The principles of economics course is the most common entry point for economic education and commands more attention among researchers than any other college-level course in the discipline. Over a period of 40 years, the senior author of this paper (K.G.E.) has taught this course to over 35,000...

In most introductory and intermediate microeconomics textbooks, the measurable welfare effects of price controls, quantitative restrictions, and market restrictions more generally, are depicted as a Harberger triangle. This depiction understates these restrictions’ inefficiency costs because...

This paper describes a classroom game that illustrates the effects of asymmetric information and adverse selection in health insurance markets. The first part of this game simulates a market in which buyers can purchase insurance from sellers; in some periods, government regulation prevents...

This paper constructs new rankings of economics journals, economics departments, and economists that employ a measure of teaching-focused research productivity, an area of growing importance in recent years. The ranking methodologies presented here use information from articles that were...

Ferraro and Taylor (2005) asked 199 professional economists a multiple-choice question about opportunity cost. Given that only 21.6% answered “correctly,” they conclude that professional understanding of the concept is “dismal.” We challenge this critique of the profession. Specifically,...

The term “margin of error” is often erroneously explained in news articles reporting the results of public-opinion polls. We present here a number of representative examples of such misinterpretations drawn from the popular news media as well as from a number of authoritative Web sites...

An extensive literature in education shows little relationship between teaching and research. Authors advance the notion that research enhances teaching, but they typically ignore the prospect of teaching enhancing research. We report the results of a survey of active researchers in economics...

The concept of comparative advantage is a fundamental tool in economics. Yet, it is a concept that new students of economics frequently find challenging to grasp. In this interactive classroom game, I highlight the three essential lessons of comparative advantage: (i) individuals can have a...

This article describes a general equilibrium market experiment that allows students to generate goods prices, exchange rates, and trade flows by trading with each other. Instructors can set experiment parameters, and output data are automatically generated as a spreadsheet file. Exchange rate...

Twenty-six undergraduate students explored the meaning of the classics (Adam Smith and Karl Marx) and two lesser-known contributions in ethics and economics (Robert Owen and John Ruskin) in a spring 2007 history of economic thought course. This article introduces the inquiry-based discussion...