International Review of Economics Education最新文献

We describe how the 2016 documentary The Man Who Discovered Capitalism can be used in the classroom to provide an entry point to the life and economics of Joseph A. Schumpeter, whose work on innovation, entrepreneurship, and creative destruction remains relevant for students today. We summarize the key ideas conveyed in the documentary and offer four criticisms: its failure to capture the role of fin-de-siècle Vienna on Schumpeter’s intellectual development, its incomplete understanding of Schumpeter’s theory of innovation, its overstatement of Keynes’s influence relative to Schumpeter, and the overly generous credit it gives to government for spurring innovation. We show how the documentary can be used in the classroom, complete with sample discussion questions grounded in the criticisms we identify. We argue The Man Who Discovered Capitalism is an effective teaching tool suitable for a variety of courses, including those on economic growth, intermediate macroeconomics, and the history of economic thought, among others.

The Taylor Rule and Fisher Relation can be represented on a graph that allows for discussion of the zero lower bound on interest rates, the existence of multiple equilibria, secular stagnation and Japan’s lost decade, among other issues. The Taylor Rule and Fisher Relation can also be included in a small macroeconomic model that can be used to study the stability under various interest rate rules under adaptive expectations or solved under rational expectations. There are a number of related empirical exercises using both descriptive statistics and regressions for undergraduates with intermediate macro level knowledge.

This study examines the relationship between a United States Agency for International Development financial life skills training program for poor and vulnerable youth in Indonesia on labor market outcomes two years following the training. Longitudinal results indicate that self-efficacy and financial behaviors improved from pre-training to two years after the training, and a logistic regression analysis finds significant correlations between self-efficacy and financial behaviors with finding new or better employment. Because financial literacy education can be associated with improved financial behaviors, and soft skills acquisition can be associated with improved self-efficacy, we conclude that the training program led indirectly to new or better employment outcomes for participants. Reinforcing this result, between 92 % and 97 % of the trained youth attributed the training program to their observed improvements in work performance and/or to new or better employment opportunities.

This study examines student performance under asynchronous and synchronous methods in a microeconomics course during COVID-19 pandemic. We conduct a quasi-field experiment in a state university in Turkey. In the experiment, students were divided into synchronous and asynchronous groups and were taught the same weekly material of microeconomics by the methods respective to their group. At the end of the week, both groups took the same multiple question test. Our results showed that asynchronous group performed significantly better than the synchronous group. While showing the comparative advantage of the asynchronous method, our study also underlines the importance of interaction between instructors and students. We discuss our findings from a socioeconomic perspective, where we argue that the flexibility that the asynchronous method offers might have compensated for the accessibility issues (internet and/or computer) during the COVID-19 outbreak. As a policy recommendation, universities can offer lectures with a recorded option to allow students to interact with the course material multiple times.

I analyze the relationship between individual contributions within a team in a team-based learning environment and performance on the final exam in three different economics courses over thirteen years. All students are assigned to teams but vary in their degree of engagement or effort in the learning activities in the classroom. Controlling for both general and course-specific academic ability, I document individual learning gains, as reflected in final exam scores, associated with higher levels of engagement in team activities, as reflected in peer evaluations. A one standard deviation increase in an individual’s average peer evaluation above the mean correlates with a 2 to 3 percentage point higher final exam score, a result that generally holds for all class levels, grade point averages, and by gender.

Large introductory courses may be cost-effective for universities, but present many drawbacks, including student absenteeism, high failure rates, and reduced learning. We undertook a re-design of our Principles of Economics courses in order to improve the learning outcomes for collaborative, dependent, and independent learners, by introducing three changes: mandatory tutorials with active learning activities; consistency in course instructors; and online quizzes. We administered a survey to students before and after the intervention to evaluate the impact of these changes on three learning outcomes: final grades, final exam scores, and self-reported learning. Our results show that the intervention positively impacted all learning outcomes, primarily due to increased tutorial attendance. Encouragingly, the strongest improvement occurred for students at the low end of the grade distribution.