In this article, the authors describe a field experiment in the classroom where principles of micro-economics students are randomly assigned into homework-required and not-required groups. The authors find that homework plays an important role in student learning, especially so for students who initially perform poorly in the course. Students in…

For students taking intermediate-level economics, does it matter where they studied principles of economics? Does transferring college credit influence subsequent academic performance in economics? With a sample covering 1999-2008, the authors analyze in this article a group of nearly 1,000 students taking intermediate macroeconomics at a…

The term "Discouraged-Business-Major" (DBM) describes students who become discouraged with the rigorous standards of colleges of business and migrate to colleges of arts and sciences to complete a degree in economics under relaxed requirements (Salemi and Eubanks 1996). Following Salemi and Eubanks, the present authors examine a decade of…

The authors use data from a finance-related theme park to explore how financial education changes investment, financing, and consumer behavior. Students were assigned fictitious life situations and asked to create household budgets. Some students received a 19-hour financial literacy curriculum before going to the park, and some did not. After…

High school transcript data were used in this study to estimate the percentage of high school graduates who complete an economics course, and to examine course-taking trends in economics from 1982 to 2009. In 2009, 58 percent of high school graduates took an economics course, up from about 45 percent from 1990 to 2005. The increases in economics…

Underrepresentation of women in economics is documented in many studies. Investigation of its sources at the undergraduate level is examined through students' decisions to persist in economics, either beyond an introductory course or in their major choices. The authors add to the literature by analyzing students' decisions to take their first…

What is the best way to allocate students to small teams in those economics courses that rely on small group work to enhance individual student learning? While experts in collaborative learning provide many suggestions, little empirical work has been done. This article begins to fill the gap. It examines whether a variety of characteristics of the…

Using data that identify the respondents to student evaluation of teaching (SET), the author finds that respondents and nonrespondents are different along several characteristics. Students respond more if they are first-term freshmen, or if the course is a major requirement. Men, students with light course loads, and students with low cumulative…

This article studies the determinants of academic achievement in online courses in economics and finance. The authors use the online tracking feature in Blackboard (Campus Edition) to retrieve the real time that each student spent in the course for the entire semester and to analyze the impact of time spent online, prior grade point average (GPA),…

Using undergraduate student records from six large public universities from 1990 to 2003, the authors analyze the characteristics and performance of students by major in two economics courses: Principles of Microeconomics and Intermediate Microeconomics. This article documents important differences across students by major in the principles course…

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 evaluated the effect on student performance of using a new information technology (IT) enhancement that permits students to participate in the recording of lectures that can be downloaded later from the Internet. The author compared two sections of the same Intermediate Microeconomics class and observed the sample students to be…

How do students enrolled in online courses perform relative to those who choose a more traditional classroom environment? What student characteristics help explain differences in student academic achievement in the two modes of instruction? What factors affect the students' choice of instruction mode? The authors address these questions in…

In this study, the authors use data from two online courses in principles of economics to estimate a model that predicts exam scores from independent variables of student characteristics. In one course, the final exam was proctored, and in the other course, the final exam was not proctored. In both courses, the first three exams were unproctored.…

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.…