Monday, November 15, 2010

Some Tools for Teaching Policy Tools

You may already be aware of both of these. But if you're not, it's worth your time to look at them.

The first is a new interactive on The New York Times website. (HT to Econlog.) It's a game on cutting the federal budget. You can cut certain spending categories and or raise certain taxes in effort to bring the Federal Budget back in line. It is rather simplistic and doesn't really show the complexity of the trade-offs, but it’s not bad for the venue. And I think that for a traditional high school economics course, it makes a great introduction.

The second resource is an opinion piece in today's issue of The Wall Street Journal. It's written by Princeton economics professor and former Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Alan Blinder. Dr. Blinder offers an interesting defense of the Fed and quantitative easing. I would think it would be usable for the monetary policy section in your AP or IB courses.

1 comment:

KPeyton said...

This is a refreshing contrast to some of the hysterical response to QE2. On the other hand, I think it ignores a central question; banks are already holding excess reserves and not lending. What is the mechanism in QE2 that will change that situation?