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The INET CORE Curriculum Project – Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics

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The INET CORE Curriculum Project – Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics The INET CORE curriculum project – Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics A project within INET’s Educational Program The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is funding an international project to change the core curriculum in economics. The project begins work in October 2013 with its base at INET@Oxford and is envisaged as running for three years. The project is directed by Wendy Carlin (Professor of Economics, University College London and Research Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London). Why? The combination of pressures for change coming from students, faculty, employers and policy makers, from recent advances in economics, and from new technologies for teaching and knowledge sharing make this an auspicious time to seek improvements in what economics students learn and how they learn it. The global adoption of very similar curricula and methods that can be taught anywhere by a 'modern-trained PhD’ lacking knowledge of real world economies seems to have produced the same dissatisfactions, whether it’s among students at the University of Chile or UCL, faculty at Bogazici University, Turkey, or the British Treasury and Bank of England. Students are embarrassed by their inability to use economics when engaging in debates about current policy issues. Their teachers are dissatisfied too: a department chair at a top university recently lamented to one of the project members that, “The students can handle any problem set we throw at them, but if I ask about the economy, their reasoning is no different from the wisdom of taxi drivers, and sometimes a bit less well informed.” The existing core curriculum is designed as if all students were to become graduate students in economics yet it teaches an outdated and sometimes even incorrect version of economics. What? As is the case in all disciplines, addressing the shortcomings of what we are calling the core economics curriculum – what is taught in the introductory course and intermediate micro and macro – is essential to making enduring changes in what students learn, and subsequently to the way economists influence society. The CORE project will develop a new approach to the design, content and way of teaching these key courses. The aim is not simply to add missing material but to reshape the core in light of developments in the economy and in economics over the past three decades. By asking big questions about the economy in the Introduction course (see below) and signaling how economics can address them, it commits lecturers to deliver in subsequent micro and macro courses, where they develop the tools & evidence base to answer the questions in depth. The first course in economics will emphasize economics is an empirical and dynamic science– requiring knowledge of data, history, and institutions – and a subject with powerful modeling tools. New intermediate macro course material will equip students to understand the economic events unfolding around them, and especially the dynamics of instability, endogenous policy formation, the financial system, growth and distribution. 1 September 2013 New intermediate micro course material will ‘bring the back of the book to the front’ by making accessible to undergraduates the huge advances made over the past two decades in asymmetric information, incomplete contracts, public goods, behavioural economics, and strategic interaction. Popular textbooks have in recent years made cosmetic concessions to recent advances in economics, placing the material in the final (and often un-taught) chapters. The new core courses will introduce students to debates in economics, and to how economists (and other scientists) seek to resolve their differences. One element in the CORE project will be the creation of a set of videoed interviews for an ‘Economists in Action’ series. The objective is to give students insight into the way economists engage in the translation of economic models into practical methods of solving problems in public policy and in the private economy. These videos will provide positive role models for students thinking about future careers. How? The project will support the production, testing, and dissemination of the essential public goods (texts in e-book format, supplementary materials such as curated web content, problem sets, data and writing exercises, classroom experiments, etc.) for introductory economics and intermediate micro and macro courses to assist departments and individual faculty members in making the switch to a more up to date, relevant, and student-engaging curriculum. To the greatest extent possible, the materials will be available open access on line in forms that allow faculty members, students and others to construct their own learning paths, in conjunction with other materials currently available and being produced by other economists. Who? In the planning stages of the project, there have been two workshops (at NBER in January 2013 and at Oxford in June 2013). Contributions have been made by the following people. Johannes Abeler (University of Oxford), Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Philippe Aghion (Harvard), Karishma Ajmera (Twist Open Innovations, Bangalore); Eric Beinhocker (INET@Oxford), Sam Bowles (Santa Fe Institute), Andrei Bremzen (New Economic School, Moscow), Juan Camilo Cardenas (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), Sarah Caro (Wiley), Diane Coyle (Enlightenment Economics), Bob Denham (http://www.econfilms.tv/), Tom Ferguson (UMass Boston, INET New York), Sergei Guriev ( Sciences- Po), Colm Harmon (University of Sydney); Daniel Hojman (University of Chile), David Hope (LSE), Arjun Jayadev (UMass Boston, INET New York and Azim Premji University Bangalore), Rob Johnson (INET), Simon Johnson (MIT, Peterson Institute), David Laibson (Harvard), Oscar Landerretche (University of Chile), Perry Mehrling (Barnard College Columbia University and INET New York), Robin Naylor (Warwick University), Martha Olney (Berkeley), Kevin O’Rourke (University of Oxford), Begum Ozkynak (Bogazici University Turkey), Bhavin Patel (Azim Premji University Bangalore); Katharina Pistor (Columbia University), Debraj Ray (NYU), Paul Seabright (Toulouse), Rajiv Sethi (Barnard College Columbia University), Konstantin Sonin (New Economic School, Moscow), Margaret Stevens (University of Oxford), Romesh Vaitilingam, John Van Reenen (LSE), Charles Vincent (Imperial). The CORE project steering committee is Wendy Carlin (UCL), Sam Bowles (Santa Fe Institute) and Oscar Landerretche (University of Chile). 2 September 2013 5 Questions for the CORE curriculum The CORE project is developing new core courses for the undergraduate curriculum in introductory economics, intermediate microeconomics, and intermediate macroeconomics. The objective of the CORE project is that having completed these courses, students would have the facts, concepts and confidence to be able to address five sets of questions. This is a preliminary list of questions. Q1 What is economics about? How have capitalism and technological innovation changed the world and what is the connection between the two? What explains the wealth and poverty of nations and people? Are there environmental constraints on economic development? How, why, and when does increased income enhance the quality of life? Q2 What/who are the main economic actors? People: how do the selfish, generous, and ethical aspects of human behaviour influence economic outcomes? Firms: how do authority and competition shape the way firms are organized and behave? Q3 What can markets do? (…and what can they not do?) How do societies coordinate their economic activities? How do markets work, when they work well? Why do markets sometimes fail? Can a restriction of competition (such as the protection of intellectual property rights, or the existence of a monopoly) improve economic performance? Why are labour and credit markets different from the market for shirts? What are the benefits and costs of the international movement of commodities, finance and people? Q4 How can public policies improve economic performance? Why does unemployment persist and why is inflation a problem? Why are there booms, recessions and financial crises? Can fiscal and monetary policy stabilize the economy? Is there an efficiency/equality trade-off? Why do government failures occur? Q5 How do economists produce knowledge? Can economics be a science (and what would this mean)? How do economists resolve differences among themselves and scientists in other disciplines (and why are differences sometimes not resolved)? How has economic knowledge evolved over time in response to new data, new methods, and problems? 3 September 2013 Economic concepts all undergraduate students should understand – this is a preliminary list of concepts Concept Example (introductory economics) Example (intermediate micro) Example (intermediate macro) Opportunity costs Work vs leisure; trade-offs Incentive compatibility constraints (best Phillips curves; intertemporal trade-offs response functions) based on agent’s next best alternative Forward looking Marginal benefits and marginal costs; Actions based on {preferences, beliefs, Monetary policy reaction function; intentional action (best consumer choice (non-strategic); Self- constraints} Employee or borrower arbitrage in financial markets such as UIP response) in strategic interested behaviour and what it means; chooses an action to maximize the present condition; coordination among policy- and non-strategic Prisoners dilemma, Assurance game; value of expected net benefits in
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