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Bret Willhoit

PBS Teachers | Access, Analyze, Act: From Economic Theory to Financial Reality - 9 views

www.pbs.org/...access-analyze-act-economy

economics pbs economy lessonplans resources

shared by Bret Willhoit on 23 Dec 09 - No Cached
  • Bret Willhoit on 23 Dec 09
     
    Great group of lesson plans, resources, and even widgets for a blog/wiki.
  • gene hayward on 23 Dec 09
     
    FYI---Link appears to be broken...:(
  • Bret Willhoit on 23 Dec 09
     
    This is the working link - http://www.pbs.org/teachers/access-analyze-act-economy/ I don't know what happened the first time around. Thanks for letting me know Gene
Jason Welker

Economics of Disasters « Foundation for Teaching Economics - 4 views

www.fte.org/...disasterslessons

economics natural disaster

shared by Jason Welker on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • This set of lessons looks at a variety of natural disasters – from the Black Death of the Middle Ages to Hurricane Katrina in our too-recent memory, to fears of avian flu pandemics that haunt the future – through the lens of economic analysis. The contexts were chosen to facilitate the teaching of economic reasoning principles not only in economics courses, but also in history and the other social studies disciplines. Each lesson addresses a question that reflects people’s compassionate reaction to news of disaster and develops one or two key tools of economic analysis in answering that question. Case studies of past disasters provide real-world illustrations.
  • disasters
  • This set of lessons looks at a variety of natural disasters – from the Black Death of the Middle Ages to Hurricane Katrina in our too-recent memory, to fears of avian flu pandemics that haunt the future – through the lens of economic analysis. The contexts were chosen to facilitate the teaching of economic reasoning principles not only in economics courses, but also in history and the other social studies disciplines. Each lesson addresses a question that reflects people’s compassionate reaction to news of disaster and develops one or two key tools of economic analysis in answering that question. Case studies of past disasters provide real-world illustrations.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • This set of lessons looks at a variety of natural disasters – from the Black Death of the Middle Ages to Hurricane Katrina in our too-recent memory, to fears of avian flu pandemics that haunt the future – through the lens of economic analysis. The contexts were chosen to facilitate the teaching of economic reasoning principles not only in economics courses, but also in history and the other social studies disciplines. Each lesson addresses a question that reflects people’s compassionate reaction to news of disaster and develops one or two key tools of economic analysis in answering that question. Case studies of past disasters provide real-world illustrations. Program Topics Introduction Addendum to Introduction Lesson 1: Are Disasters Good for the Economy? Lesson 2: When Disaster Strikes, What Can Markets Do? Lesson 3: When Disaster Strikes, What Can Government Do? Lesson 4: When Disaster Strikes, What Can We Do? Lesson 5: Are Disasters “A Disaster” for Lesson Planning? Activities
  • This set of lessons looks at a variety of natural disasters – from the Black Death of the Middle Ages to Hurricane Katrina in our too-recent memory, to fears of avian flu pandemics that haunt the future – through the lens of economic analysis. The contexts were chosen to facilitate the teaching of economic reasoning principles not only in economics courses, but also in history and the other social studies disciplines. Each lesson addresses a question that reflects people’s compassionate reaction to news of disaster and develops one or two key tools of economic analysis in answering that question. Case studies of past disasters provide real-world illustrations.
  • Jason Welker on 15 Mar 11
     
    Lesson plans for the Economics classroom for teaching the effects of natural disasters
Jason Welker

LRB · John Gray · We simply do not know! - 0 views

www.lrb.co.uk/...we-simply-do-not-know

Keynes rational behavior free markets markets macroeconomics animal spirits fiscal policy efficiency

shared by Jason Welker on 14 Nov 09 - Cached
  • The last two years, in which capitalism has suffered one of its periodic shocks, have given John Maynard Keynes a new lease of life. Events have demonstrated the limits of the theory that economies can be relied on to be stable if they are lightly regulated and otherwise left to themselves. There is now much talk of the paradox of thrift, whereby the rational choices of individuals can prove collectively ruinous, and of the need for government to counteract the inherently anarchic tendencies of markets. Keynes has been revived because he understood that markets are very often irrational. Unfortunately, few of those who urge that we go back to him seem to have understood why he believed this.
  • Apart from a brief postscript to one of the chapters and a few remarks in the preface, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller’s Animal Spirits was written before the current crisis. Yet, based on research undertaken over many years, it can be read as prefiguring the current disillusionment with economics. The trouble with prevailing theories, in Akerlof and Shiller’s view, is that they assume human beings are more rational than they actually are. ‘This book, which draws on an emerging field called behavioural economics, describes how the economy really works,’ they claim. ‘It accounts for how it works when people really are human, that is, possessed of all-too-human animal spirits.’
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 14 Nov 09
       
      I took my students to hear George Akerlof speak in Zurich recently. His presentation of "Animal Spirits" was excellent and shed considerable light on the Macroeconomics we teach in AP and IB Economics classes.
  • ‘Just as Adam Smith’s invisible hand is the keynote of classical economics,’ they write, ‘Keynes’s animal spirits are the keynote to a different view of the economy – a view that explains the underlying instabilities of capitalism.’ Here they are endorsing the caricature of Smith propagated by neoliberal ideologues anxious to confer a distinguished patrimony on an illegitimate intellectual offspring.
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 14 Nov 09
       
      Modern day free market advocates have hijacked Adam Smith's "invisible hand"...
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Shackle took Keynes’s argument a step further, and showed that no economic policy can ensure economic stability indefinitely. ‘Keynesian’ policies are no exception to this rule. Deficit financing and monetary expansion may have worked well in the conditions that existed after the Second World War. It is not clear that they will be so effective today, when globalisation has brought a freedom of capital movements that did not exist then.
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 14 Nov 09
       
      Is old fashioned Keynesian fiscal stimulus enough to solve today's economic challenges?
  • Economics and politics are not separate branches of human activity, and economic life cannot be studied independently of social divisions and political conflicts among populations, along with their cultures and religions.
  • Jason Welker on 14 Nov 09
     
    AP Macro and IB teachers should read this review of George Akerlof and Robert Schiller's book "Animal Spirits". There are some great points in this piece that can be brought into the AP or IB classroom with regards to the assumption of rational behavior and more importantly the Keynesian/Classical debate on Macroeconomic policy issues.
Jason Welker

Life on Severance: Comfort, Then Crisis - WSJ.com - 1 views

online.wsj.com/...SB125780714976639687.html

keynesianism wages recession sticky wages unemployment

shared by Jason Welker on 10 Nov 09 - Cached
  • The family recently vacationed in Virginia Beach, Va., and likes to dine on Porterhouse steaks. Since losing his job, Mr. Joegriner, 44 years old, has had several offers. He's turned each down in hopes of landing a position comparable to what he held before.
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 10 Nov 09
       
      Unemployed Americans unwilling to accept lower wage jobs! This sounds like evidence of the "sticky wages" Keynesian observed in his arguments for fiscal stimulus!
  • Mr. Joegriner is a member of what might be called the severance economy -- unemployed Americans who use severance pay and savings to maintain their lifestyles. Many lost their jobs in 2007 and 2008, and thought they'd soon find work. Now, they're getting desperate.
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 10 Nov 09
       
      I bet these people just wish they had taken that good offer a year ago. Finance people laid off during this recession must have an artificially inflated view of their own value in the labor market: over-inflated like the assets they had dealt in!
  • Last week, lawmakers passed a bill extending unemployment benefits up to 20 weeks. Unemployment benefits, which typically last about 26 weeks, were expected to run out for 1.3 million people by the end of the year, according to the National Employment Law Project.
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 10 Nov 09
       
      Extending unemployment benefits, while it is a NICE thing to do, only increases the downwardly inflexible nature of wages.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The dramatic changes in such sectors mean that many of the eliminated jobs will never come back. Some workers may suffer a permanent hit to their standard of living.
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 10 Nov 09
       
      Why won't certain jobs ever return to the US economy? Is it at least partially BECAUSE American workers are so unwilling to accept lower wages?
  • When Michelle Patterson was laid off as an executive director of marketing for a publishing company in January, she figured she could subsist comfortably, at least for a while, on the $20,000 she had reserved from her savings and severance combined.
  • She spent as much as $250 a week on networking meals and drinks with contacts. Some days, she scheduled up to four coffee meetings a day, picking up the tab most of the time. She also spent $30 a month for pedicures and $150 on her hair.
    • Jason Welker
      Jason Welker on 10 Nov 09
       
      You've got to be kidding me! This is what our world has come to. Unemployed Americans, delusional about their own worth, spending $180 a week on what, mani-pedis?
  • Jason Welker on 10 Nov 09
     
    Things are scary out there for the unemployed in America! This article tells some sad stories of opportunities lost and next eggs blown! It also illustrates a key concept from AP and IB Economics: the theory of sticky wages and prices, at the heart of Keynesian macroeconomics. 
ksajdak

How the Government Dealt With Past Recessions - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com - 8 views

www.nytimes.com/...090126-recessions-graphic.html

government policy recession

shared by ksajdak on 25 Nov 09 - Cached
  • ksajdak on 25 Nov 09
     
    Economists discuss recent recessons
Jason Welker

Economic View - A Dose of Skepticism on Government Spending - NYTimes.com - 5 views

www.nytimes.com/...11view.html

shared by Jason Welker on 21 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • the centerpiece is likely to be a huge increase in government spending
  • John Maynard Keynes
  • A main focus was how to avoid, or at least mitigate, the recurring slumps in economic activity.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Economic downturns, Mr. Keynes and Mr. Samuelson taught us, occur when the aggregate demand for goods and services is insufficient.
  • Higher consumer spending expands aggregate demand further, raising the G.D.P. yet again. And so on. This positive feedback loop is called the multiplier effect.
  • these Keynesian prescriptions make avoiding depressions seem too easy.
  • each dollar of government spending can increase the nation’s gross domestic product by more than a dollar
  • The solution, they said, was for the government to provide demand when the private sector would not.
  • less than a third of the increase takes the form of private consumption and investment.
  • Professor Ramey estimates that each dollar of government spending increases the G.D.P. by only 1.4 dollars.
  • In practice, however, the multiplier for government spending is not very large
  • If you hire your neighbor for $100 to dig a hole in your backyard and then fill it up, and he hires you to do the same in his yard, the government statisticians report that things are improving.
  • it is unlikely that, having wasted all that time digging and filling, either of you is better off.
  • inefficient spending
  • bridges to nowhere,
  • increase in economic well-being.
  • a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of each government project.
  • To this day, we have yet to come to grips with how to pay for all that the government created during that era
  • a temporary crisis as a pretense for engineering a permanent increase in the size and scope of the government. Believers in limited government have reason to be wary.
  • tax cuts will be a larger piece of the Obama recovery plan than was previously expected.
Walter Antoniotti

Building America's Democratic Fedefalist Republic a 2-pqge class handout - 2 views

Building America's Democratic Fedefalist Republic a 2-pqge class handout Important background for everyone especially in an election year. http://www.textbooksfree.org/Building%20America's%20Democr...

poitical economy

started by Walter Antoniotti on 28 Apr 16 no follow-up yet
matthew_nogrady

On the Wrong Side of Globalization - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...he-wrong-side-of-globalization

trade globalisation economics inequality

shared by matthew_nogrady on 19 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • In general, trade deals today are markedly different from those made in the decades following World War II, when negotiations focused on lowering tariffs.
  • Today, the purpose of trade agreements is different. Tariffs around the world are already low. The focus has shifted to “nontariff barriers,” and the most important of these — for the corporate interests pushing agreements — are regulations. Huge multinational corporations complain that inconsistent regulations make business costly. But most of the regulations, even if they are imperfect, are there for a reason: to protect workers, consumers, the economy and the environment.
  • recent trade agreements are reminiscent of the Opium Wars, in which Western powers successfully demanded that China keep itself open to opium because they saw it as vital in correcting what otherwise would be a large trade imbalance.
Jason Welker

Nouriel Roubini - What America needs is a payroll tax cut - 2 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010091605846.html

shared by Jason Welker on 17 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • The administration knows that it needs to fashion a revenue-neutral fiscal stimulus that increases labor demand and consumption. Its proposal to make permanent a research and development tax credit that dates to the 1980s, and then to enact a temporary investment tax credit allowing firms to write down capital investments at 100 percent of cost, are welcome -- but too modest a cure for what ails the economy. A much better option is for the administration to reduce the payroll tax for two years. The reduced labor costs would lead employers to hire more; for employees, the increased take-home pay would boost much-needed economic consumption and advance the still-crucial process of deleveraging households (paying down credit card debt and other legacies of the easy-credit years).
  • Jason Welker on 17 Sep 10
     
    Roubini says cut payroll tax to relieve households and encourage hiring.
Tim Schilling

Some Interesting Resources - 4 views

There's a very good interactive relating changes in inventories to changes in GDP at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704625004575089220715521384.html#articleTabs%3Dinteractive And th...

Economics Economy Resources GDP Business Cycle

started by Tim Schilling on 01 Mar 10 no follow-up yet
Aaron Palm

David Ranson: The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4608104575217870728420184.html

revenue limits tax spend hauser's law

shared by Aaron Palm on 19 May 10 - Cached
  • President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates a deficit that starts at 10.3% of GDP in 2010. It is projected to narrow as the economy recovers but will still be 5.6% in 2020. As a result the net national debt (debt held by the public) will more than double to 90% by 2020 from 40% in 2008.
  • They do not include deficit spending resulting from the new health-insurance legislation. The revenue numbers rely on increased tax rates beginning next year resulting from the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts. And, as usual, they ignore the unfunded liabilities of social insurance programs,
  • "Hauser's Law," as I call this formula, reveals a kind of capacity ceiling for federal tax receipts at about 19% of GDP.
  • Aaron Palm on 19 May 10
     
    We can never collect more than 20% tax rate
Bret Willhoit

Because Every Country Is The Best At Something - 17 views

www.informationisbeautiful.net/...untry-is-the-best-at-something

visualization specialization economics economy ConsumerEd

shared by Bret Willhoit on 22 May 10 - Cached
  • Bret Willhoit on 22 May 10
     
    Useful chart to demonstrate Specialization and how every country is good at something.  
  • Tim Schilling on 23 May 10
     
    It is very interesting. I posted on my blog at http://valuingeconomics.blogspot.com on Thursday. As I said there, I'm not sure some of those "specializations" are something a country would necessarily be proud of - or something they could "trade." But it is a good example of how every country is "good" at something.
Seth Roberts

Paul Krugman: The Economic Failure Of The Euro : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...e-economic-failure-of-the-euro

krugman Euro Econ Macro Economics international

shared by Seth Roberts on 25 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Krugman explains that having a transnational currency does have obvious benefits — it makes doing business a lot easier in Europe. But, he says, there's also a downside: By giving up its own currency, a country also gives up economic flexibility and the benefit of having its own federal government back it up in times of economic trouble.
  • Krugman points to the economies of Ireland and the state of Nevada as examples. Both depend on exporting as a major source of revenue (Ireland to other countries, Nevada to other states)
  • Seth Roberts on 25 Jan 11
     
    This story is a great explanation of the Euro zone and it's strengths and weaknesses
Bret Willhoit

It's the Inequality, Stupid | Mother Jones - 7 views

motherjones.com/...quality-in-america-chart-graph

economy economics politics visualization charts income incometaxes tax taxes government

shared by Bret Willhoit on 26 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Bret Willhoit on 26 Feb 11
     
    Some great charts that visually show just how unequal the two America's have become in the last 35 years.  
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