The author of this article provides an example of how one might incorporate behavioral economics into teaching macroeconomics or labor economics at an undergraduate level. The focus is on two macroeconomic concepts--wage determination and the Phillips curve--and shows that the implications and conclusions of both models differ from their textbook…

During the pandemic, the economic way of thinking was extraordinarily useful, leading to a quick consensus among economists of widely differing political persuasions on many issues of pandemic policy. Yet speaking to politicians, bureaucrats, and the public revealed many ways in which the economic way of thinking was foreign and sometimes…

An alternative approach for introducing instrumental variables in econometrics courses is presented in this article. The method is based on the ordinary least squares omitted variable bias formula. The intuition for the approach capitalizes on students' understanding and intuition of omitted variables. Thus, if students understand omitted variable…

In the early 1940s, Black artist Jacob Lawrence painted a series of 60 panels that are now collectively called "The Migration Series." The panels tell the story of how Black Americans migrated from the South to the North, beginning with World War I. The panels provide an uncommon example of the intersection of economics, Black American…

The authors of this article propose a simple exercise of monopoly pricing to illustrate complex theoretical results on the welfare effects of group pricing. By exposing students to this exercise, they aim to bridge a gap between the standard textbook analysis of group pricing and more general results in the literature and clarify some students'…

Dominion of the scarcity principle as the basis for economic analysis is virtually absolute in teaching the introductory course in economics. This supremacy is neither valid nor desirable. Two compelling alternative foundational concepts for economics are "uncertainty" and "inequality." These alternatives lead to vastly…

New economics instructors face numerous challenges when selecting technology for their courses. Because economists teach at a variety of institutions with diverse student bodies and since technology continues to evolve, this article focuses on general principles that novice instructors should consider when selecting technology for their courses.…

In Rortyan fashion, John and David (Siegfried and Colander 2022, 71-84) declare that the critical thinker will "try to learn from others rather than argue with others in order to dominate them." It amounts to saying that critical thinking is more a matter of character than of method, more a matter of ethics than of technique. John and…

The authors of this article make a case for using Fink's (2013) taxonomy of significant learning in the economics classroom to improve standard-based economics education and to continue transforming the discipline to reduce social inequality along multiple dimensions, including gender, race, and class. Fink's framework is defined by student…

Undergraduate economics degrees awarded by U.S. colleges and universities increased almost 12 percent from 2013 through 2015, then stabilized at a little above the 2015 level until 2018, after which they began an accelerating decline over the past five years to end back at a little below 2015 levels.

Textbook models of externalities tacitly assume that those externalities fall upon individuals "outside" of the market. In many contexts--including common undergraduate examples--externalities fall "inside" the market instead. Positive externalities associated with vaccination, for instance, accrue to other individuals who…

An undergraduate course in development economics presents an ideal opportunity to introduce students to the importance of gender differences in economic outcomes. The authors of this article argue that a systematic integration of gender into development economics courses based on standard textbooks is feasible and desirable. They provide a…

Teaching economic history requires the study of how to combine the economists' modeling and statistical methods with the methods used by historians and the other social sciences. It often involves learning how to search for quantitative data from a variety of sources and then building panel datasets that match the data found with existing…

The 3-equation model by Carlin and Soskice (2014) introduces the current consensus in modern monetary macroeconomics to undergraduates through a static framework in which adjustment occurs via the monetary policy rule of an inflation-targeting central bank. In this article, the authors present a dynamic extension of this model and an Excel-based…

The COVID-19 pandemic uniquely affected nearly all the subject matter in a typical principles of macroeconomics class. Fluctuations in the basic macroeconomic data in the COVID era were staggering and offer new teaching opportunities. In addition, because the recession was primarily driven by supply side shocks, the entire episode offers a unique…