used in conjunction with a regular textbook in microeconomic principles courses and in some intermediate courses. Bergstrom and Miller have a Website that includes reports on experimental results from class (http://zia.hss.cmu.edu/miller/eep/eep.html).

One problem with classroom experiments is that they take time. For most experiments, Bergstrom and Miller recommend taking the entire class period. Keeping a record of results can also be time consuming. Another concern is how to motivate students. Results are more realistic if students have an incentive to do well. One approach is to ask students to contribute voluntarily, say $20, at the beginning of the term to be pooled and paid at the end of the term as a reward based on performance throughout the term. But students who don't contribute are usually cut off from prize money, so they have less motivation. Another possibility is to base the course grade in part on performance in the experiments, but many students feel the results often rely on the luck of the draw and should not therefore affect course grades.

Return to Contents of Issue 15, Spring 1998 

Total AEA membership declined slightly ( - 0.6%) between 1993 and 1997; the number responding to the employment survey dropped more, by 3.9%. I have adjusted the results of the survey in 1997 to account for the decline in response rates. In all, the number reporting an academic employer increased from 11,031 in 1993 to 11,106 in 1997, or 0.7%. Employment at universities increased from 9,546 to 9,679, or 1.4%, but employment at four-year colleges decreased from 1,187 to 1,116, a drop of 6.0%.

Non-academic employment declined from 5,987 to 5,811, a drop of 2.9%. The largest non-academic employer in both 1993 and 1997 was the federal government, where employment fell from 1,484 to 1,337, or by 9.9%. State and local government employment also declined, from 297 to 275, or by 7.4%.

Employment in business and industry decreased from 762 to 655, or 14.0%. Banking and finance slipped from 662 to 643, or 2.9%. And international organizations remained unchanged at 557. The only non-academic categories to increase were non-academic research institutions, which rose from 619 to 659, or 6.5%, and consultants, up from 1,182 to 1,268, or 7.3%. An increase in consultants may, to some extent, reflect a growth in economists who were between permanent jobs.

The bottom line is that the modest growth among members in university jobs was more than offset by losses elsewhere, resulting in an overall decline in employment among AEA members. Job erosion among members was deepest in government and especially in business and industry, where one in seven positions disappeared in the last four years. Of course, the slack employment may reflect only what's been happening to AEA members and not the wider profession, but the corporate job loss does bring to mind the economist from Morgan Stanley quoted in last Spring's Teaching Economist. He said that his firm would not hire an economics Ph.D. without substantial work experience outside academe, arguing "We insist on at least a three-to-four year cleansing experience to neutralize the brainwashing that takes place in these graduate programs."

Return to Contents of Issue 15, Spring 1998 

I also encountered another annoyance in the same classroom. Class was scheduled to end 10 minutes before the hour. At exactly 10 minutes before the hour, as I was winding up the class, an instructor who apparently would be using the room next entered the hall and announced that I needed to stop because he needed the time to set up for his class. I was stunned. After class, I asked him not to do that again. He couldn't understand my irritation (he teaches Criminology). Even though I always finish on time, he still hovers outside the doorway until my class is over.

Return to Contents of Issue 15, Spring 1998 

But there has been a trend in the last couple of years, at least in some science fiction movies, toward a more benign and beneficial government. In Independence Day, the U.S. government, with the help of a brilliant but underemployed computer nerd (who works for a cable-TV company), takes on and defeats the space invaders. In the mostly-for-laughs Men in Black, government agents are depicted as very good at their job, which is to find and exterminate extraterrestrials who turn out to be much more ubiquitous than we common folk suspect. Perhaps the rise of government is best epitomized in The Postman, where the person who saves the day in a post-nuked nation is an accidental mail carrier. The movie is also about the marginal value of information in a non-wired world, a world not even connected by travelers since travel has become too dangerous. But the public didn't buy the postman-as-movie-hero idea, and the movie bombed. I guess Hollywood can scrap plans for The Taxman.

Return to Contents of Issue 15, Spring 1998 

In the 1993 AEA membership survey, "Teaching of Economics" was listed as a field for the first time, and 204 members identified this as one of their two specialty areas. In the 1997 report, this total increased to 296, for a growth rate of 45.1%. Notable additions since the 1993 survey include Kenneth Elzinga of the University of Virginia, and William Poole of Brown University. Perhaps the most visible economist self-identified as having a specialty in teaching is University of Chicago Professor Robert Fogel, the current president of the American Economics Association. Not bad company.

Edward R. Tufte, who teaches courses in statistics and information design at Yale, has written, designed and published three books that will aid any instructor concerned with how best to visually present information. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) both explains and demonstrates certain rules for presenting numerical data in a graphically engaging manner. This book has become a classic of its genre. Tufte offers examples of design excellence, such as a map conveying the diminished size of Napoleon's Army during the Russian campaign. Such exhibits, says Tufte, show "how multivariate complexity can be subtly integrated into graphical architecture, integrated so gently and unobtrusively that viewers are hardly aware that they are looking into a world of four or five dimensions " (p. 40). The second book in his trilogy, Envisioning Information (1990), presents what he calls pictures of nouns, pictures of representational reality rather than numbers. His third book, Visual Explanations (1997), focuses on displays that illustrate dynamic processes. I attended a one-day workshop he presented last summer in Boston. He was terrific.

In the Fall 1997 Teaching Economist, I reviewed Virtual Economics: An Interactive Center for Economic Education, a CD-ROM produced by EconomicsAmerica: the National Council on Economic Education. Michelle Mason Winston of the University of Nebraska, who was the Project Manager, has e-mailed me "your review of Virtual Economics is the best I've read so far (not 'best' in terms of being complimentary, of course)." She wants to make clear that the mission of the CD is to provide teachers "at all precollege grade levels easy access to information on economic concepts and related topics and provide assistance in teaching these concepts." For the latest developments of EconomicsAmerica visit their Web site at http://www.economicsamerica.org/econedlink. That site provides Internet links and resources (CyberTeach) along with case studies (EconomicsMinute). Although the material is aimed at precollege students, you may find some of it useful in principles courses.

In the Economics Department at UConn last spring , 49% of grades at the introductory level were A's or B's. University wide, 62% of all grades at the introductory level were A's or B's. In some department, A's alone accounted for well over half the grades in introductory courses. For example, 62% of the grades in introductory Music were A's as were two-thirds of the grades in Sports and Leisure Studies and three-quarters of those in Allied Health. Too bad economics can't attract such bright students.

"Ignorance is not innocence but sin..." - Robert Browning

"Life is not an exact science, it is an art." - Samuel Butler

"There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds

Return to Contents of Issue 15 

Return to Contents of Issue 15 

In a nationwide survey by Phoenix Home Life Insurance of 1,200 students ages 12 to 21 from households earning $40,000 or more, 90% said they believed they are adequately educated about finances. Yet only 40% could define the term "budget" and only 34% could explain what "buying on credit" means. Among college students questioned, 41% could define mortgage, 12% life insurance, 5% mutual funds, and only 6% Social Security. Half said they expect to earn at least $30,000 in their first year after graduation. One in five expects to earn $40,000.

When I go grocery shopping, I pay attention to the price spread between name brands and house brands. This comparison is made all the easier because house-brand packaging typically apes the leading name brand. Sometimes the spread is a chasm. Exhibit A is a 12 ounce box of vanilla wafers. My local supermarket charges $1.39 for its house brand, in this case IGA. The same store charges $3.29 for the Nabisco brand, or 137% more than its house brand. You could discuss with students why many consumers are willing to pay more, sometimes much more, for name brands.

The AEA membership survey also gives us some idea of the racial composition of those who are U.S. citizens. Although total membership declined 0.6% between 1993 and 1997, those responding to questions about race and Hispanic heritage declined by 10.1%. I have adjusted the data for the declining response rate.