Economics

ECON 136:  Week 14,  Friday

Effective Communication of Quantitative Information 

Here are the examples I presented in class

Dan Heath on making things stick and the Fishman article on water bottles.

Hans Roling on measuring human progress

Annie Leonard on responding to climate change

ECON 136:  Week 14Tasks

 Monday:   On Data and Persuasion    

            Background reading:

                        Data vs. storytelling      

                        Reason vs. Intuition

Wednesday:  Preparing for the Final Memorandum

 Review my comments on your written work

Review the Guide to the Final Memorandum, complete and submit through Moodle between noon on May 5 and the end of the exam period.

Friday:   We go our separate ways one last time

360:   Meet at 10 am at Pem Arch for Camden Trip

ECON 136:  Week 13 Tasks

Looking well ahead:   During exam period, I'll be asking you to write a short memo within a four hour window of your choice.   We'll go over the details on April 30.

Monday:  The Precautionary Principle

How should we cope with irreversible unlikely events?

Read Cairncross

Due Monday night (or by 3am Tuesday, April 22):   Cost-Benefit Memorandum

Wednesday:  On Climate Change

On Monday I'll ask you to take on the roles of different individuals or groups potentially affected by climate change or by policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions.  

Resident of island nation of Tuvalu -- Alison & Liz

Coal miner in West Virginia -- Jo & Sophia

Dock worker in Iceland -- Agatha & Betsy

Recent hire at Foxconn in China -- Anisa

California freeway commuter -- Ian

Southern California farmer -- Megan

ECON 136:  Week 12 Tasks

Looking ahead to Week 13:  There will be a Cost-Benefit Paper due Monday night, April 21.  I'll have the assignment posted after Wednesday's midterm.

Monday:  Midterm Review

Wednesday's exam is cumulative, so there will be a mix of questions like those on the first exam and questions related to material covered since then.   Bring a calculator to class and the exam.

Wednesday:  Midterm

In class starting at promptly at 10:10 ending at 11:00.  

Friday:   Flavors of Sustainability

Preparing for Class:   In this excerpt from Tietenberg & Lewis

Read the pp. 97-98, 103-104 and examples 5.1 and 5.2

Skim pp. 99-103

ECON 136:  Week 11 Tasks

Looking ahead to Week 12:  We'll have our 2nd midterm on Wednesday, April 16 in class.   April 14 will be a review session.   It will cover material we've discussed since the beginning of the semester.  I'm happy to help you as you prepare.  If my office hours don't work for you, then email me with all of the times you might be able to make work and I’m sure we can work something out.

Monday:  Endowments and Perpetual Care

Preparing for Class:

Read this brief peek at the dilemmas created by the existence of cemeteries

This Blog post is the briefest (admittedly biased and incomplete) introduction I could find to the controversy surrounding the decision to break the will of the founder of the Barnes Museum.

ECON 136:  Week 14,  Friday

Effective Communication of Quantitative Information 

Here are the examples I presented in class

Dan Heath on making things stick and the Fishman article on water bottles.

Hans Roling on measuring human progress

Annie Leonard on responding to climate change

ECON 136:  Week 10 Tasks

Reminder 1:   I update my office hours by the end of Friday of the previous week.   If  none of those times work for you, then email me with all of the times you might be able to make work and I’m sure we can work something out.

Reminder 2:  The Explaining an Externality Market Failure paper is due Monday night, March 31

Monday:  Valuing Public Art

Class Links

Philadelphia requires that developers devote 1% of the value of new building projects to public art.  Brief descriptions of the program are available here and on page 1 of this handout.

Query:   Is there a market failure justification for government funding of public art?

Wednesday:  Discounting & Present Value

I intend to go over the concept of discounting future costs and benefits to derive a common basis for comparison and use our remaining time to clarify issues raised earlier in the week.    

Preparing for class:

ECON 136:  Week 9 Tasks

 Reminder:   I update my office hours by the end of Friday of the previous week.   If  none of those times work for you, then email me with all of the times you might be able to make work and I’m sure we can work something out.

Monday:  Valuing Amenities

Preparing for class:

Read this excerpt (pp. 43-54) from

Cairncross, F. (1992).   Costing the Earth: The Challenge for Governments, the Opportunities for Business. Harvard Business School Press. 

then read from middle of page 35 to top of page 39 of 

Tietenberg, T. and L. Lewis (2008).  Environmental & Natural Resource Economics, 8th ed.  Pearson.

The remainder of the excerpt contains additional details on valuation methods, if the topic particularly interests you.

Wednesday:  Valuing Life

Preparing for class:

ECON 136:  Week 8 Tasks

Updated 3/17 to incorporate reading for Wednesday.

Hope you had a renewing and (where needed) healing Break. 

Individual Conferences

I’d like to check in with each of you about how the semester is going.   If you’ve fallen behind in some of our tasks, this is a good time to talk through how best to catch up.  If there is a topic in the revised syllabus you’d like to cover in more depth, let’s discuss.   This might be a good time to go over one of your midterm  rewrites.  (If you haven’t picked up your graded exam, copies will be available first thing Monday morning in Dalton 114.)

Before you retire Sunday night, please choose a meeting slot in the Week 8 block in the Working with Economic Data Moodle site.

Monday:  Solving Externality and Public Goods Problems

Five hardy souls made it to class on the 7th.   So I’ll ask them to take the lead in helping the rest of us work through the sort of problems someone who understands the externality and public goods market failure ought to be able to solve. 

Preparing for class:

Review or  complete the  Week 7 Tasks.    I’ve reset the Sapling Learnng problem sets to be due Monday at 3am.

ECON 136:  Week 8 Tasks

Hope you had a renewing and (where needed) healing Break. 

Individual Conferences

I’d like to check in with each of you about how the semester is going.   If you’ve fallen behind in some of our tasks, this is a good time to talk through how best to catch up.  If there is a topic in the revised syllabus you’d like to cover in more depth, let’s discuss.   This might be a good time to go over one of your midterm  rewrites.  (If you haven’t picked up your graded exam, copies will be available first thing Monday morning in Dalton 114.)

Before you retire Sunday night, please choose a meeting slot in the Week 8 block in the Working with Economic Data Moodle site.

Monday:  Solving Externality and Public Goods Problems

Five hardy souls made it to class on the 7th.   So I’ll ask them to take the lead in helping the rest of us work through the sort of problems someone who understands the externality and public goods market failure ought to be able to solve. 

Preparing for class:

Review or  complete the  Week 7 Tasks.    I’ve reset the Sapling Learnng problem sets to be due Monday at 3am.

Wednesday:  Cost-Benefit Analysis