Discusses how economics professors at the University of Cincinnati have spent years fighting among themselves over teaching versus research, with the result being decimation and disarray in the department. (EV)

Discusses financial literacy, its definition, and its importance. Looks at the financial literacy initiatives that are underway and whether they are working. Examines the role of family and consumer sciences education in financial literacy. (Contains 70 references.) (JOW)

Generative learning provides students with opportunities to organize course content, integrate new content with students' current knowledge, and elaborate on course content by making connections to real-world events. These opportunities promote less reliance on professors' lectures and simultaneously create more self-reliance among students. The…

The excess burden of taxation typically has two graphical representations in undergraduate microeconomics and public finance textbooks: the IC/BC (indifference curve/budget constraint) representation and the demand/supply representation. The IC/BC representation has the advantage of showing the behavioral response to a distortionary tax and how a…

In intermediate microeconomic textbooks the reciprocal nature of externalities is presented using numerical examples of costs and benefits. This treatment of the Coase theorem obscures the fact that externality costs and benefits are best understood as being on a continuum where costs vary with the degree of intensity of the externality. When…

Most children have heard that money does not grow on trees. But it does on paper--in books! This column features paired book titles and related activities that can be used in the classroom or the library media center to celebrate National Coin Week in April. Time devoted to students while sharing books on money and its uses will be well spent.

The author argues that, although the standard principles level treatment of fixed and sunk costs has problems, it is logically consistent as long as all fixed costs are assumed to be sunk costs. As long as the instructor makes that assumption clear to students, the costs of making the changes recently suggested by X. Henry Wang and Bill Z. Yang in…

Examines the pricing and other characteristics of books. Notes substantial increases in book prices between 2000 and 1985 data. Suggests a major factor is the increasing importance of foreign presses that sell books at higher prices. Indicates that discount on paperbacks appear to have been relatively stable in the two years studied. (JEH)

For some time now, it has been the posture of major league baseball that taxpayers should bear some or all of the cost of new stadiums. They argue that the community will benefit both economically and psychologically from such an investment. A stadium, they claim, will bring new jobs, increased land values, enhanced tax collections, and perhaps…

"The Little Red Hen" is a classic story. Many children have not had the opportunity to see where a commercial loaf of bread comes from, or to feel the bounce of rising dough in a kitchen. "The Little Red Hen" not only helps to introduce the process, but gives the students an opportunity to reflect how they might feel if they did the work on a…

In this study, we attempt to determine the extent to which students enrolled in economic courses benefit from extensive use of modern technology based teaching/learning tools such as electronic slide presentations. Our results are mixed. We find more support for the traditional teaching pedagogies as compared to what is being customarily used in…

The typical method of presenting supply and demand in high school classes often leaves students with an impression that markets are simple and function effortlessly. In reality, the effectiveness of markets depends on the quality of complex institutions such as private property and property-rights enforcement. Students often do not realize that…

We determine how much observed student performance in microeconomics principles can be attributed, inferentially, to three kinds of student academic "productivity," the instructor, demographics, and unmeasurables. The empirical approach utilizes an ordered probit model that relates student performance in micro to grades in prior…

Higher education is facing world-wide a number of problems such as: adjusting to larger and more homogeneous student populations, increasing the number of graduating students, and preparing them for lifelong learning. Enhancing students' learning proficiency can make a substantial contribution to solving each of these major concerns. Taking the…

Purpose: Higher education has a key role and responsibility in creating change and addressing issues of fundamental human concern such as inequality and social justice, globalisation and development, environmental protection and sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to describe how RCE-Ireland, established in September 2007, aims to develop…