Category Archives: Teaching Economics

Short video clips are a good way to get students interested in economics and help them understand the basics. I especially like the Golden Balls video for teaching game theory and Milton Friedman’s classic telling of the pencil story for … Continue reading →

Every Friday the economists at JP Morgan issue a useful compendium of facts and analysis called Global Data Watch. I’ve been reading GDW for many years, and I recall the days when it was only available in the paper edition. … Continue reading →

Once a year, in November, the graduate students in the Stanford and Berkeley Economics Departments get together for the Little Big Game, a series of contests in basketball, volleyball, Frisbee, touch football, and soccer. The Little Big Game takes place … Continue reading →

Today’s Wall Street Journal article by George Shultz, Michael Boskin, John Cogan, Allan Meltzer and me shows that the financial crisis, recession, and continued high unemployment have been caused by government policies that have deviated from proven economic principles. The … Continue reading →

Many have written about how the introductory economics textbook should change as a result of the crisis. In November 2008, one year after the crisis started, I addressed this question in a practical way when Mike Worls—economics editor at South-Western … Continue reading →

My colleagues Chad Jones and Pete Klenow have computed a new measure of economic welfare which combines consumption, leisure, mortality, and even inequality. Their new measure is closely correlated with GDP per capita as the attached diagram from their paper … Continue reading →

Bloomberg columnist Caroline Baum laments that monetarists have “followed Milton Friedman the grave.” Monetarist, of course, is a term used to identify those who agree with the ideas of the great free-market economist who died in 2006. But I see … Continue reading →

People often ask me what it’s like to teach both introductory economics courses and Ph.D. level economics courses in the same academic year, which I have done regularly for many years at Stanford including this year. The courses are at … Continue reading →

The following is a reasonable summary, in my view, of the available evidence on the impacts of discretionary fiscal and monetary policy actions taken before, during, and after the recent financial crisis: The available evidence…casts grave doubt on the possibility … Continue reading →

John Papola and Russ Roberts just put their Hayek versus Keynes rap video on youtube. It’s called “Fear the Boom and Bust.” But also go to their web page EconStories which has much more. Also today PBS NewsHour aired a … Continue reading →