The stunning events of 2007-2009 both shook the world and piqued interest in economics. In the 30-plus years that I have been teaching macro principles, I have never seen the level of interest in students as high as what I observed last year rapt attention and no sleepers! Interest in economics...

We describe experiences from integrating a semester-long economic analysis project into an intermediate macroeconomic theory course. Students work in teams of "economic advisors" to write a series of nested reports for a decision-maker, analyzing the current economic situation, evaluating and...

The paper deals with changes in tertiary education (TE) funding in 28 European countries after 2007. We focus on two aspects: first, does the public expenditure on TE change (decrease/increase) in proportion to the changes (decreases/increases) in public expenditure on education and second, did...

With very low unemployment, a large and stable current account surplus, low government debt and a budget in surplus, the Dutch economy was assessed initially to be relatively well prepared to weather the financial and economic crisis. In 2008, however, the negative effects of the financial...

With banking sectors worldwide still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis, public discussion of plans to place toxic assets in one or more bad banks has gained steam in recent weeks. The following paper presents a plan how governments can efficiently relieve ailing banks from toxic...

The paper surveys the state of German pension system after a sequence of reforms aimed at achieving long-term sustainability. We argue that the latest reforms have moved pension provision in Germany in principle from a defined benefit to a defined contribution scheme, and that this move has...