Author: easton

Getting students to think about a writing assignment

My students in “Principles of Macroeconomics” write two article summaries.  A sizable proportion of them could easily improve their work by paying more attention to what I’m asking them to do.

This semester I did a pretty good job of nudging them to do just that.  A short homework assignment was the nudge.

Here’s the assignment sheet:
Article_Summaries_ho_F17

Here’s the homework assignment:
HW_on_Art_Summary_Assign

Fires, bad hurricanes, & carbon emissions

Normally, I include climate change in my principles of microeconomics class and ignore it in principles of macroeconomics.  Due to smoky air in Portland and painful news from the Caribbean, I decided to spend some time in class discussing the connection between economic growth in the US and our carbon emissions.

To do that, I simplified an Excel workbook I created for my intermediate macroeconomics class.  It includes the Paris Accord targets for the US, an introduction to a simple Kaya decomposition, and a simulation students can use.  The simulation allows them to see how population growth, average living standards, and carbon intensity interact to determine our total emissions.  Here it is!    Growth & GHG Emissions.mac