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Useful links

  • Last month, I had a conversation with James Tierney for his Teach Me Econ podcast series. We ended up talking for over an hour so he broke it up into two parts and the first one is now posted. In this one, we talk a lot about economics at the K-12 level.
  • The Council for Economic Education has a neat site, This Day in Economic History, that provides information on past events related to economics and personal finance (with related lesson plans for high school and Principles-level classes). Example: For February 6, 1919: "A five day strike involving around 60,000 Seattle union laborers, which basically shutdown the city, comes to a long awaited end."
  • The AEA has posted webcasts of several sessions from the January meetings. They are a bit long but could be good discussion starters in any macro class.
  • Antony Davies has a series of short videos covering a wide range of topics. These are ‘talking head’ lectures (i.e., just a video of a typical lecture) but focused and short so they could be a useful tool for students who want an alternative to a textbook or just another way of getting this information.
  • When we teach price floors and ceilings, most instructors point out that these controls have no impact if they are set below (for floors) or above (for ceilings) the equilibrium price. Now England has provided an excellent example to make this point, setting a price floor for alcohol that is so low it will likely have no effect (though you may need to convert from pounds to dollars for U.S. students to understand the numbers).
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