The author investigates how ability and gender affect grades on homework projects performed by assigned pairs of students in an undergraduate macroeconomics course. The assignment grade is found to depend on the ability of both students, and the relative importance of the stronger and weaker student differs in predictable ways depending on the…

The author analyzes the inflation-targeting model that underlies recent textbook expositions of the aggregate demand-aggregate supply approach used in introductory courses in macroeconomics. He shows how numerical simulations of a model with inflation inertia can be used as a tool to help students understand adjustments in response to demand and…

The authors describe the present state of economic education in Japan. There is a larger number of undergraduate students who major in economics, but their purpose of studying economics and their economic literacy differ. Precollege economic education is regulated by the course of study and limited by the poor ability of teachers to teach the…

Many economics majors write a senior thesis. Although this experience can be the pinnacle of their education, publication is not the common standard for undergraduates. The authors describe four approaches that have allowed students to get their work published: (1) identify a topic, such as competitive balance in sports, and have students work on…

A disturbing concern that has been expressed by academic economists is the low interest in economics as a major, as evidenced by the declining enrollment in most of the economics departments in American colleges and universities. Though some college and university economics departments are experiencing or had experienced a decline in their majors…

The authors explore academic misconduct in various forms and consider the role of student perceptions. They gather data from students in introductory economics courses regarding 31 types of misconduct. They estimate the relevance of various determinants of misconduct, acknowledging that they may vary across misconduct type and that students'…

The Goals 2000 Educate America Act of 1994 included economics among the nine core subject areas that were targeted for the development of content standards. A new set of voluntary national content standards in economics, published in 1997, helped to guide administrators, teachers, and policy makers as they considered various educational objectives…

Each time the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announces that America's students are falling behind those of other countries, and with every business section article on America's trade deficit with China, America sees a new commission to reinforce the negatives and urge dramatic upgrading of the workforce. This author states…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Getting Back to Average: American Fifteen-Year-Olds Rank 14th in Reading, 17th in Science, and 25th in Mathematics,…

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…

This paper uses a new data-set for cumulative national investment in formal schooling and a new instrument for schooling to estimate the national return on investment in 61 countries. These estimates are combined with data on the private rate of return on investment in schooling to estimate the external rate of return. In 1990 the external rate of…

Economic literacy is vital for functioning effectively in today's society. Consumers need to manage their finances, investors need to plan for their future, and voters need to choose among competing economic plans. As students move on to college or enter the workforce, their understanding of the economy will help them become financially…

Economics is usually perceived as a difficult subject among undergraduate students with negative repercussions on their performance. The literature suggests that the students' problems with principles of economics are mainly related to the style and method of teaching together with the course content. Particularly attacked are the chalk and talk…

There have been many national and international reports expressing concern about the problems of teaching economics subjects in universities and colleges. This paper puts forward one approach to deal with the issue through the use of a computer based learning program designed to cater for the differences in backgrounds and learning styles of…

General equilibrium models now play important roles in many fields of economics including tax policy, environmental regulation, international trade, and economic development. The intermediate microeconomics classroom has not kept pace with these trends, however. Microeconomics textbooks primarily focus on the insights that can be drawn from the…