The authors analyze the various factors that highly recognized economists cite as reasons for pursuing a career in economics. They obtained data for 62 of the 67 Nobel Laureates in economics and included another 22 prominent economists who have made significant contributions in economic research. The authors' basic quest was to discover how these…

Based on results from a 1999 national survey, William Becker and Michael Watts found that student evaluations of teaching were by far the most widely used, and often the only method used by economics departments, to evaluate teaching in undergraduate economics courses. To investigate whether departments of economics have moved beyond the use of…

Using data collected from graduates who attended four large public universities in 1976, 1986, or 1996, the authors investigate the relationship between studying economics and civic behaviors. They compare students who majored in economics, business, or other majors, and by the number of undergraduate economics courses completed. Coursework is…

The second edition of the "Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics" was published by the Council for Economic Education in 2010. The authors examine the process for revising these precollege content standards and highlight several changes that appear in the new document. They also review the impact the standards have had on precollege…

The conception of economics education implicit in the "Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics" is fundamentally at odds with what ought to be a primary goal of a liberal education: to teach students of all ages to treat all truth as provisional. Articulate the consensus, but also articulate questions about this consensus, questions…

The primary objective of this article is to see if and how attendance policy influences class attendance in undergraduate-level principles of macroeconomics classes. The second objective, which is related to the first, is to examine whether the nature of the attendance policy matters in terms of its impact on class attendance behavior. The results…

In this article, the authors describe the place of econometrics in undergraduate economics curricula in all American colleges and universities that offer economics majors as listed in the "U.S. News & World Report" "Best Colleges 2010" guide ("U.S. News & World Report" 2009). Data come from online catalogs, departmental Web sites, and online…

Undergraduate students are often interested in and benefit greatly from applications of economic principles. Historical novels drawn from real-world situations can engage students with economic concepts in new ways and provide a useful tool to help enhance instruction. In this article, the authors discuss the use of historical novels generally in…

After three years of treading water (2005, 2006, and 2007), in 2008 (academic year 2007-08), undergraduate degrees in economics awarded by U.S. colleges and universities resumed the strong upward trajectory they exhibited from 1997 through 2004, when they rose almost 60 percent over seven years. This trend has continued unabated since 2007, with…

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…

Economics can be taught much earlier than we usually imagine, as a life skill, with direct experience, from kindergarten on. An experiential, early-grades economics of budgets, buying, and giving-up-to-get may be better than the politically inspired insistence that students get an allegedly healthy dose of free-market ideology just before they are…

Advanced Placement economics leaves thousands of high school students with a misleading impression of modern economics. The courses fail to cover key sources of growth and prosperity, including private ownership, dynamic competition, and entrepreneurship. The tools of public choice economics are totally ignored. Government is modeled as a…

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…

Blogs provide a dynamic interactive medium for online discussion, consistent with communal constructivist pedagogy. The author of this article describes and evaluates a blog assignment used in the teaching and assessment of a small (40-60 students) introductory economics course. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected across four…

The hold-up problem is central to the theory of incomplete contracts. This can occur if, after making a sunk investment in a relationship, one party can be taken advantage of by the other party, leading to inefficient underinvestment. The authors describe a simple teaching experiment that illustrates the hold-up problem, and address how to…