Jenny N. Lye

An Evaluation of Collaborative Problem Solving for Learning Economics

In this article, we describe and evaluate a package of measures designed to introduce a collaborative, problem-solving (CPS) approach to learning into the tutorials of a second-year university macroeconomics subject. These findings are derived from a comparison of a trial group of 311 students and a control group of 301 students, each drawn randomly from students enrolled in a single subject, at a single institution, the University of Melbourne. To learn economics successfully, students need to have ability in both abstract thinking and in application. They also need to be able to express complex ideas logically and fluently. The development of these diverse aspects of thinking is challenging for students in their early undergraduate years and may be one reason why students often view economics as a difficult subject. The 1995 CPS project was a pilot for a wider departmental initiative designed to enhance the role of tutorials (one-hour classes of about 20 students led by a tutor) in the teaching and learning process. The project embodied two major components: problem-based learning and collaborative learning. Both these components were thought to be potentially valuable for undergraduate students

Attendance at Australian Rules football: A panel study

The demand for Australian Rules football is examined using data on attendance at individual matches played between 1981 and 1986. An estimation methodology which is appropriate for a dynamic model with panel data is adopted and it is found that attendance at football is price inelastic and an inferior good. The effect of habit in consumption behaviour, stadium size, uncertainty of outcome and team success are also shown to be important determinants of attendance.

Systematic Influences on Teaching Evaluations: The Case for Caution

In this paper, we examine eight years of Quality of Teaching (QOT) responses from an Economics Department in an Australian University. This is done to determine what factors, besides the instructor, have an impact on the raw average student evaluation scores. Most of the previous research on student ratings has been conducted in the US. One significant difference between US and Australian tertiary education is that, on average, the number of foreign undergraduate students in Australia is ten times the number in US institutions. We find that cultural background significantly affects student evaluations. Other factors that have an influence on the average QOT score include: year level; enrolment size; the quantitative nature of the subject; the gender of the student; fee-paying status by gender; course of study; the differences between the course mark and previous marks; the quality of workbooks; the quality of textbooks; and the QOT score relative to those in other subjects taught at the same time. In addition, average QOT scores for instructors who have taught in a mix of subjects are similar to those based on scores adjusted to account for subject and student characteristics.

Robust Estimation, Nonnormalities, and Generalized Exponential Distributions

The detection and treatment of outliers in data has represented an important area of research. The general approach that has been adopted involves observing that outliers contribute to the “fatness” in the tails of the error distribution and using an appropriate model of the error term to take this into account. This article introduces a general dass of distributions to capture nonnormalities in the data based on the generalized exponential family. This family of distributions provides great flexibility in modeling not only Symmetrie fat-tailed distributions, but also skewed and possibly even multimodal distributions. The approach taken is to use subordinate distributions within the generalized exponential family to model the empirical distribution. This family represents a generalization of the unimodal exponential family, which contains as subordinates the normal, gamma, beta, Student t, and so forth. The parameters of the generalized exponential distribution can be estimated using maximum likelihood, w...

Inferences for the Extremum of Quadratic Regression Models

Quadratic functions are often used in regression to infer the existence of an extremum in a relationship although tests of the location of the extremum are rarely performed. We investigate the construction of the following confidence intervals: Delta, Fieller, estimated first derivative, bootstrapping, Bayesian and likelihood ratio. We propose interpretations for the unbounded intervals that may be generated by some of these methods. The coverage of the confidence intervals is assessed by Monte Carlo; the Delta and studentized bootstrap can perform quite poorly. Of all the methods, the first derivative method is easiest to implement.

John Maynard Keynes Meets Milton Friedman and Edmond Phelps: The Range versus the Natural Rate in Australia, 1965:4 to 2003:3

In this paper we compare the estimates of the range model in Lye and McDonald (2005a) with estimates of a natural rate model. We find that the range model is superior to the natural rate model according to econometric criteria and economic plausibility. Our estimates of the range model suggest that a significantly lower rate of unemployment is obtainable at the current time by aggregate demand policy, indeed a rate of 3.1 per cent for 2003:3 compared with about 6.5 per cent for the natural rate model. Thus we conclude that basing macroeconomic policy on the natural rate model would underrate the possibilities for economic welfare in Australia.

An Evaluation of Unemployment Policy in Australia Using the Range of Equilibria

The major failures of macroeconomic policy in the last 40 years are the huge increases in unemployment and inflation in the 1970s and the persistence for 25 years of the former. This article uses econometric estimates of a model of the range of equilibria for Australia for the period 1965:4 to 2003:3 to evaluate the role of macroeconomic policies in these failures. Our analysis distinguishes the roles of aggregate supply policies and aggregate demand policies. We conclude from our analysis that macroeconomic outcomes would have been better over this period had monetary policy been guided by a hierarchical inflation target, which is to be set so as to achieve the highest level of activity subject to satisfying the inflation target.

Inverse Test Confidence Intervals for Turning-Points: A Demonstration with Higher Order Polynomials

In this paper we demonstrate the construction of inverse test confidence intervals for the turning points in estimated nonlinear relationships by the use of the marginal or first derivative function. First, we outline the inverse test confidence interval approach. Then we examine the relationship between the traditional confidence intervals based on the Wald test for the turning-points for a cubic, a quartic and fractional polynomials estimated via regression analysis and the inverse test intervals. We show that the confidence interval plots of the marginal function can be used to estimate confidence intervals for the turning points that are equivalent to the inverse test. We also provide a method for the interpretation of the confidence intervals for the second derivative function to draw inferences for the characteristics of the turning-point. This method is applied to the examination of the turning points found when estimating a quartic and a fractional polynomial from data used for the estimation of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. The Stata do files used to generate these examples are listed in the appendix along with the data.

The influence of student experiences on post-graduation surveys

This study attempts to establish the extent to which in-class teaching quality instruments can be used to predict post-graduation survey results. It examines the responses for the Good Teaching Scale of the Course Experience Questionnaire administered to 10,433 students who completed their studies at a major Australian tertiary institution from 2003 to 2005 using a unique data-set that matched student records and measures of class characteristics to the individual survey responses. The findings indicate that the overall degree experiences of particular students can be predicted by measures of class differences as measured by teaching quality instruments and the grade distributions of the classes they completed. These factors are in addition to the effects of students’ own performance as measured by their grades, their field of study and their post-graduation experience. It was found that in-class administered teaching quality instruments have an asymmetric influence on post-graduation survey results. Higher than expected scores appear to have little impact, and lower than expected results were found to have a significant negative impact on post-graduation recollections. The grade distribution in classes taken was also found to be an important factor in explaining variation in degree satisfaction.

Secondary school fee inflation: an analysis of private high schools in Victoria, Australia

ABSTRACT The recent growth in privately administered secondary education in many developed countries has been a widely observed phenomenon. The Australian private secondary school sector has grown faster than those in any other OECD nation, even though the average tuition fees charged by these schools have increased at double the nation’s overall rate of inflation. In this paper, we employ a panel data set to estimate a set of hedonic price indices for private secondary schools that cater to different segments of the population in order to determine if and how changes in their characteristics influence the changes in fees.