scholarly journals What Students Learn in Economics 101: Time for a Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Bowles ◽  
Wendy Carlin
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
First Year ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Government Interventions ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Cyclical Fluctuations ◽  
Introductory Textbooks

We make the case for a shift in what students learn in a first economics course, taking as our exemplar Paul Samuelson’s paradigm-setting 1948 text. In the shadow of the Great Depression, Samuelson made Keynesian economics an essential component of what every economics student should know. By contrast, leading textbooks today were written in the glow of the Great Moderation and the tamed cyclical fluctuations in the two decades prior to 2007. Here, using topic modeling, we document Samuelson’s novelty and the evolution of the content of introductory textbooks since, and we put forward three propositions. First, as was the case in the aftermath of the Great Depression, new problems now challenge the content of our introductory courses; these include mounting inequalities, climate change, concerns about the future of work, and financial instability. Second, the tools required to address these problems, including strategic interaction, limited information, principal–agent models, new behavioral foundations, and dynamic processes including instability and path dependence, are available (indeed widely taught in PhD programs). And third, as we will illustrate by reference to a new open access introductory text, a course integrating these tools into a new benchmark model can be accessible, engaging, coherent and, as a result, successfully taught to first-year students. Deployed to address the new problems, following Samuelson’s example, the new benchmark provides the basis for integrating not only micro- and macroeconomics but also the analysis of both market failures and the limits of government interventions. ( JEL A22, D00, E00).

The Elusive Harmony between Government and Market Roles

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
Vito Tanzi
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
The State ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
New Harmony ◽  
The 1960S

At any moment in time there ought to be some harmony between the intervention of the state that the market requires (to correct its market failures), and that citizens demand (to promote equity and a desirable income distribution) and the actual government intervention. This chapter argues that such harmony may have existed in the years when laissez faire was in place and was broadly accepted by those who had political power. The harmony became less and less evident in the later decades of the nineteenth century and during the Great Depression. There seemed to have been greater harmony in the 1960s. That harmony went down in the late 1970s and in the 1980s. It might have been partly restored in the 1990s, with a different conception of the role of the state, with less state and more market, at least in some countries. The harmony broke down again with the Great Recession in 2008–10, There is now, once again, a search for a new paradigm that would indicate the existence of a new harmony.

Social Media as More Than a Peer Space: College Freshmen Encountering Parents on Facebook

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-chen Yang
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Parental Support ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
College Freshmen ◽  
First Year ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Parent Child Relationship ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Child Relationship ◽  
Parent Child

Social networking sites, first embraced by youth, have become increasingly popular among older generations. With more parents joining the sites, young people today are likely to encounter their parents on these platforms. However, there is limited information about how youth respond to the changing landscape, especially during the transition to a residential college, when parental support is particularly important but parent-child interaction may be disrupted by geographical distance. Drawing on literature of college transition, youth’s relationship with parents, and “context collapse,” this study explores how college freshmen react to parents’ participation in Facebook. Fifty-one semistructured interviews were conducted with 28 first-year students attending a major residential U.S. university (age M = 18.14, SD = 0.45; 50% female; 75% White, 11% multiethnic, 7% Asian, and 7% Latino). Findings showed that college freshmen overwhelmingly accepted parents and family adults as their Facebook Friends and offered them equal access as that offered to peers. Facebook provided a space for college freshmen and parents to bond and express affections, although freshmen sometimes considered family adults as being overresponsive or overreactive to Facebook posts. The implications of “friending” parents on Facebook for college freshmen’s privacy negotiation, parent-child relationship, and identity development are discussed.

Financial Innovations and the Stability of the Housing Market

2014 ◽  
Vol 230 ◽  
pp. R16-R33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin Allen ◽  
James R. Barth ◽  
Glenn Yago
Keyword(s):  
Housing Market ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Housing Finance ◽  
Government Interventions ◽  
Financial Innovations ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Stability

The recent crisis has underlined the importance of the interaction of financial innovations and the housing market. We consider five major innovations relevant to housing finance. These are (i) mortgages; (ii) specialised housing finance institutions; (iii) government interventions in housing finance in the US during the Great Depression; (iv) covered bonds; and (v) securitised mortgages. The history of these innovations and their positive and negative aspects are discussed. Future innovations to help the stability of the housing market are also suggested.

Remaking the Heartland

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Objective Observer ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Changing Times ◽  
Middle West

For many Americans, the Middle West is a vast unknown. This book sets out to rectify this. It shows how the region has undergone extraordinary social transformations over the past half-century and proven itself surprisingly resilient in the face of such hardships as the Great Depression and the movement of residents to other parts of the country. It examines the heartland's reinvention throughout the decades and traces the social and economic factors that have helped it to survive and prosper. The book points to the critical strength of the region's social institutions established between 1870 and 1950—the market towns, farmsteads, one-room schoolhouses, townships, rural cooperatives, and manufacturing centers that have adapted with the changing times. It focuses on farmers' struggles to recover from the Great Depression well into the 1950s, the cultural redefinition and modernization of the region's image that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of secondary and higher education, the decline of small towns, the redeployment of agribusiness, and the rapid expansion of edge cities. Drawing arguments from extensive interviews and evidence from the towns and counties of the Midwest, the book provides a unique perspective as both an objective observer and someone who grew up there. It offers an accessible look at the humble yet strong foundations that have allowed the region to endure undiminished.

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