Economics in Plain English » Daily Links

Welker’s daily links 05/18/2011

Jason Welker — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:30:12 +0000

Introduction to Game Theory | Yale Political Science Lecture

A summer course on game theory from Yale…

tags: game theory microeconomics lectures

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Welker’s daily links 01/25/2011

Jason Welker — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:30:11 +0000

Introduction to Development – exploring prezi | Economics in Plain English

tags: development economic development economics
- This is an introduction to the concept of economic development which I am teaching to my class at the moment. You can click through the prezi by pressing the play button and choosing fullscreen under “more”. The up and down arrow keys, zoom in and out.
Lesson Plan – Myths about Economic Development – debunked | Economics in Plain English

tags: development economics

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Welker’s daily links 11/14/2009

Jason Welker — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:30:05 +0000

LRB · John Gray · We simply do not know! – Annotated

AP Macro and IB teachers should read this review of George Akerlof and Robert Schiller’s book “Animal Spirits”. There are some great points in this piece that can be brought into the AP or IB classroom with regards to the assumption of rational behavior and more importantly the Keynesian/Classical debate on Macroeconomic policy issues.

tags: Keynes, rational behavior, free markets, markets, macroeconomics, animal spirits, fiscal policy, efficiency
- The last two years, in which capitalism has suffered one of its periodic shocks, have given John Maynard Keynes a new lease of life. Events have demonstrated the limits of the theory that economies can be relied on to be stable if they are lightly regulated and otherwise left to themselves. There is now much talk of the paradox of thrift, whereby the rational choices of individuals can prove collectively ruinous, and of the need for government to counteract the inherently anarchic tendencies of markets. Keynes has been revived because he understood that markets are very often irrational. Unfortunately, few of those who urge that we go back to him seem to have understood why he believed this.
- Apart from a brief postscript to one of the chapters and a few remarks in the preface, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller’s Animal Spirits was written before the current crisis. Yet, based on research undertaken over many years, it can be read as prefiguring the current disillusionment with economics. The trouble with prevailing theories, in Akerlof and Shiller’s view, is that they assume human beings are more rational than they actually are. ‘This book, which draws on an emerging field called behavioural economics, describes how the economy really works,’ they claim. ‘It accounts for how it works when people really are human, that is, possessed of all-too-human animal spirits.’
  - – post by jasonwelker
- ‘Just as Adam Smith’s invisible hand is the keynote of classical economics,’ they write, ‘Keynes’s animal spirits are the keynote to a different view of the economy – a view that explains the underlying instabilities of capitalism.’ Here they are endorsing the caricature of Smith propagated by neoliberal ideologues anxious to confer a distinguished patrimony on an illegitimate intellectual offspring.
  - – post by jasonwelker
- Shackle took Keynes’s argument a step further, and showed that no economic policy can ensure economic stability indefinitely. ‘Keynesian’ policies are no exception to this rule. Deficit financing and monetary expansion may have worked well in the conditions that existed after the Second World War. It is not clear that they will be so effective today, when globalisation has brought a freedom of capital movements that did not exist then.
  - – post by jasonwelker
- Economics and politics are not separate branches of human activity, and economic life cannot be studied independently of social divisions and political conflicts among populations, along with their cultures and religions.

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Welker’s daily links 11/06/2009

Jason Welker — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:30:08 +0000

A special report on China and America: : Round and round it goes | The Economist – Annotated

China and the US have a complicated relationship when it comes to trade. It may be changing in the future due to the recession in America, but for some that change can’t come fast enough!

tags: economics, current account, capital account, protectionism, exchange rates, managed exchange rate, China

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Welker’s daily links 11/05/2009

Jason Welker — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:30:09 +0000

YouTube – ACDCLeadership’s Channel

Mr. Clifford and ACDC Leadership is dedicated to creating interactive programs, lessons, and activities that make learning exciting.

tags: Economics videos, resources, review
Knowledge Learning Corporation | Child Care & Education Services

Are you looking for a great opportunity, a rewarding career, or the chance to make a difference? KC Distance Learning is hiring NCLB Highly Qualified High School certificated teachers to fill positions across the country. We currently have part-time and full-time positions available for qualified teachers who want to work from their home. Working at KCDL you will enjoy a flexible work environment, utilize the latest distance learning and communications technology, and, best of all, you can help students from all walks of life achieve their individual potential.

tags: teaching, Economics, Advanced, Placement, online, education

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Welker’s daily links 09/30/2009

Jason Welker — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:30:10 +0000

Video: Joseph Stiglitz: The Balance Sheet : The New Yorker

VIDEO: JOSEPH STIGLITZ

James Surowiecki spoke with Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, about the mishandling of the financial crisis, the relationship between government and markets, and the future of capitalism around the world. They met last month at Stiglitz’s office at Columbia University.

tags: economics

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Welker’s daily links 09/12/2009

Jason Welker — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:30:06 +0000

FT.com / China / Economy & Trade – China’s economic rebound boosts jobs

Employment levels in China began to recover over the past three months in the latest evidence of the rapid rebound in the economy from the international financial crisis as a result of heavy public investment.

tags: economics

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Welker’s daily links 09/11/2009

Jason Welker — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:30:06 +0000

Economic Growth Yet to Hit Job Market – washingtonpost.com

Despite an emerging economic expansion, businesses were sufficiently skittish about the future that the job market continued its long, steep decline in August, according to a new government report Friday. The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent, from 9.4 percent, as employers shed jobs for the 20th straight month, the Labor Department said.

tags: economics

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Welker’s daily links 08/26/2009

Jason Welker — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:30:08 +0000

BBC World Service – Business – Is inflation or unemployment worse?

Should we worry more about unemployment or inflation?

Is the massive spending of taxpayers’ money by governments, to make good the current aversion to spending by everybody else, storing up inflation or not?

The fear in some quarters, is that governments will eventually print money to finance today’s spending.
Policy priorities

In a way, it is a re-run of the debate that has rumbled on since the 1930s between Keynesians on one side – and neo-classical economists and monetarists on the other.

tags: economics

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Welker’s daily links 08/25/2009

Jason Welker — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:30:07 +0000

FT.com / Comment / Opinion – Magic and the myth of the rational market

One response to the current crisis has been a rise in the popularity of behavioural economics, which examines the psychological and emotional factors behind transactions. These models drop the assumption of the rational actor yet implicitly keep the same model of economic rationality at their heart. We may diverge from the path of rationality for all sorts of psychological reasons but only because emotion, Keynes’s famous “animal spirits”, clouds our judgment.

tags: economics, rational behavior, markets

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Welker’s daily links 08/17/2009

Jason Welker — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:30:08 +0000

Op-Ed Columnist – The Swiss Menace – NYTimes.com

Investor’s Business Daily would like you to believe that Obamacare would turn America into Britain — or, rather, a dystopian fantasy version of Britain. The screamers on talk radio and Fox News would have you believe that the plan is to turn America into the Soviet Union. But the truth is that the plans on the table would, roughly speaking, turn America into Switzerland — which may be occupied by lederhosen-wearing holey-cheese eaters, but wasn’t a socialist hellhole the last time I looked.

tags: economics

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Welker’s daily links 06/12/2009

Jason Welker — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:28:07 +0000

‘Japanese’ pair reportedly held with $134 billion in U.S. bonds | The Japan Times Online

Two Japanese were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian newspaper reported Wednesday.

The Japanese Consulate General in Milan acknowledged that two people had been detained, but it was still trying to confirm with Italian authorities their identities and whether they are Japanese nationals.

According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds worth $500 million each, in a suitcase with a false bottom. The bonds were found June 3 during a search by Italian authorities in Chiasso, on the border with Switzerland about 50 km north of Milan.

The newspaper did not say on what grounds the two were detained, but they may have been held on suspicion of attempting to take a large amount of securities out of Italy without declaring them.

It said the Italian authorities were investigating whether the securities are genuine, given their huge value.

If the bonds are genuine, the two could be fined around 40 percent of their total value, it said.

tags: economics

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Welker’s daily links 06/09/2009

Jason Welker — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:28:09 +0000

Next Test – Value of $125,000-a-Year Teachers – NYTimes.com

So what kind of teachers could a school get if it paid them $125,000 a year?

An accomplished violist who infuses her music lessons with the neuroscience of why one needs to practice, and creatively worded instructions like, “Pass the melody gently, as if it were a bowl of Jell-O!”

A self-described “explorer” from Arizona who spent three decades honing her craft at public, private, urban and rural schools.

Two with Ivy League degrees. And Joe Carbone, a phys ed teacher, who has the most unusual résumé of the bunch, having worked as Kobe Bryant’s personal trainer.

“Developed Kobe from 185 lbs. to 225 lbs. of pure muscle over eight years,” it reads.

They are members of an eight-teacher dream team, lured to an innovative charter school that will open in Washington Heights in September with salaries that would make most teachers drop their chalk and swoon; $125,000 is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, and about two and a half times as much as the national average for teacher salaries. They also will be eligible for bonuses, based on schoolwide performance, of up to $25,000 in the second year.

tags: economics, education, teacher pay, incentives, wages

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Welker’s daily links 06/08/2009

Jason Welker — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:28:10 +0000

Economic View – Freshman Economics Won’t Be Quite the Same – NYTimes.com

MY day job is teaching introductory economics to about 700 Harvard undergraduates a year. Lately, when people hear that, they often ask how the economic crisis is changing what’s offered in a freshman course.

They’re usually disappointed with my first answer: not as much as you might think. Events have been changing so quickly that we teachers are having trouble keeping up. Syllabuses are often planned months in advance, and textbooks are revised only every few years.

But there is another, more fundamental reason: Despite the enormity of recent events, the principles of economics are largely unchanged. Students still need to learn about the gains from trade, supply and demand, the efficiency properties of market outcomes, and so on. These topics will remain the bread-and-butter of introductory courses.

Nonetheless, the teaching of basic economics will need to change in some subtle ways in response to recent events. Here are four:

tags: economics

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Welker’s daily links 06/05/2009

Jason Welker — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:28:18 +0000

Bernanke Presses For Fiscal Restraint – washingtonpost.com

The nation needs to begin planning now to eventually bring taxes and spending in line, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said yesterday, arguing that large budget deficits, if sustained, could deepen the financial crisis and choke off the economy.
Bernanke’s testimony to Congress reflected growing concern among economists and investors that the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalances could stand in the way of economic recovery by driving up the interest rates that the government, businesses and consumers pay to borrow money. The rate the government pays has already risen in recent weeks.

tags: economics, balanced budget, crowding out

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.