The Heart of Teaching Economics: Lessons from Leading Minds (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)
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The Heart of Teaching Economics: Lessons from Leading Minds (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010) Simon W. Bowmaker, New York University Interview with Caroline Hoxby, Stanford University July 14, 2009 1 Caroline Hoxby was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1966 and graduated with an AB in economics from Harvard University in 1988 and then obtained an MPhil in economics from the University of Oxford in 1990 and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. She joined Harvard University as an Assistant Professor of Economics in 1994, and then served as the Morris Kahn Associate Professor of Economics between 1997 and 2000, and as the Allie S. Freed Professor of Economics between 2001 and 2007. She moved to Stanford University in 2007 to take up her current position as the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. At Stanford, Professor Hoxby teaches an undergraduate course in Economics of Education and a PhD course in Public Finance. At Harvard, in recognition for her outstanding contributions to teaching, she was a designated Harvard College Professor between 2005 and 2007 and received the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2006. Professor Hoxby’s research interests are public economics and labour economics. Her articles have appeared in the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics and Journal of Human Resources, among others. Her edited books include College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay for It (University of Chicago Press, 2004) and The Economics of School Choice (University of Chicago Press, 2003). I interviewed Caroline Hoxby in her office in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. It was mid-morning of July 14, 2009. BACKGROUND INFORMATION Bowmaker: You took your first class in economics at the age of 13. Can you tell us about that formative experience? Hoxby: It was an amazing experience because it made me think I wanted to be an economist when I was 13 years old. I took a class with a man named Sal Fabrisio, who had received a PhD in economics and gone back to teach high school social studies. He really wanted to teach economics, so he got to teach one economics class each year, and he had us read work by a lot of famous economists, like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. I just felt as though the world was opening up. I had many questions in my mind that troubled me, and no one around me seemed to have good, rigorous ways of answering them. All of a sudden, I realized there was a science of 2 answering the questions and that economists had some understanding. It was like a mental revolution. That was it. I never looked back. Bowmaker: What was the eventual attraction to public economics? Hoxby: I think public economics is absolutely at the core of economics. It is about all the ways in which the government can intervene in our lives to make things better, whether for efficiency reasons or for equity reasons. For instance, we often think of taxation being about equity, such as raising taxes so that we can re-distribute income to people. We think of other social policies, such as disability insurance or unemployment insurance, being more about efficiency. Both equity and efficiency are absolutely fundamental to economics. Almost everything a public economist does has a bearing on government policy. I also think that public economics is just a very meaty subject. Every part of economics is involved in public economics; very important theory, very modern empirical work, general equilibrium analysis, partial equilibrium analysis, public goods, externalities, and on and on. Finally, another thing that is very attractive about public economics is that it poses important problems, but it also offers solutions. We’re able to teach students about solutions, and I think that’s always nice. Bowmaker: As a student, did any of your teachers stand out as being particularly influential or inspirational? Hoxby: The problem with answering this question is there are so many who stand out! I’ve had the privilege of being taught by many really important economists. When I was an undergraduate, I was taught by Martin Feldstein, who later became my colleague. I thought he was fabulous as a professor. I was also taught by really wonderful people like Richard Freeman, Jeffrey Williamson, Larry Katz, Dale Jorgensen, and Jeffrey Sachs, all of whom I found very inspirational. When I was at Oxford, I had the privilege of having James Mirrlees as my microeconomics tutor, and you couldn’t do much better than that. Stephen Nickell, now Warden of Nuffield College and recently at the Bank of England, was my macroeconomics tutor. He was fantastic too. Then when I was in graduate school at MIT, I was taught by people like Jim Poterba, Hank Farber, and Jerry Hausman. All of them are great, but you learn different things from different people. What I 3 took away from Jerry Hausman was very different from what I took away from someone like Jim Mirrlees, for instance, but I greatly admire both of them. Hank Farber was fantastic about teaching from research. I think he was the first person I saw who could take apart a paper and reveal how all the moving parts were working underneath. That’s fantastic to see when you’re a graduate student. On the other hand, I think that students need to have teachers who have really clear insight into how a body of knowledge is organized. If their minds have it all organized in a particular way and you are able to see their clear organization, you end up organizing it very well yourself, even if your organization is not the same as theirs. People who exemplified this for me were Jim Poterba (public economics) and Jerry Hausman (econometrics). Bowmaker: Based on your experience, can you tell us about any differences in teaching styles in England compared to the United States? Hoxby: There are very big differences. I like both styles of teaching a lot, and I adored the English style of teaching. I think that if every American could get a year at Oxford, it would be a good thing. The English style of teaching is much more about deep reading and digestion. There is an expectation that you should know the history of economic thought behind each issue. There is a belief that you should read articles and books from the ‘50s, even the ‘30s, to fully understand an idea and why we approach it the way we do now. You are expected to read articles in a way that tries fully to empathize with what the author was trying to do, and then tries fully to understand the implications. American students are essentially trained via problem sets and, when they are asked to read articles, they are asked to distill from them certain pieces of information, certain lessons about methodology, or a certain empirical technique. They’re not reading the article to read it as a whole, and they’re certainly not encouraged to read the deep background behind a question most of the time. So, I think that the English and American styles are complementary to one another. The American style is very good at making you technically able, fast. The English style may be better at making you a deep thinker in economics. 4 Bowmaker: As a teacher, have any of your colleagues been particularly influential in terms of developing your style and approach in the classroom? Hoxby: Well, one of the interesting things is that I almost never see my colleagues teach, so I can’t tell you what their teaching styles are. But the one person with whom I’ve co-taught a lot, so that I know his style and know I admire it, is Martin Feldstein. He has a crystal-clear style. He always takes the time to explain an issue; he gives you the institutional background, he explains the theory, and he lays it out neatly. His teaching is 100 percent about conveying the material in a way that’s clear to students. He has no ego in the classroom. He never presents something in a way that’s complicated or difficult because he wants to impress students with how fancy his knowledge is. I really admire that style of teaching. WOMEN IN ECONOMICS Bowmaker: Why do you think more women are not attracted to study economics? Hoxby: There are several reasons. I think undergraduate women are just as interested in economic issues as are men, and I really see that in my classrooms. But I think that the culture of economics, as opposed to the content of economics, is still a male-dominated culture. I think a lot of women just find the culture off-putting. They don’t wish to live in a culture they consider to be a boys’ nerdy culture. The person likely to feel most comfortable in an economics classroom is someone who is male, who likes math, and is proud of the fact that he likes math. I’m most aware of our culture in economics when I go outside it to work in a professional setting that is more equally balanced between men and women. I find that I feel uncomfortable, which reveals that I don’t normally live in a culture that men and women equally influence. In addition, there are probably fewer female students who want to study economics for purely practical reasons such as working on Wall Street or in The City (London’s financial district).