Taking advantage of the random assignment of students in Uruguay to either a conventional introductory microeconomics course or one based on the Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics (CORE) project, this study provides causal evidence on the effects of CORE on students’ academic performance, learning experience and study practices. The results show no systematic differences in pass or dropout rates between the two courses. Similarly, no significant differences are observed in performance in the concurrent calculus course or in a subsequent advanced microeconomics course, providing no evidence of disadvantages in related subsequent courses resulting from the use of a CORE-based course. Consistent with the project’s objectives, the results also show that students assigned to the non-conventional course are 18% more likely than those in the traditional course to believe that it contributed to their academic and professional development. Furthermore, assignment to CORE reduces the likelihood of students paying for private microeconomics tutoring outside school hours, and increases both class attendance and the likelihood of studying in groups.
› The full paper is available from Wiley online library.
Using topic modeling on the corpus of papers published in seven leading economics journals since 1900, we study the evolving emphasis in research on themes relating to the state, markets, and civil society, the latter referring to families, firms as organizations, other private organizations, neighborhoods, and identity groups. We document a shift between 1900 and 1970 away from research on state-related topics towards the market, even as the economic importance of the state was growing. This was followed by a substantial movement away from market topics towards topics related to civil society.
› The full paper is available from the Elsevier website.
The academic performance of students who take an introductory economics subject taught from CORE’s The Economy is compared to the performance of students taught using the Australian adaptation of Mankiw’s principles text. All students attended the same university, completing the relevant subject during the same semester. Using a difference in differences approach, it is found that the average mark for all subjects taken after the introductory economics semester is 0.26 standard deviations higher for students who took CORE Economics, which in all the La Trobe Business School courses took the average mark from 59 to 63. Students who have taken CORE Economics were therefore seen to perform better in many other business school discipline areas.
› The paper is published and available here.
Watch La Trobe’s Buly Cardak give an overview of the paper’s findings in the video below:
The main objective of this paper is to determine how sustainability is addressed in introductory economics courses, where the foundations of the discipline are laid. Specifically, the goal is to uncover what ideas are conveyed about sustainability in these courses, how they are taught, and whether there have been any changes in the last decades. CORE is singled out as an excellent resource to teach sustainability in an introductory economics class.
› The full paper is available from the Oeconomia Copernicana website (open access)
This empirical study compares CORE-taught students with students taught using a standard textbook. The study finds that CORE significantly improves economic literacy, cognitive engagement, and students’ ability to apply economics to real-world problems.
› The full paper from Springer (open access)
Although Open Educational Resources (OERs) can help reduce costs and maximize access to instructional materials, academics face significant problems in identifying good OER textbooks. This can be traced, in part, to the low quality of many OER directories. This study evaluated more than 350 potentially relevant resources, identifying 95 multidisciplinary and 23 subject-limited OER directories that include a relatively high proportion of free textbooks rather than other OERs (syllabi, assessment materials, etc.). CORE has been identified as one of the top subject-limited directories of OER textbooks.
› The full paper is available from the MDPI website (open access)
Is the training of economists keeping pace with the growing research on climate change? Is climate change considered a central or a specialized economic topic? This study documents the attention given to climate change in economics by conducting a comprehensive analysis of fifty-seven introductory textbooks. The findings reveal a notable divergence in perspectives across countries and between the domains of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. These divergences persist irrespective of individual academic standing, underscoring a pronounced schism within the profession regarding the emphasis placed on climate change in economic discourse.
› The full paper is available from the Elsevier website (open access)
This symposium considers CORE Econ’s development, its approach to teaching economics, and the impact it has had on teachers and students. It includes the following papers:
› The papers are available from the Edward Elgar website (some may require a subscription).
This book explores ways of modernising economics education in a rapidly changing world. It offers suggestions for how to adapt existing courses and adopt new teaching materials. CORE is singled out for embedding economics within social, environmental, historical, institutional and political contexts. CORE’s The Economy is praised as a “great” and “highly recommended” textbook.
› The full book is available from the OAPEN library (open access)
We make the case for a shift in what students learn in a first economics course, taking as our exemplar Paul Samuelson’s paradigm-setting 1948 text. In the shadow of the Great Depression, Samuelson made Keynesian economics an essential component of what every economics student should know. By contrast, leading textbooks today were written in the glow of the Great Moderation and the tamed cyclical fluctuations in the two decades prior to 2007. Here, using topic modeling, we document Samuelson’s novelty and the evolution of the content of introductory textbooks since, and we put forward three propositions.
› The full paper is available from the AEA website (complimentary access).
This chapter provides a case study of creating a new online economics course at the incoming undergraduate level. The production of CORE was not a matter of simply transferring material found in traditional textbooks into an interactive and hyperlinked resource with rich media. The online course fundamentally reconceived the content of introductory economics, the sequencing and modularity of the material and the pedagogies and methods that can be used to teach the subject starting with undergraduate students. CORE also provides an example of a novel authorial model which harnesses the power of distributed international online production where over 20 authors and numerous teachers and students collaborated to produce resources which retain the cohesive feel and vision of a single-authored text and where the time from conception to publication was considerably shorter than a comparable print publication.
› The chapter is available from the Edward Elgar website (a subscription may be required).
The money creation and monetary policy chapters in the leading introductory textbooks commonly present an outdated and misleading approach that is now largely irrelevant. A preferable model would help students understand that money and monetary policy are about bank and household motives, the importance of capital, and the role of credit. An updated approach would move beyond the current orthodoxy, which assumes both that the mechanical base-multiplier explains monetary policy and the quantity theory explains inflation. Monetary policy has evolved dramatically in the last 40 years. Therefore, textbook authors and teachers of introductory macroeconomics might consider some of these suggestions to help explain recent events.
› The full paper is available from the Taylor & Francis website (a subscription may be required).
The article’s authors report on a comprehensive curricular reform aimed at communicating the broad range of social issues that economists study while engaging students in active learning strategies. The reform increased interest in taking additional economics courses and majoring in economics, broadened students’ views of what economists do, and imparted more content to students. Female students earn higher grades under the revised curriculum, but no differential impact on interest in majoring in economics for female students, students of color, or first generation college students is found. Engaging students with empirical work on important social issues appeals to all students, resulting in more majors from both under- and overrepresented groups, but generates little impact on the percentage of students majoring in economics from underrepresented groups.
› The full paper is available from the Taylor & Francis website (a subscription may be required).
› An earlier version of this paper is available for free from the SSRN website.
