Check out this podcast episode!

Javanomics


My Boring Lectures


The Howl





Enjoy! -- Mike

Krugman on the US housing bubble

This is why you should not buy Real Estate.

Paul Krugman on the rich getting richer

Economic Literacy Site

Link to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve site.

Econ a Foriegn Language?

I was looking through various pages the fed has and found an old speech from June 1999 on Economic Literacy. I saw the following quote by Alice Rivlin and it made me wonder if this is how my students see my lectures. Those who have read do not have this problem but those that have not may!?

"Economic literacy is akin to having a working knowledge of a foreign language. If you are with a group of foreigners and don't speak their language at all, especially if its sounds and intonations are strange and unfamiliar to your ears, you tune out. You feel excluded, perhaps uneasy. If you have a rudimentary working knowledge of the language, you can at least follow the drift of the conversation, ask a few questions and feel that, even if you are not getting the fine points, you are not totally left out and you have a basis for acquiring more knowledge. That, it seems to me, is what economic literacy means—a rudimentary working knowledge of the concepts and language of economic activity and economic policy."

How much of rudimentary working knowledge do they have? Can I congratulate myself on discussing terminology and boring the heck out of my students before moving on to exciting debates?

Greenspan's Retirement

The legacy of Greenspan Housing Bubble

Professor on Credentialism

The Chinese Are Coming & Self Interest

Two stories on NPR Marketplace caught my attention: The first story was about the Chinese investing in the U.S. which reminds me of the Japanese in the 1980's buying Real Estate in U.S.
The Second story (commentary) is by Adam Hanft. He pointed out:

"People are positively jubilant about spending time and effort to create
videos or discover them, and then post them for free.But why? There's no
economic benefit to them. And that defies classic economic theory that says we
are all rational beings and act only in our own self-interest."

This will make an interesting discussion with the students.

MOney Video

This is from Dropping Knowledge. I will use this in class when I start teaching about money.
The Answer: Because it is a medium of exchange?

Why the Stock Market Moves by Navaro at UCI

A student asked me about the stock market and I did not have a good answer. I feared giving bad advice and him losing money and getting sued.
I am going to direct him to Peter Navaro's site and have him listen to the lectures.

need to look into this

I ran across this site for educators. I need to look at this site and decide if there is anything useful there or not.
Also a great site for the students is http://www.isbnspy.com/

Colbert Welcomes Henry Kissinger Back to the White House

The more we think that things are changing the more they are the same!

Start Of An Excellent Blog

Another excellent economist has decided to blog. I know that I will like MacroMind because he will ask questions that are relevant to our students. Also he is responsible for me being a dismal educator. He is responsible for my interest in economics as a subject, and he was one of the first people to encourage me to teach. Go toMacromind

John Kenneth Galbraith Quote

John Kenneth Galbraith is one of my favorite economists. I remembered that he had coined the term "conventional Wisdom" . Searching for the original quote I ran across the following quote of his "The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events."
You can see the above proven slowly but surely in the political news.

World is getting Flatter for Educators

This is another proof of Mr. Friedman's Hypothesis that the world is flat. Will online classes be taught from India? why not?

Story--Courtesy Reuters
U.S. homework outsourced as "e-tutoring" grows

By Jason Szep Thu Sep 28, 10:43 AM ET

BOSTON (Reuters) - Private tutors are a luxury many American families cannot afford, costing anywhere between $25 to $100 an hour. But California mother Denise Robison found one online for $2.50 an hour -- in India.

"It's made the biggest difference. My daughter is literally at the top of every single one of her classes and she has never done that before," said Robison, a single mother from Modesto.

Her 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, is one of 1,100 Americans enrolled in Bangalore-based TutorVista, which launched U.S. services last November with a staff of 150 "e-tutors" mostly in India with a fee of $100 a month for unlimited hours.

Taylor took two-hour sessions each day for five days a week in math and English -- a cost that tallies to $2.50 an hour, a fraction of the $40 an hour charged by U.S.-based online tutors such as market leader Tutor.com that draw on North American teachers, or the usual $100 an hour for face-to-face sessions.

"I like to tell people I did private tutoring every day for the cost of a fast-food meal or a Starbucks' coffee," Robison said. "We did our own form of summer school all summer."

The outsourcing trend that fueled a boom in Asian call centers staffed by educated, low-paid workers manning phones around the clock for U.S. banks and other industries is moving fast into an area at the heart of U.S. culture: education.

It comes at a difficult time for the U.S. education system: only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for black Americans and Hispanics, according to government statistics.

China and India, meanwhile, are producing the world's largest number of science and engineering graduates -- at least five times as many as in the United States, where the number has fallen since the early 1980s.

Parents using schools like Taylor's say they are doing whatever they can to give children an edge that can lead to better marks, better colleges and a better future, even if it comes with an Indian accent about 9,000 miles away.

SLANG & AMERICAN ACCENTS

"We've changed the paradigm of tutoring," said Krishnan Ganesh, founder and chairman of TutorVista, which offers subjects ranging from grammar to geometry for children as young as 6 years old to adults in college.

"It's not that the U.S. education system is not good. It's just that it's impossible to give personalized education at an affordable cost unless you use technology, unless you use the Internet and unless you can use lower-cost job centers like India," he said over a crackly Internet-phone line from Bangalore. "We can deliver that."

Many of the tutors have masters degrees in their subjects, said Ganesh. On average, they have taught for 10 years. Each undergoes 60 hours of training, including lessons on how to speak in a U.S. accent and how to decipher American slang.

They are schooled on U.S. history and state curricula, and work in mini-call centers or from their homes across India. One operates out of Hong Kong, teaching the Chinese language.

As with other Indian e-tutoring firms such as Growing Stars Inc., students log on to TutorVista's Web site and are assigned lessons by tutors who communicate using voice-over-Internet technology and an instant messaging window. They share a simulated whiteboard on their computers.

Denise Robison said Taylor had trouble understanding her tutor's accent at first. "Now that she is used to it, it doesn't bother her at all," she said.

TutorVista launched a British service in August and Ganesh said he plans to expand into China in December to tap demand for English lessons from China's booming middle class. In 2007, he plans to launch Spanish-language lessons and build on Chinese and French lessons already offered.

A New Delhi tutoring company, Educomp Solutions Ltd., estimates the U.S. tutoring market at $8 billion and growing. Online companies, both from the United States and India, are looking to tap millions of dollars available to firms under the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act for remedial tutoring.

Teachers unions hope to stop that from happening.

"Tutoring providers must keep in frequent touch with not only parents but classroom teachers and we believe there is greater difficulty in an offshore tutor doing that," said Nancy Van Meter, a director at the American Federation of Teachers.

But No Child Left Behind, a signature Bush administration policy, encourages competition among tutoring agencies and leaves the door open for offshore tutors, said Diane Stark Rentner of the Center on Education Policy in Washington.

"The big test is whether the kids are actually learning. Until you answer that, I don't know if you can pass judgment on whether this is a good or bad way to go," she said.
Read the Article

Economics Roundtable: Robert Shiller

Yale economist Robert Shiller argues that the stock market is explained by investor psychology, not the internet or globalization as others claim. Shiller forecast the collapse of the last bubble in 2000 and offers insight here into assessing risk in the 21st century. Series: "Economics Roundtable" [Public Affairs]

Demand

This is my lecture on Demand based on Textbook by David Colander. Using Google to put up my lectures.

Blocked Sites On Campus

You Tube is blocked on our campus, so some of the video links are not visible on campus.
The school blocks My Space too. However, the students organization are using it and coming up with new groups all the time. A college trustee has a myspace account. He can be found in the Rio Hondo Past and Present Group.
The AGS Group post was interesting:
"... we have been having some technical difficulties with our normal Rio Hondo AGS website and so what the heck; why not create a myspace for AGS? Everyone has a myspace (well almost) and lets be frank; they check it constantly, forcing administrators at Rio Hondo to ban myspace entirely. Consequently, we figured this would be a great and quickest way to reach our members, discuss upcoming events, announce deadlines, and etc....!"

Myspace Groups

Oh I set up a MySpace account too. I am Economisto! And I found this Video there:Posted By:Econ311

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Fiscal Policy

Economics Video

This is a very creative way of teaching fiscal policy.
Somebody flagged it on Youtube but it is clean!

Fishball explained with Economics

Is this Mandarin or Cantonese? Is it accurate?

Basic Macro

My latest gadget/software is Camtasia by Techsmith corporation. I have started creating simple powerpoint on the basic Microeconomic subjects, such as supply and demand, Equilibrium etc.
I have learned that I do not like my own voice and that I have an accent.
I started with microeconomics because it is easy to break down into simple components.
What are the Basics in Macro? GDP, Aggregate Prices, .....
Next how can I keep it simple and yet fun?

My Micro MultiMedia Page Do I have an Accent or just imagining it?

It is Tarriff Plus Subsidies in the Land of Rising Sun

In previous post I wondered how do the japanese subsidize their farmers?
According to the WTO:Read the Article
The average Japanese tariff rate on agricultural imports is 20.1%, and the effective tariff rate on rice imports is the equivalent of 406%

Japanese farmers' output equals 1.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of roughly 500 trillion yen a year but the amount of farm subsidies paid by the Japanese government is equivalent to an even larger 1.4% of GDP.

I have lived in the Japanese countryside and I understand the inefficiencies of this system. But I am forgiving of this inefficiency. Look at my August 21 posting!

Why is the U.S. falling behind?

This article from bloomberg states 'U.S. spends more on primary and secondary education than most developed countries, yet has larger classes, lower test scores and higher dropout ratesU.S. spends more on primary and secondary education than most developed countries, yet has larger classes, lower test scores and higher dropout rates".
What could be the cause?
Is it a statistical distortion? where schools with small budget are lumped in with affluent school districts leading to these numbers!?
Or
Is this confirming the results of the coleman report? http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/cocoon/ICPSR-STUDY/06389.xml
Or
Something else?

Article

Freakonomics is Yabai in Japanese

I was looking for a book and I saw a book called Yabai in Japanese. Yabai means strange or weird.
I recognized the orange within an apple image. It is the freakonomics book.
Apparently my wife read this book and that is why she is reading stiglitz microeconomics textbook. She is fascinated by economics as presented by Levitz and disappointed by microeconomics as presented in standard microeconomics textbook. She asked for an easy to read Microeconomics textbook. I gave her a few, but I think she will be disappointed.
I wonder could we make Micro more interesting? There are the experiments of supply and demand but something more...

Price Floor and Quality

I was walking with my wife and talking about price floors. She is reading Stiglitz book in Japanese. She asked me the following question: "What is wrong with price floor if it brings quality to the good?"
It took me awhile to figure out what she was talking about. It was with the help of the electronic dictionary that I understood she is talking about price floors.
She followed that with : "Is quantity everything?"
I tried to remind her that in Japan watermelon costs around 8000 yen (about $90).
She paused and said the following: "At first I liked cheap watermelon but now...."
I waited.
She continued: " I wonder Is cheap cheap everything? What about taste?"
This made me think too.
There were three questions on my mind:
1) What is wrong with a price floor which is set up to encourage high quality goods. (This is different from U.S. farm subsidies which encourages quantity)
2) Are we happier with more? I dont know if the fruit were truly better in Japan or not but it was a treat to have a piece of fruit. Scarcity made it tastier.
3) Why is my wife (a non-economist) reading Stiglitz economic textbook?
4) How do the Japanese subsidize their farms? Is it a quota or a price floor?

Freakonomics (this is freaky)

I found this article on freakonomics like a car crash. I found it disgusting but could not stop reading.
Here is another site I could not stop reading:
http://blog.organomics.org/

Every Micro teacher should read and use

Every Microeconomics teacher should read this book by Steve Keen. Even if an instructor does not accept his arguments it is an interesting way to get the students to think about Economics. Usually students just memorize the formulas but I love the look in the students' eyes when I tell them about this book.
The better prepared students love to read this book and argue with me after class. I take on the neoclassical approach and I see these students (so far two) ace my standard microeconomics exam.
They love to argue and prove the teacher wrong and in the process learn about Micro.

Debunk Econ Site

Go with the Flow

I had a conversation with my colleague at Rio she asked how do I like Krugman's new textbook so far?
I complained about Chapter 14 where he switches between Nominal and Real quantity of money so many times that it can becomes confusing.
However overall I recommended the book to her. She asked what do I like best about this book?
I said without thinking; "The Flow!"
This book does an excellent job explaining macroeconomics using the Circular-Flow model.

Podcasting

I have not written for awhile due to my new fascination with Audio. I know my students dont like to read so they all claim to be auditory learners.
I decided to believe them and I started playing with various audio softwares and sites out there. I found a site called podomatic which makes the whole thing easy. I put up couple of "testting this is mike" postings.
Also I got myself on i-tunes so students can download me on their i-pods.
I am curious as to how many students will stop attending my lectures.

Video Projects for Economics

This is a great idea. I wonder if I can get the students to do a project like this?

Why Study Econ Websitee

A Great Site

This is a great site!

CPI A smart students question

If the CPI overstate inflation, how do we know we are not overcorrecting for this and end up understating inflation?
What is the number telling us about the real world when we remove the volatile part of inflation? Does that mean nobody uses energy during that time!?

How economist see Valentine day

This is an excellent audio file to illustrate how economist think. Marginal cost of a valentine card vs. the Marginal Benefit of giving the card.
Happy valentine day!

An Excellent Site by NYTimes

This is a link that I found on Math and Econ using the New York Time.

What do they Know

The NCEE has released the findings of a new poll, conducted by Harris Interactive (The Harris Poll® People), that examines adults’ and students’ current understanding of basic economic concepts.

Whimsical Streak in an Introductory Econ.

I am reading the Accidental Theorist by Krugman again. The following (original published in Slate Jan 23 1997)caught my eye and I will use it in my first lecture. Not the whole thing but the following section:

"You can not do serious economics unless you are willing to be playful. Economics is not a collection of dictums laid down by pompous authority figures. Mainly it is a menageries of thought experiments-parables, if you like-that are intended to capture the logic of economics processes in a simplified way. In the end, of course, ideas must be tested against the facts. But even to know what facts are relevant, you must play with those ideas in a hypothetical settings. "

I would have to reword this but the idea of playfulness is important for student to learn and develop critical thinking versus just memorizing various laws of economics.

Listen to this!

This is an interview with Art Kleiner. Toward the end of the interview he gets into what makes a good educator.

Diversity in Economics

Macroeconomics & Heuristics

I was reading the article "What is problem solving?" by Michael Martinez (see my last post). The Heuristic approach advocated in the paper is an interesting idea.
In the article he had the following sentence:
"All heuristics help break down a problem into pieces."
This made me think of Macroeconomics. A very big puzzle , so big that it can not be seen as one piece. Economist take pieces of information Unemployment, Inflation, Interest rate, etc. and try to reason the function, relationship between different pieces or the location of each piece in the larger picture.
I am thinking of bringing a puzzle to class and fiddle around with it so the students can visualize this idea. An old puzzle with worn out edges would be better because in real life there is NO exact fits.

Problem Solving

Surfing the Web and I ran into the above article by Dr. Michael Martinez. My mind is a little "blurry" from looking at the screen for so long but I think this article is saying what I tell my students.
Failure is your best teacher!
Screw up on the homework and you will not screw up on the exam!
I let them redo their homework till they get 100% on the homework. (most do not take advantage of this)
I never give them the correct answer.
They have to figure out where they went wrong.
I felt a bit guilty. I thought that I was being easy but now I feel great knowing that there is a method to my madness.

Winter Vacation

This winter vacation is too long. I am going crazy. This made me think about one of the assumptions of economics and I have to ask the following question:
How do we calculate the cost of working to a workholics?
How do we calculate the cost of working to workholics that like to complain about working?

Market Failure Vs. Failure of Market Outcome

This is an interesting article by David Colander.

Looking at the crowd

I was watching seminars given by various famous political gurus. These were in the lecture format given to interested graduate students at American University. Some of these lecturers were actually interesting. Watching these lectures I noticed the following:
1) Interested students do fall sleep in class. I saw a few fighting sleep and saw one doodling.
2) They wake up to ask questions. The sleepiest student was the first one to ask a question.
(sleepiest is not actual word but at this moment I can not think of a better word).