The authors describe the Business Conditions and Economic Analysis (BCEA) program developed at the University of Richmond. The BCEA program is an experiential learning format for economics students built on the success of student- managed investment funds (SMIF) in finance. In its initial...

The authors show how microeconomic concepts and principles are applicable to the study of terrorism. The utility maximization model provides insights into both terrorist resource allocation choices and government counterterrorism efforts, and basic game theory helps characterize the strategic...

Most studies of the determinants of understanding in economics focus on performance in a single course or standardized exam. Taking advantage of a large data set available at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA), the authors examined the performance of economics majors over an entire curriculum. They...

The authors measure math skills with a broader set of explanatory variables than have been used in previous studies. To identify what math skills are important for student success in introductory microeconomics, they examine (1) the student’s score on the mathematics portion of the ACT...

The author describes an introductory economics course in which all of the reading material is drawn from the Great Books of Western Civilization. He explains the rationale and mechanics of the course. An annotated course syllabus details how the reading material relates to the lecture material.

The author describes a course designed to build the critical thinking skills of undergraduate economics students. The course introduces and uses game theory to study the Bible. Students gain experience using game theory to formalize events and, by drawing parallels between the Bible and common...

The authors examine concurrent enrollment programs (CEP) as an effective means of teaching college economics in high school. They describe the establishment of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships to set national standards for CEP. They also investigate the performance of...

The determination of college students' academic performance is an important issue in higher education. Whether students' attendance at lectures affects students' exam performance has received considerable attention. The authors conduct a randomized experiment to study the average attendance...

The author provides an economic analysis of tradable pollution permits by clarifying the derivation of permit supply and demand relationships and connecting those concepts to permit trading for the case of two polluters. Using the standard comparison of costs and benefits, he makes the marginal...

In 1996, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) changed the method used to calculate measures of real GDP from a Laspeyres or Paasche index to a Fisher ideal index, also called a chain-weight index. Even though this is a significant change in approach and has resulted in extensive revisions of...