In this paper, we explore the connection between education and wage inequality in Spain for the period 1994-2001. Drawing on quantile regression, we describe the conditional wage distribution of different populations groups. We find that higher education is associated with higher wage dispersion. A contribution of the paper is that we explicitly…

This historical research will provide school leaders with a broad conception of the conditions, forces and processes behind the development of Economics Education. It serves as a case study of past and current practices and approaches to advocacy in economics education. Since it began in 1885, economics education has experienced many obstacles and…

We investigate graduate school outcomes for students who entered economics Ph.D. programs in Fall 2002. Students in Top-15 ranked programs and those with higher verbal and quantitative GRE scores are less likely to have dropped out, but no more likely to have graduated. Those with undergraduate degrees from Top-60 U.S. liberal arts colleges and…

This paper reports experiment results of teaching large classes of introductory economics with modern learning technology such as MyEconLab or Aplia. This new technology emerges partially in response to the enrollment pressure currently facing many institutions of higher education. Among other things, the technology provides an integrated online…

Over the past several decades, colleges and universities have moved away from the traditional chalk-and-talk lecture. Professors have experimented with a myriad of methods to engage students more fully. Some of the innovations that have been used have succeeded in improving student performance and satisfaction. In this paper we report the learning…

Many instructors in subjects such as economics are frequently concerned with how to teach technical material to undergraduate students with limited mathematical backgrounds. One method that has proven successful for the authors is to connect theoretically sophisticated material with actual data. This enables students to see how the theory relates…

Only governments can ensure, through laws and policies, the provision of universal public goods, such as a safe supply of water, affordable health care and housing. They can regulate commerce and the private sector. However, governments cannot legislate Jean-Paul Sartre's radical freedoms, Amartya Sen's developmental freedoms, or Hannah Arendt's…

This paper describes aspects of a research project which used linguistic and intertextual analysis of student writing to investigate the relationship between the academic curriculum and student voice in a first year economics course at a South African university. I argue that the discourses and practices of first year university economics…

In the neoclassical growth theory, higher saving rate gives rise to higher output per capita. However, in the Keynesian model, higher saving rate causes lower consumption, which may lead to a recession. Students may ask, "Should we save or should we consume?" In most of the macroeconomics textbooks, economic growth and Keynesian economics are in…

One of the most important concepts being taught in principles classes is the idea of "thinking on the margin." It can also be one of the most difficult to get across. One of the most telling examples, according to this author, comes in trying to get students to learn the profit maximizing condition for perfectly competitive firms. She…

The search for a social goodness function in economic systems is reviewed, especially in light of the fact that the economy is a subsystem of a biosphere that has its own rules for determining success, or at least for limiting feasibility. The frequent perversity of reductionist quantitative success indicators in economics (profit, quotas, GDP) is…

The authors compare various characteristics of terminal master's of economics programs in Canada and the United States. As far as they know, this is the first article to present results from a survey of Canadian master's programs in economics. Using a Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test, they found significant differences between the Canadian and U.S.…

This article presents empirical results of explorative case studies that examine whether the New Public Management mechanisms have improved the academic performance of PhD education in selected German and European economics departments. Our data rely on document analyses of organisational variables and in-depth semi-structured interviews with…

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…

This paper reports on a pilot study that involved introducing writing tutors or writing fellows into a compulsory, third-year economics course with the intent of incorporating both writing across the curriculum and writing intensive elements. The connections and interrelationships between writing and writing intensive courses are set out briefly…