Teaching and Learning Economics with Technology

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91584312009-11-26T15:33:12.480-05:00Teaching and Learning Economics with Technologymusings on economic education, economic analysis and economic policySteve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.eduBlogger178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-55897515247132566432009-11-23T17:37:00.000-05:002009-11-23T17:37:02.610-05:00How Unemployment Taxes and Obama’s Stimulus Are Killing Jobs » The Foundry

As reported by the Heritage Foundation... "From the AP - 'Employers already are squeezed by tight credit, rising health care costs, wary consumers and a higher minimum wage. Now, the surging jobless rate is imposing another cost. It’s forcing higher state taxes on companies to pay for unemployment insurance claims.' " (read the rest at the next link)How Unemployment Taxes and Obama’s Stimulus

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-78269266509433437402009-11-23T08:40:00.000-05:002009-11-23T08:40:28.442-05:00Payback Time - Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government - Series - NYTimes.com

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed. (read more at the next link)Payback Time - Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government - Series - NYTimes.comAnd then there

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-82254633459631837912009-11-12T13:00:00.000-05:002009-11-12T13:00:44.296-05:00Universities: Kindle DX Doesn’t Make the Grade | GottaBeMobile.com

Universities: Kindle DX Doesn’t Make the Grade | GottaBeMobile.comFrom GottaBeMobile, Xavier Lainer reports that the Kindle DX gets a bad review.

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-17886862352449978402009-10-30T23:34:00.000-05:002009-10-30T23:37:34.740-05:00You have to wonder about the wisdom of encouraging people with no savings to borrow more money at a time when there are no jobs.

Definitely the quote of the day!

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-54523903204301157772009-10-30T12:34:00.003-05:002009-10-30T12:53:26.978-05:00Here we go again, John Taylor

This is the most outstanding image from John B. Taylor where he offers clear graphical evidence that the Bush stimulus did not work and the Obama stimulus did not work because as learned long ago temporary income changes do not change long term behavior. This chart is cited in an excellent testimony by Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Senior Fellow and Director of Economic Policy Studies, American

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-73210646857879836552009-10-29T11:41:00.006-05:002009-10-31T12:14:21.306-05:00Government purchases a 3.5% growth rate, but it may be a "clunker"

Today the BEA announced the third quarter growth of GDP of 3.5% preliminary. The details are interesting. In seasonally adjusted chained 2005 dollars (Table 3 of the tables accompanying the official release) the GDP rose from Quarter 2 to Quarter 3 of $112.5B or 0.87% of the Q2 base GDP of $12.9T. That rate over four quarters is the 3.5% reported increase.So what rose the most between the 2nd and

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-81785652310515687672009-10-25T12:28:00.005-05:002009-10-25T12:41:12.069-05:00Costs of Health Care Reform in the second ten years

I've been looking in to health care reform costs and one thing does not make sense. We get quoted that the cost of reform is under $900B for the first 10 years (CBO), but what about the next 10 years. Here is the Lewin Group's Sept. 9 , 2009 analysis of costs in Long-Term Cost of the American Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 as Amended by the Energy and Commerce Committee in August 2009.

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-25602762607568218462009-10-09T21:31:00.004-05:002009-10-09T22:03:08.236-05:00John Nist Nudges Behavioral Economics

The theory of games is not my field, but I appreciate many of the revelations of the games. What has always bothered me in a way I could not articulate was many of the accepted conclusions of behavioral economics. Enter John List, professor of economics, University of Chicago in this article by Tim Hartford: "How an inconvenient economist upset the cool crowd"In the I should have known this

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-4936177675319044372009-09-18T10:54:00.003-05:002009-09-18T11:20:24.907-05:00Do you favor the Fed Buying Mortgage Backed Securities?

FedAssetsSept09.jpg (image)Read the entire story at Calculated Risk

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-58979160587993964092009-09-17T10:10:00.005-05:002009-09-17T10:43:21.375-05:00Ignorance -- Our greatest enemy.

Today, September 17, is constitution day and across the country constitution day celebrations are planned. I hope to be at one today watching new citizens being sworn in. One great thing about converts (new citizens) or anyone who has made a conscious decision is they have invested in their new country and have learned much about that which they have joined. In fact it is typical to administer

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-68674376166104905662009-09-05T12:56:00.005-05:002009-09-06T10:16:04.747-05:00Teenage Unemployment Highest since records have been kept.

Teens are hardest hit in this particular recession. Here is a graph from Catherine Rampell in her Economix blog post.Now here is a puzzle. Before 1993 the median length of weeks of the unemployed (time to find a job) roughly equals the unemployment rate. After 1993, the duration in weeks is seemingly larger than the unemployment rate. Why?

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-22654463187698150092009-08-28T11:12:00.004-05:002009-08-28T11:20:25.912-05:00WIPTE October 12-13, 2009

"WIPTE 2009 early registration fee of $50.00 is available through September 14th. After September 14th the registration fee is $100.00. ... WIPTE 2009 will be held on October 12-13, 2009 (at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg VA) ... WIPTE is open to anyone with an interest in instructional technology. A wide variety of disciplines are embracing Tablet PC's and similar pen-based devices as tools for

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-90535610402318381432009-08-28T08:33:00.004-05:002009-08-28T09:32:32.588-05:00Frustrated with the Tablet PC market and Best Buy in particular

If you have read this blog or know me then you know that I am a big proponent of Tablet PCs or laptops that have a digital pen input option. Having a pen on the mobile computer makes so much sense for taking notes and presenting, especially in quantitatively demanded disciplines. I use a Tablet PC in each class I teach and in my graduate classes in statistics and econometrics each of my students

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-13350157964466762592009-08-23T12:51:00.002-05:002009-08-23T13:00:30.900-05:00Equality in the classroom: Incentives matter

Students are fixated on grades, I am fixated on learning. This typically drives my students to distraction, but I am one that does not feel that grades and learning are always strongly correllated, but I am sure they are positively correlated. I had an email sent to me by one of my friends that was called this "economics" professor is a genius. I spent some time unsuccessfully trying to find

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-5719693587957831552009-08-21T10:50:00.004-05:002009-08-21T11:12:57.157-05:00Did AT&T Kill Google Voice (or was it the FCC years before)

The economic issues in this WSJ article are mind boggling. Why AT&T Killed Google Voice

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-18697330937310040742009-08-21T09:14:00.003-05:002009-08-21T09:24:26.181-05:00Health Care -- Overspending is preferable to Rationing.

I have always admired Martin Feldstein as one of the clearest economic thinkers of our time (and president of the National Bureau of Economic Research). I agree with his last paragraph in his WSJ opinion article on Health reform and want to sign on to it. He says "Like virtually every economist I know, I believe the right approach to limiting health spending is by reforming the tax rules. But

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-4392442485566263132009-08-08T15:06:00.005-05:002009-08-08T15:14:33.276-05:00Health-Care Reform: Do Animals or People Get Better Care?

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free. (HT Greg Mankiw for this article)AUGUST 8, 2009"Man vs. Mutt" Theodore Dalrymple on who gets the better treatment in Great Britian, and what this means for U.S. health-care reform. His conclusion: "on the whole it is better to be a dog."

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-25110199467465738972009-08-03T19:17:00.002-05:002009-08-03T20:15:08.974-05:00The Wall Street Journal's List of the top 25+ Economics Blogs

Some of my favorites are here in the Wall Street Journal's Top 25 Economics Blogs. Students interested in learning economics should read some of these or other blogs.I use Google Reader and subscribe to many of them, you can do likewise. For an excellent summary of many blogs and commentators look at the Economics Roundtable. It has on one page what almost all of the economics blogs are

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-79242450266226349042009-08-01T11:48:00.007-05:002009-08-01T13:18:41.648-05:00What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen

What is Seen and What is Not Seen is an essay written by Frederic Bastiat in July 1850. Before you discount this as an old idea remember that (1) Adam Smith laid down the foundations of our economy in 1776 with the Wealth of Nations and (2) good ideas never age and do survive the test of time.Consider these first three paragraphs from Frederic Bastiat (then go read the rest):"In the economic

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-49757494779117041572009-07-31T21:37:00.003-05:002009-07-31T21:41:52.335-05:00Crain's Cleveland Business: Social media extend search for prospective students

Crain's Cleveland Business: Social media extend search for prospective studentsNortheast Ohio's colleges and universities are moving some of their recruiting efforts online, using social media web sites to promote their schools to prospective students. Shared via AddThis

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-14211251307900013102009-07-31T18:02:00.005-05:002009-07-31T18:13:46.453-05:00Taxes: How high is too high?

The latest post from PerotCharts.com shows the top one percent of income earners pay over 40% of all income taxes. The bottom 90% of income earners (yes 90% of all americans) pay only about 28% of all taxes with the bottom 50% paying less than 3% of all taxes. So we should be taking the rich even more? Notice that if "rich" is the top 1% that there are only 1.4 million of them to support a

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-53251421129029753502009-07-30T21:08:00.010-05:002009-07-30T22:00:06.727-05:00The New PC (hint: It's Public Choice)

Amity Shlaes, the author of the NYT bestseller The Forgotten Man: A History of the Great Depression, writes in Forbes, The New PC. Not political correctness or a personal computer, but Public Choice Theory that "says that the laws of economics aren't suspended at the door to City Hall." It is a great read.(HT Don Boudreaux)I have written about George Mason University before in a post about being

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-23631091458134205742009-07-30T20:04:00.003-05:002009-07-30T20:39:55.109-05:00Cash for Clunkers or just a Clunker?

In a previous post I cited Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, as a brilliant read. This book is a must for all who want to learn economics. The lesson is given in pages 15 through 22. The essence of the lesson is shown by the broken window fallacy. In that fallacy, some mistake the job creation for the glazier as growth and not as the destruction of the opportunities that now can not be

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-3860861665141891602009-07-27T20:51:00.000-05:002009-07-27T20:53:41.085-05:00Apple finally to produce a Tablet?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a52c9ec0-7a29-11de-b86f-00144feabdc0.html

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9158431.post-15661723937392709092009-07-02T08:55:00.007-05:002009-07-02T09:54:35.188-05:00Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 -- I might be ready to try it again.

Having used Dragon and other speech-to-type software in the past, this post by Xavier at MIDStories caught my interest and impressed me. You have to watch this video if you have ever used speech-to-type software. I will have to give Dragon Naturally Speaking another try at Nuance.com.Since I use a Tablet PC, I did a search and found a few interesting reviews, most on earlier versions. Here are a

Steve Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15251030636925168479myers@uakron.edu0