economic reflection essay

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Student Reflective Essays

These have been extracted by Dr. Kay Strong from her students' work and are provided as an appendix to her case study, "Use of Portfolios for Assessment in Introductory Economics" .

From the portfolio of AMF:

My reflective essay:.

Economics is the study of how people interact with their environment to provide material (goods and services) that we need and want. This was one of the very first things that I have in my notes from the start of this class in August. My newly un refined definition is the study of how the decisions we make determine the consequence of how the entire world's energy and resources are divided up in order to make the whole world flow. Whether that decision is to start a business or look for a job, get married, buy a new sweater, or make a phone call, everything we do has a dollar amount attached to it. Gained or lost, money is the bottom line for many of our life's decisions.

Prior to this class, I assumed economics was for the people in dress suits on Wall Street. I never cared much to learn about unemployment rates, for example, because that was something that never affected me. Now, I realize that I couldn't have been more wrong. Many times, since I have been hired, people have been laid off at my factory, and it always occurs around January. This is because many of the factories that we supply close down for a few weeks to a month due to the slowdown in car sales. What happens prior to January that makes such a drastic dent in wallets every year? Could it be the holiday season sucks everyone dry and it takes awhile consumers to get back on their feet? It could be one factor. Layoffs are already planned for some plants that we support, and a slow down in overtime is forecasted for our plant.

I now pay more attention to economic reports that I see on the news or in the papers because I understand the basic concepts that they are talking about. I don't just hop right to the comics anymore, and I actually flip through the Money and Business sections! I feel that it has expanded my knowledge base to be able to speak more intelligently about economic topics when they come up in conversation. I play the devil's advocate with people to see if they can notice the whole picture of a news story instead of just seeing it as one person in small town USA.

I also feel that this class has opened my mind to new possibilities. Realizing that what might be great in the here and now might be bad for the long run. For example, the wonderful tax money that we got back last year. Sure it was great to have an extra $300, but in the long run it did not really have the affect on the economy that it was planned to have. Worse, the government is now facing quite a large deficit and could have used that money in the fight over sees.

I had no idea of how much information the web can really provide for you if you look for it! I must admit that I used to get online check my email and then get offline again. I never really surfed the web as much as I have in the last few months. I have learned a great deal and have even passed on some information to people at work and family. So many interesting facts are out there if you just look for them. Unless you research both sides of a story you may never come up with how you really feel about a topic.

I feel that my writing and vocabulary skills have been sharpened. Working in a factory you tend to use poor speech, and very rarely do you pick up a pencil to write anything but your name. This class gave me an avenue to be creative and use my brain to think in ways I usually don't have to think. Even in my other classes I could easily memorize data and information for exams that is just as easily forgotten. In this class we were challenged to apply the data to our every day lives making it a part of who you are. This kind of learning is a lot harder to forget.

From the portfolio of DMK:

Reflective essay:.

There is an enigma to the study of economics: while it seems simplistic in design, weighing costs and benefits to find solutions to macro-level problems, economics is also very personal. This was a great surprise I found in this class.

Consider poverty and public assistance, an issue many disagree on. While government websites can spew out statistics and policy solutions, and textbooks can define the reasons behind poverty and draw nice curves showing the distribution of income in various nations, it still comes down to people and families. What possibilities await one family who can be lifted from impoverished conditions, and what possibilities await a country whose future livelihood depends in part on the children within that impoverished family? Federal and state budgets are another conflicting matter: what child will go to class hungry when government cuts school breakfast programs, or whose car will need tire replacements when budgets fail to appropriate enough to maintain roads? Can we really put a price on a child’s life for the issuance of airbags in cars, and who will determine the price tag, the parent or someone sitting behind a desk at an insurance company? Individuals are grossly affected by studies in economics.

To examine policy at a macro-level can be awesome: the natural balances found in such things as wage equilibriums and how many pizzas Dominos should be making, appears to be as forceful as any natural occurrence. To make policy at a macro-level, on the other hand, must be some sort of hell reserved for politicians: knowing that every dollar one appropriates, every trade treaty one signs, and every pre-decided maximum penalty for crimes committed can have an enormous impact on just one individual is a terrible responsibility. It is an awesome power, and not one that lets people sleep peacefully at night.

I am yet undecided whether I enjoyed this class. If ignorance is bliss then I am in agony, for I might have received less of a fright watching old “Tales from the Crypt” reruns. Happy or not, my appreciation for the study of economics has grown considerably, as I used to believe it was a subject found only in the business section of newspapers, rather than a tool used in many areas of life. Criminal activity, for example, is moral issue, but one that finds its roots in cost/ benefit analysis, for if we raised the costs would the activity be deemed profitable? Or on the flipside, if we pull the morality out of the equation, what would the benefits be? Policy isn’t always about money spent and results from that spending, but can also be where we as a society, at a given time, desire control over certain behaviors.

One of the greatest conclusions I have come to, in completing this class, is that government is not always a good thing. Yes, it serves some purpose and offers some services that would not else be available, but the costs to which government extracts for their services is far too high. As noted previously, policy making is an awesome power, blend that idea of power with billions of dollars, a tablespoon of moral ideals and a pinch of elitism and policy makers start believing they’re playing God. Theological arguments aside, there are two main difference: One, God knows His outcomes before His actions—Government does not have that ability, and never will; two, when Government intervenes, their actions typically produce some unintended results. Government makes too many value-based judgments, although ideas of value are often defined by us, the voters. It is not good economic policy to spend tax dollars to save family farms, but we do because we find security in memories of summers at Grandpa’s farm and gawking at ponies at a roadside fence during Sunday afternoon trips. It is not good economic policy to levy high taxes on imported steel, yet we do because we uphold American union organizations as a great pastime, second only to baseball. Morals and ideas of value do not mesh with economics, yet Government tries to blend the two.

With that idea arises a new question: whose perspective should be followed in regards to policy making? From Governmental economic advisors, to steel workers, to welfare recipients, there are far too many sides of an issue to find compromises, and people’s perspectives are far too unstable. When I take off my Student Hat, and place on my head my Church Hat, there is an innate pro-life perspective, even though my Student Hat tells me that the costs of illegalizing abortion is far greater than any personal benefit I might extract from such policy. When a worker in Washington takes off their Government Hat and visits an elderly Aunt in a nursing home, their perspective on the costs of Medicaid and Social Security might be minimized when they see first-hand the benefits of these programs. If one person cannot always decide whether the costs of a societal issue outweigh the benefits one reaps from it, how on earth can 535 Congressional members plus an Executive office-holder do so?

Finding solutions and analyzing information in print can be an enormous task itself with all the data we have ready for viewing on the Internet. However, too much of this information is contradictory, and even within Government sites there are discrepancies that must be hunted down, such as the spending of the Social Security surplus for 2003 and a true figure on what war with Iraq might cost. Furthermore, the dollar figures in Government spending are simply too high to fathom: visualizing a trillion dollars is like staring at an abstract painting, you can look at it, but you cannot always see the form and structure it takes.

Economics shouldn’t be abstract, but a simple study of resources and the best possible way to use them. However, first it must be decided when it is best to allow markets to find their own natural equilibriums and when it is best to ask for Government intervention.

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Reflection Essay On Economics

Prior to taking this course, I believed that economic theory consisted mainly of supply and demand. While this is a significant component of economics (Acemoglu, et al., 2017), there is much more to the topic than my original simple understanding: as supply goes up, prices go down, as demand goes up, prices go up. Indeed, a host of other factors influence price, supply, demand, and other aspects of what we know as economics. One of the constructs that surprised me the most involved profit-making. My thoughts had been influenced by the ethical stance developed by Milton Friedman, called individualistic corporate ethics. Under Friedman’s theory, management’s ethical duty is to make money for shareholders (Salazar, 2014), and this is what I understood to be the goal of most businesses—profit motive. Upon further study, I have discovered that there are other, equally important, ethical principles involved in running a business. One is to follow laws, regulations, avoid conflicts of interest, and treat employees fairly and with dignity (Epstein, 2006). Another falls under the rubric of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Epstein, 2006), which involves giving back to the community, preventing waste, achieving sustainability, and being environmentally conscious. Both of these ethical duties may diminish corporate profits, but they are ethical duties of corporations and their managers.

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Prior to taking this class, I believed that the free market controlled the economy. Now I am aware that there are many forces, in particular government interventions, which can skew free market results. For instance, taxes can be used to make policy. If the government wants to encourage home ownership, for example, it passes a tax deduction applicable for mortgage interest. If the government wants to discourage home ownership, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates so high that most buyers are unable to qualify. Taking the dollar off a specie standard caused its valuation to fluctuate internationally, which impacted prices in America. Certain tariffs and trade agreements have made foreign goods either more affordable or more expensive. Although the United States is a capitalist country, the government exerts considerable influence on economics well beyond that of the free market.

This class has increased my knowledge of economics by giving me a reality check. I now know that there are many influences on how much money people make, how much bang they get for their buck, and that economic choices are complex. In particular, I am now aware that if I want to make an impact on economics, I need to be aware of political stances of my elected officials and the governmental actions in many spheres that, at first glance, may not seem economics-oriented. Requiring safety equipment or health care for employees appears to fall under the category of protecting workers, yet it may result in higher costs to businesses, fewer jobs available, or higher prices. In some cases, the public is willing, even eager, to pay these costs given the benefits—but only an informed public can make such choices.

Conclusion In the future, I intend to continue looking for economic implications in all aspects of living, not just prices and wages. In particular, I plan to learn more about government policies and regulations by reading proposed laws and regulations and even corresponding with officials if I have questions. Although government requirements can be very beneficial to communities and workers, they can have drawbacks. Only an informed citizen, who looks at every angle of a regulation or law, can be confident that the outcome is consistent with the intent, and that there are no unexpected or unwanted economic ramifications. I am thankful for the knowledge of how broad the sources of economic impacts can be, for I believe this will assist me in being a more productive citizen, aware of implications that I might have missed before taking this course.

• Acemoglu, et al. (2017). Microeconomics. 2nd ed. City: London: Pearson College Div.
• Epstein, E. (2006). The Good Company, Rhetoric or Reality? Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics Redux. University of California at Berkeley. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download? doi=10.1.1.461.34andrep=rep1andtype=pdf
• Salazar, H. (2014). How Tesla Handled the Heat – Tesla’s Shocking Responce to Multiple Model S Fires. Business Ethics Case Analyses. Available at: http://businessethicscases.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-tesla-handled-heat-teslas-shocking.html

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BusEco: Reflective essay

What is reflective writing in the context of business and economics.

A reflection is an assessment task that helps you to think about:

• what you have experienced
• why your experience unfolded in the way that it did
• how you could do things differently next time, and
• how you can apply what you’ve learned to future experiences, especially in your business career.

Reflective writing tasks therefore link your study and your future career closely. The ability to reflect on your own actions and behaviours is a key skill in both the university and the workplace.

For all business roles, the ability to observe previous experiences and outcomes, and to then implement changes or establish new practices, is particularly important.

4 essentials for reflective writing in Business and Economics View

Sample student reflective essay with marker’s feedback

Essay instructions provided to students.

Use the knowledge you have accrued in this unit to write a reflective essay on the following topic: What, in your opinion, is the importance of disequilibrium and how would the knowledge you have gained about disequilibrium and other key concepts in this unit help you in your career as an entrepreneur? Length requirement: minimum of 1000 words.

Learning outcomes assessed

• Can demonstrate understanding of the basic concepts related to economics.
• Can apply knowledge about economics to workplace/employment situations.

Read the following example of a student’s reflective essay.

Check your understanding View

Activity 1: citing your source accurately.

The tutor has identified a lack of in-text citations and references as a major problem with this reflective essay. She was looking for evidence of learning from the required reading and research, and an ethical approach to academic work through citing and referencing any ideas the student has obtained from external sources.

Choose which of the following extracts provides an accurate in text citation,  using the Library Guide to citing and referencing APA 7th , if necessary.

Disequilibrium is a situation where internal and/or external forces prevent market equilibrium from being reached or cause the market to fall out of balance. This can be a short-term byproduct of a change in variable factors or a result of long-term structural imbalances (Chen, 2019).

Disequilibrium is a situation where internal and/or external forces prevent market equilibrium from being reached or cause the market to fall out of balance. This can be a short-term byproduct of a change in variable factors or a result of long-term structural imbalances (Chen, 2019, para. 1).

“Disequilibrium is a situation where internal and/or external forces prevent market equilibrium from being reached or cause the market to fall out of balance. This can be a short-term byproduct of a change in variable factors or a result of long-term structural imbalances” (Chen, 2019, para. 1).

Activity 2: referencing your source accurately

The tutor has identified a lack of in-text citations and references as a major problem with this reflective essay. She was looking for evidence of learning from required reading and research, and an ethical approach to academic work through citing and referencing any ideas the student has obtained from external sources.

Take the required elements of an APA 7th reference for this kind of source (website) and drag them into the correct order.

Activity 3: outline the purpose and preview the structure of the essay

Activity 4: which essay plan will achieve the task’s requirements best.

The tutor also indicates that she thinks the student’s essay was either poorly planned or unplanned. Take a look at the three essay plans below and order them from best to worst. I.e. order the sequence so the plan that best addresses the task requirements is number one, and the least effective plan is and number three.

Essay plan 1

Intro Para. 1: My opinion about disequilibrium Para. 2: Knowledge I learnt about disequilibrium and other economic concepts Para. 3: My career as an entrepreneur Conc.

Essay plan 2

Intro Para. 1: Disequilibrium: importance in the context of an innovative start-up - Summary of facets of disequlbm - Identify 3 key aspects relevant to start-up: gap in market, the ‘disequlbm price’ and dynamic equilib, Walrasian general equlbm, providing examples or citations as needed Para. 2: Key economic concepts & explanation of their relevance - Scarcity - Elasticity - monopolies/competition - Externalities/public goods Para. 3: My career as an entrepreneur - Brief description of start-up - Link between concepts in para 2 and entrepreneurial venture in its various stages of development Conc.

Essay plan 3

Intro Para. 1: Disequilibrium: importance and relevance to an innovative start-up - Summary of facets of disequ - Identify aspects relevant to start-up: gap in market, the ‘disequ price’ and dynamic equilib, Walrasian general equilibrium and how it applies to individual cases - Include in the above examples of how each relevant aspect would apply to my start-up Para. 2: Key economic concepts & explanation of their relevance - Scarcity - Elasticity - monopolies/competition - Externalities/public goods - Examples of each one as it applies to my start-up Para. 3: My career as an entrepreneur - Description of start up and timeline of expected stages of development - Relevance of concepts/theories to my start up: --- Disequilibrium --- Scarcity --- Elasticity --- monopolies/competition --- Externalities/public goods Conc

Drag and drop the Essay plan number to order that you think best addresses the task requirements.

Activity 5: Evaluate a reflective essay

Watch the video introducing reflective writing. Then complete the brief activity evaluating the student essay in terms of Gibbs’s reflective cycle.

The student essay considered in this resource reflected on learning that took place within an economics unit. Consider how the student has incorporated the elements of Gibbs’s Reflective Cycle that was discussed in the video, into their essay. (Keep in mind that because the student is reflecting on learning, rather than an event, not all parts of the cycle need to be covered in detail.)

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Economics Reflection, Essay Example

Pages: 2

Words: 610

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You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work.

Chapter 14 begins by describing how money came to be the primary mode for exchanging goods and services. This chapter is really interesting in the sense that it specifically describes the features that make currency an effective tool to exchange goods and services such as high degree of acceptability, storage of value, and ability to retain purchasing power over time. This helps me understand why the barter system had serious limitations and eventually failed because not everyone has same needs and wants and not everything is capable of maintaining value over time. Some of the properties described for ideal currency help explain why U.S. dollar is one of the most desirable currencies in the world. The chapter also helps me understand how value of money declines over time due to inflation which is why governments try hard to keep inflation under control. This explains why people demand interest earning on their deposits in the bank and interest rates are higher for the long term as compared to the short term due to greater uncertainty. The chapter also introduces us to the Fed which plays an important role in regulating the supply of money in the economy. I also understood the concept of moral hazard which has been quite prevalent in the banking sector and has resulted in reckless behavior by some of the biggest banks and corporations. It seems that deregulation of the financial sector is responsible for moral hazard to some extent.

Chapter 15 introduces us to the concept of money supply and the various ways it is computed such as M1 and M2. Before taking this chapter, I thought money supply always refers to currency but this chapter has taught me that money supply also includes other liquid assets such as checks and bank checking accounts etc. The chapter has also taught me that Fed takes some steps to ensure the liquidity of the financial system by requiring banks to hold a particular proportion of their deposits as reserve which cannot be loaned out even though it imposes opportunity costs on the banks and other deposit institutions. Similarly, we learn that banks are essential to the functioning of the economy by acting as intermediaries between depositors and borrowers. The chapter also teaches us how Fed cannot only increase money supply but also decrease it by borrowing bonds. The chapter also touches up the effects of technology on the banking sector such as the rise if virtual banks which can be accessed anytime by the clients and these banks also benefit from lower startup costs and operating fees. The last topic addressed by the chapter are the monetary tools utilized by the Fed to influence quantity of money in the system such as open-market operations, discount rate, and required reserve ratio.

Chapter 16 starts with the factors that influence the demand for money such as interest rates, convenience (cash is being increasingly replaced by debit cards), and consumers’ lifestyles. Similarly, the state of the economy and inflation level also have direct impact on the demand for money. We also learn that the demand for money has negative relationship with the interest rate which makes sense because lower interest rates result in lower opportunity cost. This explains why investors move to countries with higher interest rates in search of higher returns. Similarly, supply of money is usually determined by Fed’s actions. This chapter has been particularly helpful in understanding Fed’s actions during the recent financial crisis. Fed has kept interest rates lower maybe to stimulate consumption activities after the recent financial crisis but it has also been careful not to overheat the economy which could lead to high rate of inflation.

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Economics Extended Essay Guide: Everything You Need to Learn

by  Antony W

April 18, 2024

This guide covers everything you need to learn before you write an IB Economics Extended Essay.

We look at the definition, structure, assessment criteria, topic selection, data collection, analysis and evaluation, and reflection.

What is an IB Economics Extended Essay?

An Economics Extended Essay is a 4,000-word autonomous, self-directed report based on a topic of personal interest. This project allows you to:

• Improve your research skills.
• Apply economic theories to a real-world issue.
• Analyze and evaluate the outcomes of your study.

The essay requires 40 hours of preparation and writing. Moreover, you’ll get help from your school-based supervisor throughout this period. The result should be a clear and well-organized analytical essay.

To write a comprehensive Economics EE, you must dedicate time to conduct in-depth research to collect meaningful and reliable data you can use to analyze the context of your theory and research issue.

IB Economics Extended Essay Structure

Your Economics EE should feature a title page, table of contents, introduction, methodology, main body, conclusion, bibliography, and appendices.

• Title Page: Write the title of the essay, the EE research question , subject, and word count.
• Table of Contents: Make sure each section mentioned in your table of contents has corresponding page numbers.
• Introduction: Explain the focus of the essay, the scope of the research, and your line of argument.
• Main Body: Write reasoned arguments for the issue under investigation. Use subheadings for methodology, analysis, discussion, and evaluation.
• Conclusion: Communicate what you’ve achieved. Mention the limitation of your research and note what your research question couldn’t answer.
• Bibliography:   Cite all the EE sources to demonstrate that you engaged in in-depth research and that you care about academic integrity.

IB Economics Extended Essay Assessment Criteria

The assessment criteria for an extended essay in economics examine focus and method, knowledge and understanding, critical thinking, presentation, and engagement. The following table is a complete summary of the marking scheme.

Economics Extended Essay Topic Selection

The best economics EE topic is the one that you find interesting enough to explore, as long as the focus remains on the fundamentals of economic concepts.

We strongly suggest you choose a topic that allows you to apply economic theories, methods and instruments present in the curriculum. Remember, the assignment requires you to conduct secondary research. However, you may also conduct pertinent original research depending on the topic you choose.

Your topic should:

• Be historical. However, your focus should be on a research issue that’s no more than five years old.
• Allow you to use economic theories and concepts to answer your research question.
• Provide opportunities for critical analysis of the information and data collected.
• Allow enough room for analysis while sticking to the scope of the essay. 

Don’t choose a broad topic because the essay needs critical and reflective thinking and analysis on something specific. And don’t pick an excessively narrow theme because you may not have access to specific data.

So choose your topic wisely, making sure that it isn’t too wide or too narrow to fit within the scope of the EE’s requirements.

Data Collection in Economics Extended Essay

You have to conduct original research on topics covered in the economics curriculum. Therefore, spend just enough time establishing value for your topic in microeconomics, macroeconomics or the global economy.

Doing original research goes a long way to show that the title and the research question is an issue unanswered by secondary sources.

If you’ve decided to write an EE on microeconomics, you may have to use primary research in the form of surveys, questionnaires, or interviews with pertinent businesspeople direct to the study subject.

Themes from macroeconomics and the global economy require more secondary research in the form of data extraction from published academic papers, historical records, government publications, newspaper/online articles, and statistical databases.

Analysis and Evaluation in Economics EE

The analysis of your economics extended essay can only be effective if you use pertinent economic theories to analyze data collected.

You have to incorporate applicable economic theories, models, and methods in your research’s findings.

For example, you can exhibit critical analysis and evaluation by a sound assessment and judgment of the amount to which the applicable economic theory is beneficial in addressing your research question .

If you cannot establish relevant connections between your selected topic and the research question, avoid establishing knowledge claims based on economic theories, models, and instruments.

Criterion C of the assessment instrument requires you to provide precise findings for each analyzed point, and there has to be interim conclusions throughout your writing.

Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the limitations of your own research, flaws in the economic theories, and underlying assumptions of the models utilized when developing your arguments. Also, evaluate the extent to which an economic theory may or may not describe your topic.

IB Economics EE Reflection Session 

Being reflective is one of the IB learner profile characteristics, and it is now a formal requirement of the EE evaluation criteria.

IB uses the Reflections on Planning and Progress Form (RPPF), which has a 6-point value, to evaluate reflections. This is a substantial amount of points, which can determine the distinction between two grades on the final examination.  

As part of the EE requirements, you will be required to hold three mandatory reflection sessions with your supervisor, and each of these reflection sessions appear on the official RPPF.

Reflection in the EE focuses on the process of the assignment itself.

Consider the following areas of reflection for each portion of the RPPF:

• How did you overcome the problems, setbacks, and barriers you encountered, and what did you learn in the process?
• Which of the IB learner profile characteristics apply to you?
• What did you learn, and did new views emerge?  

The maximum word count for all three reflections is 500. You must write the reflection in your own word and pertain only to your personal learning journey throughout the course.

About the author 

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Personal Reflection on The Topic of Economic Inequality

• Categories: Economic Inequality Economic Problem Income Inequality

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Words: 944 |

Published: Aug 30, 2022

Words: 944 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Bibliography

• Ingraham, C. (2019, April 27). Analysis | How rising inequality hurts everyone, even the rich.
• Roser, M., & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2013, December 5). Income Inequality.

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• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Front Matter
• Table of Contents
• [PART I Introduction]
• GLOBAL IMBALANCES AND DOMESTIC INEQUALITY: January 11, 2012
• A WORLD OF CONVERGENCE: April 23, 2012
• AUSTERE GROWTH?: June 8, 2012
• SHOULD CENTRAL BANKS TARGET EMPLOYMENT?: December 19, 2012
• THE GREAT DISCONNECT: March 11, 2013
• THE END OF CONVERGENCE?: October 3, 2013
• NORTHERN EUROPE’S DRAG ON THE WORLD ECONOMY: November 22, 2013
• CATCHING UP AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS: December 17, 2013
• TAILSPIN OR TURBULENCE?: February 17, 2014
• THE FUTURE OF ECONOMIC PROGRESS: April 15, 2014
• THE OIL PRICE OPPORTUNITY: December 16, 2014
• CAN TRADE AGREEMENTS STOP CURRENCY MANIPULATION?: April 17, 2015
• IS UBER A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY?: July 23, 2015
• [PART II Introduction]
• THE INEQUALITY TRAP: March 8, 2012
• WHAT ROLE FOR THE STATE?: July 20, 2012
• THE CENTRISTS CANNOT HOLD: January 14, 2013
• ECONOMIC POLICY’S NARRATIVE IMPERATIVE: April 15, 2013
• BALANCING THE TECHNOCRATS: May 10, 2013
• THE NEXT SOCIAL CONTRACT: July 18, 2013
• THE GREAT WAR AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: January 9, 2014
• GOOD GOVERNANCE AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: March 13, 2014
• THE GREAT INCOME DIVIDE: July 21, 2014
• A GREAT BREAKDOWN?: August 12, 2014
• PUBLICLY FUNDED INEQUALITY: March 9, 2015
• THE PARADOX OF IDENTITY POLITICS: May 13, 2015
• A NEW BIRTH FOR SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?: June 10, 2015
• RESTORING YESTERDAY’S HOPE FOR TOMORROW’S WORLD: December 17, 2015
• [PART III Introduction]
• THE GLOBAL FUTURE OF EUROPE’S CRISIS: February 17, 2012
• REBALANCING THE EUROZONE: May 14, 2012
• MARIO DRAGHI’S GUNS OF AUGUST: August 1, 2012
• EUROPE’S VITAL FRENCH CONNECTION: September 12, 2012
• BACK TO THE BRINK FOR THE EUROZONE?: October 10, 2012
• DAVID CAMERON’S EUROPEAN SPAGHETTI BOWL: February 4, 2013
• THE EUROPEAN CONSEQUENCES OF GERMANY’S ELECTION: September 16, 2013
• EUROPE’S POLITICAL TRANSCENDENCE: May 9, 2014
• DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE: June 12, 2014
• REVAMPING EUROPE’S TATTERED SOCIAL CONTRACT: September 18, 2014
• EUROPE’S FRANCO-GERMAN DREAM TEAM: November 14, 2014
• STILL NO EXIT FOR GREECE: January 21, 2015
• FISCAL AUSTERITY VERSUS EUROPEAN SOCIETY: February 18, 2015
• E PLURIBUS EUROPE?: September 21, 2015
• TWO EUROPES IN ONE: November 10, 2015
• Back Matter

Reflections on the economic implications of COVID-19

Coronavirus entered our lives and our vocabulary in just December 2019 but has quickly become a daily feature of them, and a global public health crisis. The repercussions are not symmetric, as people with fragile health and older generations are affected disproportionally more than the rest.

Aside from the human suffering, the economic implications are already immense, and will only become greater in the immediate future. Governments and central banks are attempting to understand these economic consequences as they unravel, and respond appropriately.

Once authorities in Wuhan imposed restrictions on movement and enforced the lockdown of the city in late January, the availability of labor dropped and production output with it. Wuhan is a manufacturing center for the tech, electronics and automotive industries. The ever-declining number of workers in the city, the initial hotbed of the virus, resulted in the disruption of the availability of components and products from across China, which negatively affected global supply chains.

The implication of the lockdown was reflected by Apple’s announcement that it is uncertain it can satisfy the demand for iPhones. Economists call this sudden decline in the production of goods and services a negative supply shock.

The complexity of the current situation is due to the fact that a supply shock generates a negative demand shock; that is, a sudden decrease in the demand for goods or services.

The income of employees, who cannot go to work either because their movement is restricted for health purposes or they are themselves sick, declines. In some countries, the lack of paid sick-leave further exacerbates the loss of income.

The result is two-fold: a change in the consumption patterns and a negative adjustment in expectations. In fact, the latter is most important, affecting the sentiments of both consumers and producers. Negative sentiments are amplified by the global integration of the economies calling for carefully addressing this point.

What’s behind the economic policies we are seeing?

Two types of policies tend to be used to counter the negative economic implications. Central banks decrease the interest rate and attempt to increase the supply of money in the economy. Government agencies explore the reduction of different types of taxes using fiscal policy to strengthen the aggregate demand. How might these measures affect economies?

The liquidity provided by central banks eases concerns in the markets. It is expected that through quantitative easing, that is, the purchase of government bonds and other securities by the central bank, the additional funds will partially alleviate the stress felt from the demand shock. This is, therefore, a good policy. Decreasing the interest rate, in general, has similar effects: it positively affects the concerns of consumers and producers over liquidity. In general, it results in higher asset prices and therefore it is favored and sought after by investors.

And yet, throughout the world, we are mostly in a very low interest rate environment, which restricts the potential effect of such a measure. Importantly, making interest rates close to zero, as the Federal Reserve Bank did on two occasions recently, eliminates a potential tool that may be needed in a subsequent stage to boost the economy. In fact, the reaction to the second emergency cut of the interest rate last weekend did not convince the markets that plummeted on Monday.

Fiscal authorities try to complement and enforce the policies of the central banks, boosting further the aggregate demand through lowering or postponing taxes. Thus, in the US, authorities are considering postponing tax filing for 2020 and decreasing the payroll tax; the latter is mostly paid by employees and is expected to have an important impact at their spending.

Are the above policies enough?

Even though the policies point towards the right direction, certain aspects need to be put in perspective.

COVID-19 is a public health crisis with humanitarian consequences. It is neither a banking crisis nor a financial one. It has negative economic implications, but it is first and foremost a public health challenge.

We still know very little about the virus, how it spreads and how to ease its consequences. Thus, the most important and urgent objective is to contain the virus. Economies that can test and isolate infected people fast, like China and South Korea, seem to succeed in containing the virus much better. This implies that funds should be allocated towards performing a large-scale free COVID-19 testing.

In addition, the fiscal policy recommendations are heading in the right direction but need to go further. Reducing the payroll tax affects only the people who are employed; it does not have any impact on those who do not work anymore either because they are sick or because they have lost their job. And so, policies that address the segments of the population (consumers and producers) who are currently the most vulnerable will also boost the economy.

Strengthening or even introducing paid sick-leave programs, increasing unemployment benefits and other automatic stabilizers, or sending money directly to the citizens, will remove the tension from one segment of the market, boost aggregate demand and improve the existing negative sentiments.

Seen globally, monetary policies of central banks and fiscal policies are affecting the aggregate demand of an economy. There are no short-cuts to stimulating the aggregate supply. That said, in the current conditions, encouraging and providing resources to employees to work remotely, from home, is one way to tackle this challenge. Of course, the difficulty may be that a firm does not have the capability or resources to have employees work from afar. In this case, the government can provide low-interest loans to the firms to facilitate such a transition.

COVID-19 is a global public health issue and it therefore requires a global response. Thus far, countries have been caught off-guard: underestimating the speed of infection, they seem to respond one after the other.

Even the European Union has not been effective in providing a response from all the country members. Instead, each country has announced its own shade of restriction-of-movement policy, and its own timing for enforcing the ban of large gatherings.

Individualistic approaches to a global threat don’t tend to constitute an effective strategy. On the other hand, inclusive and collaborative leadership determining broad policies able to reinforce the objectives of all the economies affected do.

It has been good to see how in recent years, graduate programs and business schools have been offering sessions about addressing disruption with success. So, now let’s use this know-how along with lessons learned from disruptions at the firm and industry level. If we do, and approach COVID-19 with determination and creativity there will, without a doubt, be gains.

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The basics; a West Village, New York pizza restaurant. Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty

Economics 101

Why introductory economics courses continued to teach zombie ideas from before economics became an empirical discipline.

by Walter Frick   + BIO

What happens to the job market when the government raises the minimum wage? For decades, higher education in the United States has taught economics students to answer this question by reasoning from first principles. When the price of something rises, people tend to buy less of it. Therefore, if the price of labour rises, businesses will choose to ‘buy’ less of it – meaning they’ll hire fewer people. Students learn that a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs.

But there’s another way to answer the question, and in the early 1990s the economists David Card and Alan Krueger tried it: they went out and looked. Card and Krueger collected data on fast-food jobs along the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, before and after New Jersey’s minimum wage increase. The fast-food restaurants on the New Jersey side of the border were similar to the ones on the Pennsylvania side in nearly every respect, except that they now had to pay higher wages. Would they hire fewer workers in response?

‘The prediction from conventional economic theory is unambiguous,’ Card and Krueger wrote. It was also wrong. Fast-food restaurants in New Jersey didn’t hire fewer workers – instead, Card and Krueger found that employment slightly increased. Their paper set off a hunt for other ‘natural experiments’ that could rigorously test economic theory and – alongside other research agendas like behavioural economics – transformed the field.

Over the past 30 years, PhD-level education in economics has become more empirical, more psychological, and more attuned to the many ways that markets can fail. Introductory economics courses, however, are not so easy to transform. Big, synoptic textbooks are hard to put together and, once they are adopted as the foundation of introductory courses, professors and institutions are slow to abandon them. So introductory economics textbooks have continued to teach that a higher minimum wage leads to fewer people working – usually as an example of how useful and relevant the simple model of competitive markets could be. As a result of this lag between what economists know and how introductory economics is taught, a gulf developed between the way students first encounter economics and how most leading economists practise it. Students learned about the virtues of markets, deduced from a few seemingly simple assumptions. Economists and their graduate students, meanwhile, catalogued more and more ways those assumptions could go wrong.

Today, 30 years after Card and Krueger’s paper, economics curriculums around the world continue to challenge the facile view that students used to learn, in which unfettered markets work wonders. These changes – like spending more time studying market failures or emphasising individuals’ capacity for altruism, not just selfishness – have a political valence since conservatives often hide behind the laissez-faire logic of introductory economics. But the evolution of Econ 101 is not as subversive as it may sound. Instead, it reflects the direction the wider discipline has taken toward empiricism and more varied models of economic behaviour. Econ 101 is not changing to reflect a particular ideology; it is finally catching up to the field it purports to represent.

I n 2019, Harvard University’s introduction to economics course, Ec10, changed hands. The respected conservative economist and textbook author Greg Mankiw handed it over to Jason Furman and David Laibson. Furman was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under the US president Barack Obama. Laibson, also a textbook author, focuses his research on behavioural economics – which he prefers to describe as ‘psychology and economics’. As part of this transition, the course textbook shifted from Mankiw’s popular Principles of Economics (5th ed, 2015) to Economics (2nd ed, 2018) by Laibson, Daron Acemoglu of MIT, and John List of the University of Chicago.

Their goal in revising the course was threefold, says Furman. First, the course should be coherent and helpful for students, even if they never take another economics course. Second, it should speak to issues students care about – climate change, poverty and inequality, for example. Third, it should reflect the way economics is practised today, which means more empiricism, more psychology, and more attention to market failures and public policy.

Historically, introductory courses have reflected the way that the field of economics evolved, says David Martin, an economist at Harvard and section leader for the course. Theory came first: 18th-century philosophers like Adam Smith and David Ricardo sketched out principles of how markets operate; 20th-century economists like Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow turned those ideas into mathematical models.

This is science as described by the theoretician. Since then, a subtle but evident shift has taken place

Two developments in the late 20th century changed the field’s direction. First, computers made data much easier to find and to analyse. Second, advances in statistical theory led to new methods of inferring cause and effect from data. Those methods ushered in what economists dubbed the ‘credibility revolution’, and in 2021 three of its architects, including Card, received a Nobel Prize.

The empirical turn in economics upended the discipline, but textbooks have lagged behind. Publishers typically require that authors not change more than 15 per cent for any new textbook edition to avoid upsetting instructors, which effectively capped the pace at which Econ 101 could evolve. The 1997 edition of Mankiw’s introductory textbook, for example, includes a section on observation and the scientific method. It also quotes Albert Einstein’s claim that ‘The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking’ and describes Isaac Newton seeing an apple fall and being motivated to develop a theory of gravity. This is science as described by the theoretician. Since then, a subtle but evident shift has taken place. In the textbook that Harvard uses, first published in 2015, empiricism is elevated to one of the three core principles of economics, alongside ‘optimisation’ and ‘equilibrium’. Their book includes sections on ‘evidence-based economics’ in every chapter.

Undergraduates in Harvard’s Ec10 read the Card-Krueger minimum wage paper in the second week of class. It’s introduced in a session on empiricism in economics, and the students complete a simplified version of the analysis, calculating the difference in employment at fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Philadelphia before and after New Jersey raised the minimum wage. The lesson is that ‘economic theories are only as good as the predictions they allow us to make about behaviour,’ says Martin. ‘The way we generally teach is facts first,’ he says of the course. Where theory once led, it now follows.

T he theory side of Econ 101 is changing, too. The workhorse of introductory economics courses is the model of a perfectly competitive market. Students were traditionally introduced to its principles by reasoning about a consumer good with which they were already familiar, like pizza or ice cream. If a slice of pizza is free, how many will you take? (Several.) What if each slice costs $4? (Fewer.) What if each slice costs $40? (None at all.) This armchair reasoning forms the basis of a demand curve, where the quantity of a good (pizza) is higher when its price is lower.

The exercise is then repeated for the supply side where things work in reverse: the higher the price, the more people will find it worthwhile to make and sell pizza. And the point where supply and demand meet is the market equilibrium. The model assumes that buyers and sellers are all rationally optimising according to their preferences; they act so as to maximise their ‘utility’.

Harvard students still learn this model, in the second week of class. But the third week of Ec10 kicks off a series of three lectures challenging its key premises – in particular, the idea that people are purely selfish, perfectly rational maximisers. Instead, over three lessons, students are introduced to psychology, game theory and ‘social economics’ – which includes questions of fairness, trust and altruism.

Students learn that, even when people are motivated and trying to optimise, they often aren’t perfectly rational

In one class, students play a game called the ‘Keynesian beauty contest’, where everyone picks a number between one and 100. The rule is that the student whose pick is closest to two-thirds of the class average wins $10. What number should they pick? If guesses are random between one and 100, the average will be around 50, and two-thirds of 50 is 33⅓. But is 33⅓ a good guess? If everyone does that math, they’ll all guess 33 – and two-thirds of 33 is 22. But what if everyone does that math? Then the best guess would be two-thirds of 22, and so on. If everyone is purely rational and believes everyone else to be rational too, then the best guess is zero. That, in game theory lingo, is the Nash equilibrium.

In reality, the most common guess is 33, followed by 22; the third most-common guess is zero. The point of the exercise is that the game-theoretic prediction fails to match up with the real-world behaviour. Students learn that, even when people are motivated and trying to optimise, they often aren’t perfectly rational (even Harvard students).

Students also play the dictator game, where one student is given money and has the option to keep it all for themselves or to share it with another student. Most people share at least some of their windfall, says Martin, showing that ‘even when given the opportunity with no repercussions to be super greedy, a lot of people will give some money to the other person.’

These exercises challenge the notion that human behaviour is mostly selfish and rational. Such challenges to ‘ Homo economicus ’ have long had a place in economics textbooks – in the very back. Courses mirrored the textbooks, with ‘back of the textbook’ lectures on topics like altruism coming at the end of the semester.

Ec10 integrates this material throughout the course and teaches it alongside more classic models. ‘From the first second we teach [the competitive model of supply and demand], we say we’re going to teach tons of ways it fails or goes wrong,’ says Furman. What was once supplementary is now a central part of Econ 101.

H arvard is not alone in its shifting approach. In fact, for a team of economists in the UK, it doesn’t go far enough. A decade ago, they set out to ‘bring the back of the textbook to the front’ and, most controversially, to relegate the classic model of a perfectly competitive market to the back of the book.

‘The spark was the financial crisis,’ says Wendy Carlin, an economist at University College London, of the unorthodox textbook she helped to create. Students wanted to know what had gone wrong in the global economy, and introductory courses struggled to provide an answer. Margaret Stevens was having the same problem at the University of Oxford: many of her students were undergraduates in philosophy, politics and economics – and finding that the latter couldn’t answer the questions they had about the post-crisis economy.

In truth, the examples in economics textbooks were ‘chosen to fit the model’ being taught, says Carlin. Whereas ‘when researchers work on a problem, we start with a question in the world – and often some descriptive data, some hunches,’ she says. ‘And then we step back and think: “Which economic tools and which concepts are going to help us make progress on this question?”’

Carlin and Stevens teamed up with Sam Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe Institute, to launch a new, open-source economics textbook published by CORE Econ and called T he Economy 1.0 . The first edition launched online in 2017. Earlier this year, the project – now with dozens of contributors from around the world – published the second version of its microeconomics curriculum.

They wanted to write a textbook that would draw in students and keep them motivated

For Bowles, the project recalled his correspondence with Martin Luther King Jr in the late 1960s. They’d met through anti-war activities, and King sent Bowles a list of economic questions he wanted help in answering. ‘I opened the list when it came,’ says Bowles. ‘I didn’t have a clue about how to answer any of them. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know the answers – I didn’t know where to look.’

Carlin, Stevens and Bowles had all been teachers before they were economists: Carlin has a degree in education; Stevens taught high-school mathematics; and Bowles taught high school in Nigeria. They wanted to write a textbook that would draw in students and keep them motivated.

The result is a textbook unlike the ones most economics students encounter. CORE Econ begins by charting the ‘hockey stick’ trendline of both economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. The first chapter spans technological innovation, Thomas Malthus’s theory of population growth, and colonialism. It is now used by almost 400 universities on six continents, according to CORE Econ, and in just over half of UK universities that offer an economics degree.

In CORE, the classic model of a competitive market does not make an entrance until Chapter 8. ‘What CORE is doing in micro[economics] is trying to bring to the intro classroom what grad students have been taught for a long time,’ says Bowles.

For example, in the CORE textbook, firms are introduced as having the power to set prices. That might sound obvious but it’s not how things work in the typical introductory model of a perfectly competitive market. In that model, there are lots of identical sellers and the market sets a price. Firms can choose to either sell at that market price or not sell at all. Imagine a street with several very similar pizza parlours: if one tries to charge a much higher price than the others, customers will notice and stop shopping there, and that parlour will have to lower its price.

At least that’s the old Econ 101 logic. CORE puts that at the back of its approach to signify that it’s the special case rather than the norm, says Bowles. Instead, the CORE pedagogy teaches a model where firms sell different goods, and each has at least some power to dictate prices and wages. This choice has implications for more than prices. By eschewing the perfect competition model, CORE introduces the idea that power is a central aspect of market interactions.

CORE includes many other topics that, once, may not have made it even into the back of a textbook, including forced labour and the gender wage gap. Pirate ships of the 18th century are used to explore the role that institutions play in deciding who gets paid how much. The most recent version contains a unit on colonialism and its role in the industrial revolution.

I t’s tempting to judge CORE and even Harvard’s Ec10 in ideological terms – as an overdue response or countermeasure to a laissez-faire approach. But the evolution of Econ 101 is about more than politics. (Despite its focus on traditionally more progressive topics, CORE has been criticised for being insufficiently ‘heterodox’, according to Stevens.) By elevating empiricism and by teaching multiple models of the economy, students in these new curriculums are learning how social sciences actually work.

‘A model is just an allegory,’ says the economist David Autor in his intermediate microeconomics course at MIT. For decades, Econ 101 taught one major allegory, in which markets worked well of their own accord, and buyers and sellers all emerged better off. Government, when it was mentioned at all, was frequently portrayed as an overzealous maintenance man – able to solve some problems but also meddling in markets that were fine on their own.

That is not how most contemporary economists think. Instead, they see the competitive market as one model among many. ‘The multiplicity of models is economics’ strength,’ writes the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik in Economics Rules (2015). ‘[W]e have a menu to choose from and need an empirical method for making that choice.’ As the Econ 101 curriculum catches up, economics students are finally getting a taste of the variety that the field has to offer.

As much of an improvement as the new curriculums are, they raise a puzzle. The traditional Econ 101 course was, for all its flaws, coherent and memorable. Students came away with a clear framework for thinking about the world. What does the new Econ 101 leave students with, other than an appreciation that the world is complicated, and that data is important?

Carlin’s answer is that ‘the workhorse [of Econ 101] is that actors make decisions.’ Modelling those decisions remains a central part of economics. What’s changed is the way decision-makers are represented: they can be selfish, but they can also be altruistic. They can be rational, but they can also be biased or blinkered. They are social and strategic, and they interact with one another not just with the faceless market. Models help approximate the most salient features of these interactions, and students learn several different ones to guide their understanding. They also learn that models must fit the facts, and that a crucial part of economics is leaving the armchair and observing what is going on in the world.

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To find the reference example you need, first select a category (e.g., periodicals) and then choose the appropriate type of work (e.g., journal article ) and follow the relevant example.

When selecting a category, use the webpages and websites category only when a work does not fit better within another category. For example, a report from a government website would use the reports category, whereas a page on a government website that is not a report or other work would use the webpages and websites category.

Also note that print and electronic references are largely the same. For example, to cite both print books and ebooks, use the books and reference works category and then choose the appropriate type of work (i.e., book ) and follow the relevant example (e.g., whole authored book ).

Examples on these pages illustrate the details of reference formats. We make every attempt to show examples that are in keeping with APA Style’s guiding principles of inclusivity and bias-free language. These examples are presented out of context only to demonstrate formatting issues (e.g., which elements to italicize, where punctuation is needed, placement of parentheses). References, including these examples, are not inherently endorsements for the ideas or content of the works themselves. An author may cite a work to support a statement or an idea, to critique that work, or for many other reasons. For more examples, see our sample papers .

Reference examples are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Chapter 10 and the Concise Guide Chapter 10

Related handouts

• Common Reference Examples Guide (PDF, 147KB)
• Reference Quick Guide (PDF, 225KB)

Textual Works

Textual works are covered in Sections 10.1–10.8 of the Publication Manual . The most common categories and examples are presented here. For the reviews of other works category, see Section 10.7.

• Journal Article References
• Magazine Article References
• Newspaper Article References
• Blog Post and Blog Comment References
• UpToDate Article References
• Book/Ebook References
• Diagnostic Manual References
• Children’s Book or Other Illustrated Book References
• Classroom Course Pack Material References
• Religious Work References
• Chapter in an Edited Book/Ebook References
• Dictionary Entry References
• Wikipedia Entry References
• Report by a Government Agency References
• Report with Individual Authors References
• Brochure References
• Ethics Code References
• Fact Sheet References
• ISO Standard References
• Press Release References
• White Paper References
• Conference Presentation References
• Conference Proceeding References
• Published Dissertation or Thesis References
• Unpublished Dissertation or Thesis References
• ERIC Database References
• Preprint Article References

Data and Assessments

Data sets are covered in Section 10.9 of the Publication Manual . For the software and tests categories, see Sections 10.10 and 10.11.

• Data Set References
• Toolbox References

Audiovisual Media

Audiovisual media are covered in Sections 10.12–10.14 of the Publication Manual . The most common examples are presented together here. In the manual, these examples and more are separated into categories for audiovisual, audio, and visual media.

• Artwork References
• Clip Art or Stock Image References
• Film and Television References
• Musical Score References
• Online Course or MOOC References
• Podcast References
• PowerPoint Slide or Lecture Note References
• Radio Broadcast References
• TED Talk References
• Transcript of an Audiovisual Work References
• YouTube Video References

Online Media

Online media are covered in Sections 10.15 and 10.16 of the Publication Manual . Please note that blog posts are part of the periodicals category.

• Facebook References
• Instagram References
• LinkedIn References
• Online Forum (e.g., Reddit) References
• TikTok References
• X References
• Webpage on a Website References
• Clinical Practice References
• Open Educational Resource References
• Whole Website References