The authors analyze the various factors that highly recognized economists cite as reasons for pursuing a career in economics. They obtained data for 62 of the 67 Nobel Laureates in economics and included another 22 prominent economists who have made significant contributions in economic research. The authors' basic quest was to discover how these…

Over 20 years ago, the late William Zahka (1990, 1998) outlined how the acceptance speeches of those who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science could be used to teach undergraduates. This article updates and expands Zahka's work, identifying some of the issues discussed by recent Nobel Laureates, classifying their speeches by topic…

Based on results from a 1999 national survey, William Becker and Michael Watts found that student evaluations of teaching were by far the most widely used, and often the only method used by economics departments, to evaluate teaching in undergraduate economics courses. To investigate whether departments of economics have moved beyond the use of…

In 1995, 2000, and 2005, the authors surveyed U.S. academic economists to investigate how economics is taught in four different types of undergraduate courses at postsecondary institutions. They especially looked for any changes in teaching methods that occurred over this decade, when there were several prominent calls for economists and…

A study considered effects of class size and other class-specific variables (missing student questionnaires and attrition) on learning of college economics. Beginning class size was significant and negatively correlated to learning economics--partly since students in larger classes were significantly more likely to withdraw before taking the…

Evaluation of students in Minneapolis during and after the Developmental Economic Education Program (DEEP) shows a decrease in economic knowledge with the termination of the program. (DE)

Reports on the evaluation of an audiovisual tutorial (AVT) package used in several two-year colleges, finding that the AVT experience has no differential effect on learning for the experimental group. Also discusses basic research problems and offers solutions. (Author/JR)

Contends that, when discrete choice models are taught, particularly the probit model, it is the method rather than the interpretation of the results that is emphasized. This article provides a graphical technique for interpretation of an estimated probit coefficient that will be useful in statistics and econometrics courses. (GG)

How much time do academic economists allocate to teaching, research, and service, and how much time do their departments want them to allocate to these pursuits? As a result of the decline in economics majors in the early 1990s, was there a change in the reward system and time allocation of academic economists toward teaching? In this study, the…

Finds through surveys in 1995 and 2000 that, despite some indications of increased emphasis and interest in teaching over this period, the teaching methods in economics courses have changed very little over the past five years and are still dominated by chalk and talk classroom presentations. (RLH)

The authors show how the work of Nobel Laureates in economics can enhance student understanding and bring them up to date on topics such as probability, uncertainty and decision theory, hypothesis testing, regression to the mean, instrumental variable techniques, discrete choice modeling, and time-series analysis. (Contains 2 notes.)

Introduces the Online section in the "Journal of Economic Education" that identifies exemplary interactive material for teaching and learning economics. Describes the selections for the section in this issue of the journal and states that the featured Web sites illustrate important direction for teaching using hypermedia and…

States that Bergmann's paper (see SO516713) misses the point of suggesting improvements in the Joint Council's "Framework." Concludes that the present "Framework" is conceptually adequate but could be improved with additional treatment of how economists 1) establish the relationship between variables, and 2) define and use the…

Suggests that the claims of advocates of centralized standards and universal testing of schools must be questioned and that alternatives to testing should be considered for the educational output of schools. Argues that supporters have failed to consider the costs of national essay-type tests and the inherent problems of test reliability. (MJP)