Teaching of Economics

Caveman economics

I am greatly enjoying Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - who spoke at the LSE last week (there was a long queue of my students wanting to buy the book). Today’s Mail on Sunday previews another example of the new genre of popular books on behavioural economics written by Professor Pete Lunn from the Economic and Social Research Institute and given the enticing title Basic Instincts: Human Nature and the New Economics. It is published by Marshall Cavendish next month, few details available yet. I will keep my eye out and add to the blog when they are more widely known.

Congratulations to Tiffin Girls School

Tiffin Girls’ School are celebrating their win in the 2008 Bank of England / The Times TwoPointZero competition. Many congratulations from everyone at Tutor2u. Read all about their triumph here

Flair for economics

1st: The Tiffin Girls’ School, Kingston-upon-Thames.
Nancy Chen, Georgia O’Donnell, Neshma Shah, Teresa Song

2nd: Loreto College, Coleraine, Co Londonderry

3rd: Leeds Grammar School, West Yorkshire

Other finallists: Peter Symonds College, Winchester, Hampshire; Tonbridge School, Tonbridge, Kent; Wolverhampton Girls’ High School, Wolverhampton

Now the attention switches to the Royal Economic Society’s Young Economist of the Year competition, there are just under two months to go before entries must be submitted for judging.

Tutor2u VLE in Economics

As the summer revision and exam season approaches, I will be spending a lot of time developing new resources for the Economics VLE available through Tutor2u.The system already provides a full range of study resources, online tests and assignments, glossaries and revision aids organised on a topic by topic basis for four separate courses: AS micro and macro and A2 micro and macro. I will also be developing the European Union and Housing modules in the coming days. Details of the VLE and group and individual subscription rates are available here.

Credit Crunch Mind Map

I have updated my mind map on the credit crunch and now made it available to download as a mmap.file. If you have Mind Jet Mind Manager, please feel free to download it and amend if you find it useful.
The_Credit_Crunch.mmap

2008 RES Conference - Press Releases

This is an excellent service from the Royal Economic Society’s 2008 Conference - a sizeable number of press releases on some of the research findings presented to the delegates. Nick Fawcett from Oxford University also recommends this document on the causes of the sub-prime crisis which was used in one of the lectures at the conference. 

Fragile Earth Gallery

A picture tells a thousand words. The Guardian’s new Fragile Earth picture gallery provides some wonderful and often disturbing images of our fragile natural resource base and the impact of man on the environment. This could be a good resource to turn to when teaching environmental economics? The paperback version of Fragile Earth: What’s Happening to Our Planet? is now available from Amazon and other main street booksellers.

Common mistakes in daily decisions

The Old Theatre at the LSE was completely packed last evening for an entertaining and riveting lecture from Dan Ariely, the author of ”Predictable Irrationality”. Dan Ariely has for many years used experimental methods to discover more about many of the biases apparent in our everyday behaviour. His lecture was rich in examples and encouraged us at all times to think counter-intuitively. 

Economics: Sunday Paper Selection

David Smith looks at the performance of the UK economy over the last fifteen years referencing a work published alongside the Budget Report last week: Resilience in the UK and other OECD economies

Jeff Randall writing in the Telegraph argues that “the unwinding of the Great Debt Delusion still has a long way to go and many more victims to claim.”

Will Hutton on a a deluded Wall Street threatens the world economy

The Mail on Sunday has a stunning aerial photo of Heathrow Terminal 5 - superb for using when teaching economies of scale and the law of increased dimensions!

A to Z of AS Macroeconomics!

Teaching at 5.30pm on a Friday afternoon as the fag end of term approaches isn’t great fun but after a successful SWOT analysis of the UK economy yesterday, I set my AS macro group a half hour challenge today - to produce an A to Z of macroeconomics as a prelude to their revision. Working in pairs, they tried to assemble twenty-six entries - it could be a concept, an issue in the news or perhaps a well known economist - anything so long as it had a macroeconomic connection! Similar to the game of Scattegories, teams only scored a mark when their answer was unique within the class.

Double points could be scored for suggestions such as Ben Bernanke, price pressures or credit crunch. Three marks for purchasing power parity! This led to some very creative and quirky answers.

Anyway ... here is a potted (albeit incomplete) summary of the responses. My job over the weekend is to produce a word document that provides a web link to a newpaper or BBC news story for each of them - so that they can access some articles linked to their suggestions whenever they want to. Can blog users suggest other entries? I am happy to email the word file over if you want to try this exercise before the end of term!

Tony Dye

I was very sad to learn today that Tony Dye, former chief investment officer of Phillips and Drew died on Monday at the early age of 59. Tony was known as Doctor Doom for his bearish forecasts for stock prices during times of financial euphoria and ultimately he was proved right with the collapse of the dot-com boom in the spring of 2000. The boys at my economics society at school thought so much of him that they invited him to speak to the Keynes Society a couple of years ago. Tony delighted us on that occasion with a really nicely judged talk and by using some chapters of Keynes’ General Theory to illustrate some of the dangers of the herd mentality of people working in the financial markets. Tony Dye was a natural contrarian who believed passionately in the lessons of history and the power of the idea that values revert back to historic means. His obituary in the Telegraph provides a neat quote from Keynes which Tony was fond of using “worldy wisdom teaches that it is better to fail conventionally than it is to succeed unconventionally.” Rest in peace.