Category Archives: Teaching Economics

This week Russ Roberts released the third episode in his innovative new interview series called “The Numbers Game.” The innovation is to add graphs and other visuals—and thereby helpful numerical information—to his popular podcast interview series EconTalk. The first three … Continue reading →

It’s good news that economic issues are now getting more attention in the presidential campaign. More than 400 economists have signed a statement on the differences between the Romney economic program and the Obama program—the numbers are growing each day—and … Continue reading →

Today the Wall Street Journal dedicated more than three-fourths of a page to publishing large excerpts from a 1980 memo to president-elect Ronald Reagan from George Shultz and other economists who had advised Reagan in the presidential campaign. In my … Continue reading →

One of the most important things for students to learn in introductory economics is that differences in productivity are the main reason for differences in real wages over time and across countries. In his presidential address this year before the American … Continue reading →

Alan Blinder and I are frequently on different sides of economic debates, especially when it comes to the effects of monetary and fiscal policy and the impact of short-term discretionary actions. For example, we have both testified together in Congress … Continue reading →

This fall was a great quarter to teach the introductory course (Economics 1 at Stanford) with plenty of good examples from Occupy Wall Street, the crisis in Europe, the continuing debate in Washington over economic policy, and the rising federal debt. Unfortunately nothing … Continue reading →

We just finished Week 7, and Lecture 27, in Economics 1 with a midterm exam coming up next week. What a great time to be teaching and learning economics, with the questions about the bailouts and the top 1 percent … Continue reading →

How should the introductory economics text change in response the financial crisis, the recession and the very slow recovery? The question will be discussed at a big economics teachers’ conference in New Orleans this week. I will be there to … Continue reading →

The Nobel Prize committee made an excellent choice in awarding the 2011 economics prize to Tom Sargent and Chris Sims for their influential contributions to macroeconomics. One of the first papers of Tom Sargent I read was his little “Note … Continue reading →

Those of us who teach economics stand on the shoulders of those who taught us economics. I just heard the sad news that one of my truly extraordinary economics teachers, E. Philip Howrey, recently died in a biking accident. When … Continue reading →