The authors use a capital budgeting example to show students how to incorporate price elasticity into financial analysis as an application of what students learn in their microeconomics course. They present simple as well as more advanced price-quantity relationships, and using various "what-if" scenarios; the authors show how risk…

This article uses a logistic probability distribution approach to examine the effect of lecture attendance, aptitude test results, individual heterogeneity and pedagogic intervention on student performance for first-year microeconomics and second-year macroeconomics modules at a leading South African university. The research was motivated by the…

The author discusses the development of a unique course, The Economics of Online Dating. The course is an upper-level undergraduate course that combines intensive discussion, peer review, and economic theory to teach modeling skills to undergraduates. The course uses the framework of "online dating," interpreted broadly, as a point of…

In this article, the authors show that the dividend discount model can be derived using the basic intertemporal consumption model that is introduced in a typical intermediate microeconomics course. This result will be of use to instructors who teach microeconomics to finance students in that it demonstrates the value of utility maximization in…

The authors' data contain inter- and intra-class variations in experiments to which students in a principles of microeconomics course were exposed. These variations allowed the estimation of the effect on student achievement from the experimental treatment generally, as well as effects associated with participation in specific experiments. The…

No matter the college, a class in the principles of microeconomics is likely to cover the discipline's greatest hits. The author attends three economics courses at three colleges, and finds three very different approaches. In this article, the author discusses three colleges' different approaches that shape learning in Econ 101.

The Edgeworth exchange diagram is a traditional tool of undergraduate microeconomic theory that depicts the mutually beneficial gains from voluntary trade. The authors take the analysis one step further. They identify the buyer's and seller's surpluses that accrue to both trading parties in the Edgeworth diagram. This is a straightforward exercise…

Through the use of event-history techniques, we will show that a duration framework is adapted to the analysis of higher education attrition. Our dropout model allows for estimates to vary over time. While some factors exhibit constant effects, like high school characteristics, other effects do vary from the first year to the fourth. Men and women…

The existence of an inverse relationship between wage levels and regional unemployment rates, commonly referred to as the wage curve, is well established in the economic literature and was described by Card (1995) as being "close to an empirical law of economics". This microeconomic wage-unemployment relationship, first identified by…

The author makes a pedagogical contribution to optimal income taxation. Using a very simple model adapted from George A. Akerlof (1978), he demonstrates a key result in the approach to public economics and welfare economics pioneered by Nobel laureate James Mirrlees. He shows how incomplete information, in addition to the need to preserve…

The authors show how the transformation loci in the specific factors model (capital specificity) and the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model (capital mobility) can be rigorously derived and easily compared by using geometric techniques on the basis of Savosnick geometry. The approach shows directly that the transformation locus with capital…

Does investing taxpayer money in higher education lead to major payoffs in economic growth? State legislators and policy makers say yes. They routinely advocate massive appropriations for university education and research, even in poor economic times, on the grounds that taxpayers will be rewarded many times over. The investment of federal funds…

A standard and comprehensive model is needed to evaluate and compare technology transfer systems and the stakeholders within these systems. The principle systems considered include federal laboratories, U.S. universities, the rehabilitation engineering research centers (RERCs), and large small business innovation research programs. An earlier…

The following program description, literature review, and theoretical bases demonstrate the andragogical soundness of the two projects and a club of the Monterey Adult Transitions Program. The Bistro Project began as a suggestion of an Associate Superintendent, who ran a similar project in the Boston area. The Greenhouse Project began as a…

Microeconomic principles courses focus on perfectly competitive markets far more than other market structures. The authors examine five possible reasons for this but find none of them sufficiently compelling. They conclude that textbook authors should place more emphasis on how economists select appropriate models and test models' predictions…