Syllabus
Syllabus 2019-20
Instructors: Charles Disantis & Chris Janus
Overview
Lucky you. You are about to embark on a yearlong course in economics that is probably the most important, and certainly the most pervasive, social science in the modern world. Micro and macroeconomics seem to touch most things these days, and an understanding of them both is part of the background for understanding much of what goes on around you. To further encourage this understanding, economic current events will be a weekly part of the course and your evaluations.
You are also going to learn a heck of a lot in this course. We will start with microeconomics, which deals with economic problems that you, the individual, face and that individual business enterprises deal with every day. We will then move to macroeconomics, which looks at economic problems in the “aggregate” – that is, in large numbers. This part of the course will help you understand our nation’s economic policy and will introduce you to different economic philosophies. And speaking of philosophy, one of the wonderful things about economics is that we will be able to talk about a lot of abstract, philosophical issues but use very practical, down-to-earth examples to illustrate them. Economics lends itself to going from the practical to the philosophical and back again: a wonderful way to enliven the practical and test the abstract.
The Blog: atmicromacroeconomics.blogspot.com
This blog should be your first stop for all matters pertaining to the course. At the top of it you will find "pages" for your weekly schedule updates, the syllabus for the course, criteria for you leading a Harkness discussion, a checklist for writing a history paper, a citation guideline, a business plan for creating your own company, a description of your behavioral research project, a description of your stock selection papers, a spring quarter Hyde Park Business project, and finally a list of good economic books. The Home Page will often be used by the teachers to cite articles of interest to you or additional information about evaluations. You are responsible to be familiar with all of this. You should never complain to your teacher that you did not know what the assignment is because that simply means you did not check the blog.
Quizzes & Tests
David Colander, the author of your text, is fond of saying that one of the things you learn in economics is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So what are the costs of this course? There is an immediate one I can think of: a lot of hard work. This is the sort of course that requires your attention on a daily basis. Everyday in class we will be learning something new that you will have to make an effort to understand as preparation for our frequent quizzes.
These quizzes will also ask you to recall key graphs, equations, and ideas from the textbook chapters. Short answer questions will also be taken from the lectures we have heard from outside speakers and from current events articles we have read. You will also be quizzed on chapters from Charles Wheelan’s Naked Economics, Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, and John List & Uri Gneezy's The Why Axis, which we will select in conjunction with the Colander chapters. Quizzes are generally 50 points each.
AP Exams
AP exams are offered in both Micro and Macroeconomics. If you wish to take the AP exams, we strongly encourage you to take only one, because they usually fall on the same day. We recommend the micro exam since we will spend more time on that field than on macro. We would also recommend that only those students who have done well in the course, AND WHO ARE WILLING TO STUDY FOR THE AP EXAM, sign up to take one or more of the AP exams, as the course is not directly tailored to the AP exams.
Books
Characteristic of most good students is their ability to take effective notes and highlight the required reading, bring the proper books to class, and just generally be organized. I want to encourage these tendencies in all of you. Therefore, you are expected to bring your textbook and economics notebook to class each day.
The texts you are expected to purchase for this course are:
- Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational Revised & Expanded Edition (Harper Perennial, 2010).
- David Colander, Macroeconomics 10th edition (McGraw-Hill, 2017).
- David Colander, Microeconomics 10th edition (McGraw-Hill, 2017).
- John List & Uri Gneezy, The Why Axis (Public Affairs, 2013)
- Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics Revised & Updated Edition (W.W. Norton, 2010).
Naked Economics reviews much of what is in Colander without the math or the graphs and in a very readable fashion. One of my former students who was at Harvard told me that they use Naked Economics in their introductory course. Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational provides a number of case studies in behavioral economics, generally showing how social, cultural, and personality forces can override financial considerations in people’s decision-making. This year, we will also use The Why Axis, which is an additional look into behavioral economics through a number of large-scale field experiments.
Lecture Series
The course features an extensive lecture series by distinguished economists and other experts. There will often be a short reading as preparation for these talks; these readings combined with what the speakers have to say will frequently be the basis for questions on your evaluations. The topics of the talks will usually not be related to what we are doing in class but are of timeless importance to you (like value investing) or are relevant to issues that are being hotly debated now (like quantitative easing, bank regulation, health care, or the plight of the middle class). The lecture series is also a wonderful opportunity for you to hear other adult voices in the classroom who are experts in their fields. Most of the lectures will take place during class periods, but occasionally they will be held in a common space during the Thursday assembly period.
We encourage students whose parents have experience in business or economics to consider giving a guest talk. We are always happy to hear proposals!
Duration of Course
The course will end for seniors with the beginning of May Project; juniors taking the course will continue to meet. Together with your teacher, you will determine a project or series of readings to be completed in the last weeks of the academic year.
Student Participation & Facilitation
A second piece of the evaluation puzzle is class participation. It will be important. If you just sit there, we reserve the right to lower grade a full letter. Active participation that is constructive will certainly improve your grade. DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR that impedes the smooth running of the class can, again, lower your grade by a full letter.
Both fall and winter quarters will have formal participation assignments. In the fall, you will lead the class in a discussion of a chapter from a supplemental text Naked Economics. A detailed rubric for discussion leadership evaluation can be found in the "pages” section of the blog under "facilitator criteria." We will also select an observer to formally comment on the discussion, as is done in the Harkness method that is used at Exeter. Please note that discussion evaluation may vary slightly by teacher.
In the winter quarter, you will discuss and possibly present on major field experiments from The Why Axis: gender in the workplace; public education; charity. Details about these assignments are forthcoming.
Some introductory criteria for evaluating facilitators:
1. Do you lead the discussion by asking thoughtful questions rather than lecturing students on what is in the reading?
2. Are you capable of answering the questions that you ask and those that the students ask?
3. Do you involve most of the students in the class or just a few eager ones?
4. Are key graphs drawn on the board or screen by you or your peers, and are the graphs properly labeled?
A grade of “C” reflects substandard facilitation.
A grade of “B-“ reflects good facilitation.
A grade of “B” reflects good pre-questions that you know the answers to, though you have difficulty answering questions that students raise.
A grade of “A-“ reflects good questions with good command of the material, but poor board or screen work.
A grade of “A” reflects good questions, good command of the material, and good board or screen work.
Fall Research Project: Behavioral Economics
Behavioral economics has transformed the field of economics over the last fifteen to twenty years or so. We have gone from a discipline that relies on “Econ. Man,” a rational optimizer of utility or profit depending on whether we are analyzing an individual or a firm, to a discipline whose practitioners have gone out in the field and tested its models only to discover that irrationality plays a significant role in how humans behave. Fortunately, as Dan Ariely has suggested, their irrationality is patterned or predictable so it can be studied. This has opened up a whole new field in economics that has made the field much more relevant because its conclusions are closer to how people actually behave.
We would like each of you to write a behavioral research paper during the fall quarter where you hypothesize one of these irrational patterns and then create a field experiment to see whether your hypothesis is true. Dan Ariely’s books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality and The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty will be particularly helpful in thinking about the irrational pattern you wish to study and how to shape an experiment. To help, we will give you selections from Ariely and other recent experiments in behavioral economics. As List and Gneezy remark, try to view “life as a laboratory.”
Detailed instructions and grading criteria for this assignment can be found at the top of the Economics Blog under the page "Behavioral Research Paper."
Spring Research Projects
During the winter quarter Mr. Janus would like the students in his classes to write a “story” (in Peter Lynch’s use of the term) about a stock that you would like to invest in. Your paper should reflect Lynch’s philosophy of value investing that will introduce to you in a selection of readings during the quarter. Your paper must be a minimum of three pages and a maximum of five, excluding appendices. You should begin this paper by writing a paragraph explaining the philosophy of value investing. You should then cite the stock you have invested in and explain why you have chosen this stock and this sector at this moment in time. You should have consulted at least three or four sources in making your choice. Those sources might include the annual report of the company, Value Line, and perhaps the Morningstar website. I would include some of the material you looked at in your appendices. You should answer the following questions in your paper: Why do you want to invest in the company’s product(s)? What is the company’s position in the industry? How financially healthy is the company? What is the philosophy and recent history of the company’s management? How healthy is the company for the long term? How expensive is the stock?
These questions should help you write the STORY of your company that will form the rationale for you buying and selling the stock. You should make every effort to actually invest a small amount of money in the stock of your choice. You don’t have the money? Hey, what are grandparents for anyway?! Detailed instructions and grading criteria for this assignment can be found on the Economics Blog under the page "Stock Selection Paper-Value Investing."
Mr. Disantis’ class will take an in-depth look at marketing from several prisms, including traditional commercials and social media presence. The project for the quarter will ask students to select a company or non-profit of their choosing and create a marketing campaign for it. The campaign will include three visual variations on a chosen theme that relate directly to the organization’s ethos and customer/participant base. Detailed instructions and grading criteria for this assignment can be found on the blog under the page “Marketing Project.”
The Michael Lewis Project
Please read one of the following Michael Lewis books that document dramatic changes in the financial, business, and academic landscapes from the 1980s going forward. Then write a paper of at least six pages about the period that the Lewis book is set in using his text as a jumping off place. So the context of his book is at least as important to your paper as the actual Lewis story. Some of you will make the mistake of writing a book report. Please don’t be one of those.
Here are the Lewis' texts you may choose from: Liar’s Poker about the transformation of the mortgage market into a money making machine for Wall Street during the 1980s; The New, New Thing concerning the emergence of Silicon Valley through the eyes of Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape; The Big Short about the collapse of the housing market; Boomerang, the story of the Great Recession in Europe; Flash Boys that focuses on insider trading with the emergence of electronic markets; The Undoing Project that explores the origins of behavioral economics through the love story of Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
Detailed instructions and grading criteria for this assignment can be found on the blog under the page “Michael Lewis Project.”
Point Distribution Scale
Fall Semester
Quizzes: 50 points each (5-6 quizzes for the quarter)
Research Paper: 150 points
Discussion Facilitation: 50 points
* Other graded assignments may be given at the discretion of the instructor.
Spring Semester
To be determined.
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