Category Archives: Uncategorized

This is a fairly long post that was driven by conversations with a wide variety of colleagues. All errors are my own. Cognitive science has discovered a great deal about how learning works, and by extension, what leads to effective … Continue reading →

A friend, Carrie Mook Bridgman, reached out on Facebook and asked my opinion of Rutger Bregman, “Why Society’s Biggest Freeloaders are at the Top” Here’s what I think as a mainstream economist. This article is true in part, especially where … Continue reading →

President Biden recently announced an infrastructure bill of some $2 trillion. Infrastructure provides the underlying structure of a working economy.  Infrastructure consists of expenditures that have long returns benefiting a large number of citizens and businesses, but which tend to … Continue reading →

Traditional publishers make their profits by exploiting monopoly power.  The traditional textbook industry is dominated by a small number of large firms, think Cengage, McGraw-Hill, Pearson.  Economists describe this type of industry as an oligopoly, in which the large firms … Continue reading →

In recent years, most colleges and universities, at least in the U.S., have adopted explicit initiatives to promote student success, which they assess aggregate metrics in terms of retention and graduation rates.  Yet at the same time, I wonder if … Continue reading →

My intro students always seem to do less well than I expect on exams, especially on the final exam.  Part of the reason is that I ask at least a few questions which go beyond what we’ve explicitly done in … Continue reading →

Last month I attended the 2019 Conference on Teaching & Research in Economic Education (CTREE), sponsored by the American Economic Association, in St. Louis, Missouri.  The sessions were very high quality and I learned a great deal.  One thing that struck … Continue reading →

I was looking at the gradebooks for my last several semesters of intro courses, both face-to-face and online, and was reminded that there appear to be significantly higher rates of students failing to complete my online sections, either when students … Continue reading →

How do you reconcile your role as a teacher with your role as a grader. Giving expert feedback– formative assessment—is not the problem. That’s a part of what good teachers do. Feedback helps students improve their work and enhance their learning. … Continue reading →