Robert L. Sexton

Using Short Movie and Television Clips in the Economics Principles Class

Abstract: The author describes a teaching method that uses powerful contemporary media, movie and television clips, to demonstrate the enormous breadth and depth of economic concepts. Many different movie and television clips can be used to show the power of economic analysis. The author describes the scenes and the economic concepts within those scenes for a number of movies.

Speed Variance, Enforcement, and the Optimal Speed Limit

A model of the optimal speed limit is developed which explicitly recognizes the roles of average speed, speed variance, and the level of enforcement. An unusual result emerges, namely that a higher speed limit may be optimal when reducing the variance in highway speeds reduces accident externalities.

Hedonic Wage Equations for Higher Education Faculty

This paper discusses the use of hedonic techniques to theoretically and empirically understand the wages of higher education faculty. The paper first presents theoretical models of department and faculty choice. These models represent a synthesis of prior work in the hedonic area. The models imply a hedonic wage equation for faculty with wages dependent on productivity, departmental amenities and locational amenities. The theoretical discussion is followed by exploratory and illustrative empirical work. In summary, the reported regressions show that increased teaching loads and secretaries per faculty member tend to decrease salaries while increasing referred journal articles, hotter than average summers, colder than average winters and a Ph.D. program tend to increase professor’s salaries.  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Slope versus Elasticity and the Burden of Taxation.

The incidence of the burden of a tax is usually presented as an application of elasticity in introductory economics. A more useful exposition of tax incidence results if slope is used rather than elasticity.

Incorporating Inventories into Supply and Demand Analysis

ConclusionIn the microeconomic portions of principles and intermediate macroeconomics, supply and demand analysis is presented as “the truth.” However, the simple Keynesian macroeconomic model virtually ignores market clearing, while the standard microeconomic model of supply and demand assumes perfect market clearing. Since hidden assumptions are a major source of confusion and misunderstanding between economists and the general public, students should be exposed to stock-flow analysis at the intermediate level as a separate or integrated chapter on supply and demand.

The Short- and Long-Run Marginal Cost Curve: A Pedagogical Note

The brief paper lacks an abstract, but clarifies a point of considerable confusion among students of economics.

Controlling the Abandonment of Automobiles: Mandatory Deposits vs. Fines

There is no abstract for this paper, but what it establishes is that a first-best policy intervention would set optimal mandatory deposits on automobiles. Moreover, a littering fine for abandonment of automobiles is seen to be second-best, either with or without a mandatory deposit, leading to inefficiency.

Cross-Price Elasticity and Income Elasticity of Demand: Are Your Students Confused?

The authors demonstrate that most textbooks are ambiguous at best in their treatment of cross price and income elasticity of demand. There is also no discussion of what initiates a price increase in discussions of substitutes and complements in the textbooks examined. The authors offer a remedy for these deficiencies.

Slavery, Amenities, and Factor Price Equalization: A Note on Migration and Freedom

The paper examines the role of self-ownership versus other ownership of labor with implications for the interpretation of the historical evidence regarding timing of black migration from the South to the North after emancipation.

A Note on Interfirm Implications of Wages and Status

This paper does not have an abstract, but examines inter-firm implications of some prior explorations into the nature of wages and status by Robert Frank.