Kathryn Nantz

The labor-managed firm under imperfect monitoring: Employment and work effort responses

Abstract This paper examines worker incentives in the labor managed firm (LMF) and derives implications for the response of employment and work effort to changes in output price. The proposed model assumes that worker effort is monitored imperfectly and that workers individually choose how much effort to supply on the job. However, the LMF collectively chooses the employment level and dismissal rule. It is shown that the optimal employment level for the LMF increases with relative output price, which is a reversal of the finding in conventional theory. Our model also implies that work effort varies inversely with output price.

History and Economics—Can Students (and Professors) Learn Together?

in spite of much rhetoric and many ad aptations of core curricula, one of the old problems still plagues us: students compartmentalize knowledge and fail to make lasting connections between sub jects. We have developed a course integra tion that overcomes this and other prob lems and that includes two unusual features. Our project integrated two courses that, to our knowledge, had never been paired: Introduction to Macroeco nomics, from the social sciences and Em pire to Commonwealth, 1815-1992, from the humanities. And in an attempt at genu ine integration, each professor partici pated as a student in every class of the oth ers course.

Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Peer Review of Teaching (PRoT) Initiative in Nursing Education

Abstract For many years, an area of research in higher education has been emerging around the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs. Recently, a new body of knowledge has developed regarding the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs resulting in formative and summative evaluations. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a peer review of teaching (PRoT) program for nursing faculty, initiated at one small comprehensive university in the northeastern United States. Pairs of nursing faculty evaluated each other’s teaching, syllabi, and course materials after collaborating in a pre-evaluation conference to discuss goals of the classroom visit. Qualitative data gathered in post project focus groups revealed that faculty found their modified PRoT process to be a mutually beneficial experience that was more useful, flexible and collegial, and less stressful than their previous evaluation process.

The uses of economics in an integrated cluster

IF YOU TEACH A HISTORY COURSE required of business or other non-history majors you may be confronted with student complaints that the subject is boring and of no use to them in the pursuit of their professional objectives. Because they do not know how to deal with history course material and are used to much smaller, denser reading assignments, such students may also complain that they do not know how or what to study for tests, and that there is too much reading in the course. Unlike a hard science or math-oriented social science course, in which most of the reading deals with problem solving methods that build on previous skills, history course reading often appears to these students as a mountain of disparate facts. Whereas, for example, an economics test might cover thirty pages of difficult but solvable problems, a history test might cover three hundred pages of loosly organized information, which students find impossible to memorize for the exam. You may as a result be confronted by frustration and resentment rather than by a willingness to learn.

Economics And Electronic Spreadsheets: Interdisciplinary Economics In Education

This paper discusses a model we developed for using the computer to help introductory students learn economics. Each semester that we teach introduction to macro or micro, students inevitably make statements such as, “I know the theory but I don’t understand the graphs”, or “I understand the problems when you work them in class but I cant do them on the exams”, or even “The problems you did in class were easy, but the problems on the test were hard”. Strober and Cook (1992) carefully documented these types of student responses by viewing videotapes of students discussing course material. The authors found that difficulties were rooted in students’ inability to understand basic concepts and then to apply those concepts to graphical or mathematical constructs. Students are able to accumulate information, but cannot use it. Fels (1990) relates the story of a student who knows that a higher price means a lower quantity demanded, but when asked whether an increase in the price of gasoline will lower quantity demanded, responds “no, because people have to use their cars to get to work and school” (p. 89). These examples illustrate the difficulty that students often have when they attempt to apply economic concepts.