A Couple of Interesting Resources via Chicago

The first is not actually via Chicago, it's via The Council on Foreign Relations in New York. But the content is strictly from Chicago.

The CFR recently hosted the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Charlie Evans. I know Charlie from my days in Chicago, and I have immense respect for him. Naturally, I was excited to learn that he had given a speech at the CFR. I was more excited to learn that it's available as audio and video and transcript here.

Charlie's talk was titled "The Great Inflation Debate" and he thoroughly discussed the back and forth about the Fed's actions in the recent recession and whether those actions might lead to inflationary pressures. As always, Charlie was very thorough, and very thoughtful. His comments make excellent follow-up to the Krugman article highlighted in previous posts. At the very least, I would use this presentation with any students involved in any kind of policy competition (such as the Fed Challenge) or project. It provides a number of perspectives, and his answers to a wide range of questions provide further insight into current conditions.

The second resource is courtesy of the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago. This past summer, the Center hosted a teacher institute, "Understanding the Global Economy: Bringing the World Market to Your Classroom." About six weeks ago, they had all the readings and PowerPoint presentations from the institute on their website. (Click on the "Resources" tab on the home page.)

I had a chance to look at most of them, and they were quite good. Mind you, I didn't agree with all of them. But the presentations balanced each other out quite well, in my opinion. (There were one or two that were more normative than positive, but we can leave that.) Since then, CIS has added videos of the presentations and some lesson plans.

The lesson plans are good, although they are old stand-bys that have been updated, for the most part. Nevertheless, they work. It is also important to note that there are lessons for all grade levels, which is not always the case with this topic. The videos are good quality, so they should be of help. I'm not sure I'll have the time to go through them all, but there are two or three that I will make a point to look at, because I've already borrowed from the assigned readings for those sessions.

I know you're all busy, but I hope you get a chance to look at these, and I hope you'll share your thoughts.