Teaching · Economics
Fun and Learning in the Classroom: Incorporating In-Class Games to Teach Economics
Attending a workshop discussion on using quick games in the classroom as a useful learning activity this week prompted me to formally write up several short exercises and fun games I have used with students over the years. These activities are simple, practical, and have been mostly adapted from other economists and my own professors from when I was a student. It is designed to make core economic concepts a little concrete for students through a little hand-on experience. The act of making choices in the classroom given the incentives and constraints, and then reflecting on the outcomes and interaction with other students (economic agents) is a great way to see how some fundamentals concepts of economics in action.
These include a candy/chocolate exercise on diminishing marginal utility, a live iced tea market to construct demand curves from willingness to pay, a tragedy of the commons fishing game, production possibility frontier discussions around consumption and investment, and a voting exercise to introduce ranked choice voting, median voter theorem, tyranny of the majority and other political economy concepts.
Teaching · Notes · Economics
Lecture Slides and Worksheets from Principles of Micro and Macro
These are some of the older slides and worksheets I used when I first started teaching. There are updated slides somewhere, I just need to find them.
Summer 2019
Principles of Macroeconomics
These are lecture slides I use in class (used in conjunction with an iPad where I would annotate and draw on the slides themselves).
Lectures 2-6 (Micro: Opportunity costs, and Markets)
Lecture 2 (PPC) – Lecture 3 (Demand and Suply) – Lecture 4 (Supply) – Lecture 5 (Markets) – Lecture 6 (Market Failure)
Lectures 7- 15 (Macroeconomic Theory)
Lecture 7 (GDP) – Lecture 8 (Standards of Living) – Lecture 9 (Circular Flow) – Lecture 10 (Business Cycles) –
Lecture 11 (AD/AS) – Lecture 12 (AD/AS – 2) – Lecture 13 (Unemployment) – Lecture 15 (Inflation)
Lectures 17 – 22 (Money, Banking and Short-run Stabilization)
Lecture 17 (Money and Banks) – Lecture 18 (Federal Reserve) – Lecture 19 (Monetary Policy) – Lecture 20 (Fiscal Policy)
Lecture 21 (Recessions) – Lecture 22 (The Financial Crisis and the Great Depression)
Lectures 23 – Lectures 24 (The Open Economy)
Lecture 23 (International Trade) – Lecture 24 (Trade and Exchange Rates)
Fall 2017
Principles of Macroeconomics
These are worksheets I use in the Principles Macro class as a way for the students to evaluate what they know and what they don’t, and as a springboard for class discussion.
Week 1 (PPC) – Week 2 ( The Market) – Week 3 (Externalities)
Week 3 (GDP) – Week 4 (Circular Flow and Unemployment) – Week 5 (Inflation) – Week 6 (AD and AS)