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…

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…

Little research in economic education has dealt with MBA programs. The authors investigated student performance in a microeconomics/managerial economics course taught in a one-year MBA program at the German International School of Management and Administration in Hanover, Germany, during the 2002-5 academic years. After controlling for other…

In 1989, microeconomics and macroeconomics examinations debuted on the Advanced Placement (AP) scene. At that time, many professors of economics were skeptical that college freshmen had the skills and maturity to understand the concepts in principles of economics courses. They thought teaching these concepts to high school students was even more…

Academic dishonesty--cheating--includes plagiarizing, receiving credit for work not one's own, copying assignments, copying from another's exam, taking another's exam, not doing individual work on individual assignments, failing to contribute to team projects, and other forms of deception about work and performance. Cheating is rampant on college…

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…

Public colleges and universities today are more than institutions of academic study. They play a role in the economic and social life of their communities by engaging in partnerships aimed at enhancing their scope and brand image. This paper suggests these partnered activities do more than just manage costs and replace state support during…

This article focuses on the erosion of the monopoly by universities of the higher education system in Israel. The hegemony of the universities, the major player in the academic field, has been shattered by the development of the regional colleges that unsettled the preconceptions concerning the higher education system in Israel, including the…

In order to consider whether a course in college algebra should be a prerequisite for taking psychology statistics, we recorded students' grades in elementary psychology statistics and in college algebra at a 4-year university. Students who earned credit in algebra prior to enrolling in statistics for the first time had a significantly higher mean…

Authors of intermediate microeconomics textbooks devote relatively more space to imperfectly competitive markets than can be justified by their relative occurrence in actual markets. This gap has persisted for at least 40 years, even with an almost complete turnover of authors between the decades of the 1960s and the 2000s. This portrayal gives…

The author combines the supply and demand model of taxes with a Cournot model of bribe takers to develop a simple and useful framework for understanding the effect of corruption on economic activity. There are many examples of corruption in both developed and developing countries. Because corruption decreases the level of economic activity and…

Attempts to clarify the concepts of, and the link between, fixed costs and sunk costs. Argues that the root of confusion is the inconsistency in defining the term fixed costs. Consistently defines fixed and sunk costs, and describes how instructors must teach under these definitions. (RLH)

In spring 2006, the Higher Education Council of Berks County (HECBC) conducted a study to measure the economic impact of the five colleges located in Berks County: Alvernia College, Albright College, Kutztown University, Pennsylvania State University, Berks Campus (Penn State Berks) and Reading Area Community College (RACC). Although many higher…

This chapter demonstrates how institutional researchers at institutions of higher education can use economic theory for enrollment management. (Contains 4 figures.)

Explores consensus among economists on specific propositions on the basis of a fall 2000 survey of American Economic Association members. Finds consensus generally within the profession, although the degree of consensus varies among propositions that are international, macroeconomic, and microeconomic in nature. States the profession displays…