Excerpts from Dr. Buckley's Syllabus

Tests are par for the course in college. Dr. Buckley is no different: he offers three exams. And he has the coolest exam policy I've ever heard of.

There are no makeup exams - for any reason. According to the syllabus, you can decide not to take either the 1st or 2nd exam. If you opt not to take the 2nd exam, then the 15% of your grade represented by that exam gets shifted to your 1st and Final Exams, so that they are worth 17.5% and 27.5% respectively. You can not choose to miss both the first and the second exam, and you must take the final.

Those are the rules. Do what makes you best off.


Can you say live your life according to what you teach? This man is such an economist.

Big News

This morning, I've made it public internet knowledge that my husband, the professor, has accepted a tenure track job at NSUOK. What's the big deal? I had no clue. When I was a student, I didn't pay much attention to the professors and their career tracks. Here's the breakdown, as I understand it from Bryan.

GRAD STUDENT: teaches a section or two; no real respect in the research world
ADJUNCT PROFESSOR: teaches just a few sections, usually by choice
VISITING PROFESSOR: one to two year contracts, focus on teaching, most PhDs start here anywhere from 1-15 years
TENURE TRACK PROFESSOR: THE job, after 5-6 years teaching and researching, you are eligible for tenure, stability and prestige
TENURED PROFESSOR: after being a great teacher and generous with research, you've "hit it big" aka you can teach whatever you want and can't get fired
CHAIR OF DEPT: you can decide who stays and who leaves, runs department

Now you know.

Writing for Publishing

Everyone knows the saying "Publish or Perish" but does anyone know how to publish? I didn't know, and last night, Dr. Buckley enlightened me.

Here's my interpretation of How to Write a Publishable Research Paper in Economics
1. First, think of a clever idea, preferably something topical to current news and social awareness (i.e. environmental economics or political economics).
2. Develop a mathematical model (90% of the time, it's calculus) that is solvable, applicable and interesting.
3. Cleverly find a data set to use for your mathematical model. This is the big one. It's not really a skill, but luck: finding a set that is complete and manageable. Then it's crunching numbers and crunching more numbers. Remember to account for differences in characteristics (i.e. whether a state is a coastal state).
4. Apply a clever econometric method.
5. Revise, edit and revise.
6. Submit to one journal at a time. If you are accepted, great; add it to your resume. If you are rejected, select another journal and resubmit.

Additional note: you might have a good idea and find that there is no data. And that sucks.

Apparently, you have to be an economist, a statistician, a calculus mathematician and a writer to pull this thing off. I'm already exhausted.

Teaching as You Learn

I always thought you could learn the most from someone who has been teaching the same thing for years, you know, an expert. Well, Dr. Buckley offered an interesting alternative.

He claims that a teacher who just relearned the material might actually end up being a more effective teacher. Without the routine lecture, a teacher who teaches something new to their course catalogue could offer more insight, having just refreshed their own knowledge, they would be better able to know which parts are more difficult and require extra time for understanding. Sometimes, Dr. Buckley says, teachers are so used to their line of thinking that it's difficult to see how someone might not understand.

Oh, the tough life of being a genius...

Variety is Beneficial

One of the benefits of trade is that variety is good. Bryan was telling me that when the Berlin Wall was torn down, Eastern Germany had oranges and apples for the first time. The introduction of these fruits being a benefit of trade. I still wasn't convinced that it was a benefit, this new introduction of fruit. Because how could people who had never had oranges and apples consider these new fruits a benefit? They had never tried them before, and maybe they would never miss them.

Apparently, it's even simpler than that. Bryan broke it down to something I could understand: chocolate. We have one bag of chocolate that is all milk chocolate truffles, and we have another bag of chocolate that has four flavors. If you eat one piece of chocolate from the first bag, it's delicious. If you eat a second one, it's delicious. If you eat a third, it's delicious. At some point, it's going to get less delicious. However, if you eat from the second bag, you will eat perhaps a white chocolate truffle. If you have another truffle, it might be dark. If you have another, it could be milk chocolate. And so on. Because you have four different varieties, the rate of diminishing marginal returns is spread across all four, resulting in a better experience, or a benefit of trade.

Obligatory Introduction

My husband Bryan is an economics expert, literally. He spent a decade at Clemson University (six of them graduate school), emerging victorious with the king of all degrees: his doctorate. Recently, our dinner table has become our own intellectual battleground for discussions about world events, new stupid laws and issues we have with things we are reading.

With all the learning, I'm taking good notes. This blog is my place to share the simple brilliance Bryan shared with me. He's patient in his speaking and clear in his explanations. It's really great to learn from someone who loves what he's talking about and loves the person he's talking to. I think it's the most conducive learning environments out there.

So, why blog? Because economics is something everyone could learn more about. Because I prefer typing to handwriting. Because I want Bryan to see how brilliant a teacher he is. Because there actually is an easy way to explain economics, and that's the way Bryan does it.