economic naturalist writing assignment

Improving economics teaching and learning for over 20 years

Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment

Wayne Geerling , LaTrobe University Published June 2011

https://doi.org/10.53593/n1301a

Introduction

Dismal science, the economic naturalist, final remarks, selected student essays.

“Most students who take introductory economics seem to leave the course without really having learned even the most important basic economic principles”, laments Robert Frank in “The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment” , published in the Journal of Economic Education (2006). In fact, “when students are given tests designed to probe their knowledge of basic economics 6 months after taking the course, they do not perform significantly better than others who never took an introductory course” (Hansen, Salemi and Siegfried, 2002). Wherein lies the problem? How do instructors or lecturers overcome this? This case study will evaluate a pedagogical device pioneered by Robert Frank: “The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment”, in which students are asked to pose an interesting question about some pattern of events or behaviour they have personally observed (a real life event) and to use basic economic principles to solve the question in no more than 500 words (Frank, 2006, 2007). In addition to being a useful means for teaching economics at a principles/introductory level, this writing assignment has practical benefits for teaching economics through real world examples and/or to students who are non-specialists. I will conclude with a series of questions (and answers) posed by students when I piloted this writing assignment in my own teaching in 2010.

Introductory economics classes have limited impact on economic understanding (Walstad and Rebeck, 2002, 2008). One cause of this is that most courses try to cover too many concepts, with the result that not enough attention or time is devoted to mastering the important (threshold) concepts (Frank, 2007). The idea that less is better in teaching economics is not new (Becker, 2004). Getting Economists to agree on a list of threshold concepts which should be mandatory in an introductory course creates a new dilemma (Frank, 2007). The most important thing, according to Frank, is that lecturers begin with a well articulated short list of principles, and then illustrate and apply each principle in the context of simple examples drawn from familiar settings (Frank, 2006). These principles will be revisited in different contexts later in the course. Students should then practice the principle by using it to solve simple problems taken from their own observations, and ultimately, to pose original questions which are then answered by the same basic principles (Frank, 2006). 

Another related problem is the image of Economics as a dry, uninspiring, abstract subject. Scottish writer, essayist and historian, Thomas Carlyle, once described the discipline of Economics as the “Dismal Science”. This pejorative term reflects the widely held view that this science is boring, inaccurate and gloomy (or, in line with Malthus, has gloomy predictions). As a discipline, Economics has been slow to adopt innovative approaches to teaching (Becker, 2001, 2003; Becker and Watts, 1996, 2001). Traditionally, most learning in the discipline is based on “chalk and talk” and teacher-centred, passive student learning. Ben Stein’s character from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a popular caricature of this “dismal science” in the classroom: highly abstract concepts delivered in a monotonous voice, which ultimately sends the students to sleep.

Most Economics programs are designed with graduates and PhD students in mind, even though they make up a miniscule number of students studying Economics: according to Frank, only 2% of American students who take an introductory economics subject major in economics (Frank, 2007). The comparable figure in the UK is 10–15% for students taking an economics module in a non-economics program. The heterogeneous makeup of the student body in any introductory class requires an approach to teaching economics which can embed threshold concepts (Sloman and Wride, 2009: see also ) in both students studying specialist economics degrees and non-specialists ( Embedding Threshold Concepts Project, Staffordshire University ). A point raised by Gary Becker in the mid 1990s is sadly still pertinent: “Students have unnecessary difficulty learning economics because textbooks generally do not have enough good examples of real-world applications.” (Becker, 1996).

Frank uses the economic naturalist writing assignment in his introductory economics courses. Students formulate their own question based on a real life observation and are encouraged to write free of algebra, graphs and complex terminology, in a manner understandable by a relative who has never studied economics (the so-called Grandma test) (Frank, 2007: see also ).

The term “economic naturalist” comes from an analogy Frank makes with someone who has taken an introductory course in biology: what types of questions would they be able to answer afterwards? “If you know a little evolutionary theory, you can see things you didn’t notice before. The theory identifies texture and pattern in the world that is stimulating to recognise and think about” (Frank, 2007).

Individual students may prefer particular learning styles, such as visual, aural or conceptual. Frank adopts the “narrative theory of learning”, which claims that the human brain absorbs information in narrative (story telling) form easier than in abstract form (equations, graphs and theory). This can be traced to the evolution of our species as storytellers and the importance of narrative in a child’s learning experience (Carter, 1993, Carter and Doyle, 1996, Doyle, 1997). His writing assignment, therefore, is a practical application of this approach. Students who come up with an interesting question are more likely to have fun and devote energy to the task, and talk to others about it, which reinforces the practical aspects of what they learned. The learning is now internalised and great stories are usually remembered forever (Frank, 2007).

The economic naturalist writing assignment can be seen as a means of reorientating introductory classes: giving students more opportunities to practice Economics (Hansen, Salemi & Siegfried 2002). I adopted this assignment as part of a new 2 nd year elective I introduced at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, in 2010: “Economics of Everyday Life”. The aims of the assignment were shamelessly borrowed from Frank and encouraged students to:

• Think like an Economist
• Explain the intuitive logic of Economics
• Apply economic reasoning to comprehend and solve problems in everyday life
• Better understand the complexities of human behaviour

“Economics of Everyday Life” was aimed at different streams of students: those undertaking a degree or considering a major in Economics, as well as non-specialists from different Faculties opting for an elective. All students studying Business at La Trobe University (or any of its derivates) take “Introductory Microeconomics” in their first year, yet as we know from the work of Frank, their understanding of threshold concepts cannot be taken for granted. I provided a simple theory refresher at the start of the subject, and organised parallel workshops in week 1 of the semester for students who felt they needed additional help, to ensure that all students understood the basic microeconomic concepts upon which the subject is built.

All students were required to write at least one reflective essay for the semester along the guidelines set by Frank with one slight modification: the essay length was extended to a maximum of 750 words. Getting students to come up with an interesting question is easy for some but hard for most at the beginning. This form of assessment is not used in other subjects and students would typically ask me to “give them a question”. I experimented by getting students to submit an essay proposal, so I could check that they were on the right path (appropriate question, understanding of concepts involved, etc), but in hindsight this was too time-consuming and led to over-reliance on me. Next time I will limit my input to validating the question and encourage greater peer reflection in tutorials: students work in groups of 4–5 and give feedback on each other’s essay proposal.

The most immediate benefit from this writing assignment is getting the students to see the relevance of studying economics. “The essays allowed me to make real-life connections between daily problems and economics.” (subject evaluation, student 1) Once the learning becomes personal, students learn instinctively and naturally, which promotes critical thinking skills and deeper learning. “The essay contributed to my learning in that I was able to independently research and apply economic concepts to real world observed situations. This enabled me to use my individual economic thought to try and decipher human behaviour in given circumstances.” (subject evaluation, student 2)

The writing assignment is also a counter to the more prevalent means of assessment, which often rely on formalism and encourage rote learning of key concepts. “Rarely have I been asked to write an essay in an economics subject. I found essay writing to be a particularly effective way for me to convey economic concepts. Using mathematics and formulas is effective to an extent, however, having the opportunity to describe and critically analyse economic concepts in conjunction with real world scenarios extends the study of economics to a whole new level.” (subject evaluation, student 3).

The emphasis is not on teaching students the right way of thinking but to consider various hypotheses (rather than simple black/white dichotomies) and to apply economic principles in a consistent, logical and rational manner to arrive at the most plausible answer. The best questions, to paraphrase the subtitle of “Freakonomics”, explore the “hidden side of everything”, i.e. contain an element of counter-intuition. These essays “teach the student to develop the mind of an Economist and provide meaning to social phenomena through the primary principles of incentives, rationality, logic and other classical economic concepts. While, from the outset, a particular social phenomenon may seem an absurd, irrational proposition, it is only through a clear concise economic method that we see results can be deducted in a very logical manner. Thus economic principles become the lens through which we can view the world and make sense of it.” (subject evaluation, student 4)

And finally, a few words about the essays actually chosen for this case study. This sample of 15 represents just over 10% of the total essays written in the subject. The topics are quite varied: thinking at the margin and the rationality/irrationality dichotomy are explored through the purchase of fixed-gear bikes, decision to exceed speed limits and search for a place to rent. How markets work and what happens when they don’t was investigated through the conventional – the decision whether to purchase the last can of coke on the shelf – and price discrimination or gouging, a popular topic among Generation Y: the purchase of environmentally-friendly eggs, sale of soft drink on aeroplanes and designer denim shorts. A variance on the theme of markets is the informal market for personal relationships, a topic which, on the surface, appears to have little in common with Economics, but the essays on online dating and the contraceptive pill prove otherwise.

One of the most important lessons in Economics is that incentives matter. Students soon learn that incentives sometimes have perverse or unintended consequences. Does McDonald’s three-minute Drive Thru service promote better customer service? Will the new P plate rules introduced in Victoria reduce road safety?

It goes without saying that preference was given to essays which were interesting, illustrated the most important principles of Economics and were well written. Editing, when used, was applied judiciously: to fix typos and improve the general syntax, not to change the overall argument. These are essays from undergraduate students, not PhD students. To quote Frank (for the final time), they “should be viewed as intelligent hypotheses suitable for further refinement and testing” (Frank, 2007).

You may choose to disagree with some of these hypotheses but if you discover something interesting about the explanatory power of Economics, the decision to read this case study has been a wise one. Take a chance, use this form of assessment in your teaching, and you might be pleasantly surprised by what you and your students discover.

• Why would a consumer spend up to $4,000 on a fixie bike when a standard one is much cheaper?
• How should one overcome the perils of online dating?
• Why does steroid usage lead to an inefficient outcome for society?
• Eggspensive Taste: Why do eggs that cost 95c a dozen to produce sell for up to $9.00?
• The Market is Amoral: Should you buy the last can of Coke on the shelf?
• "Why are motorbikes exempt from paying fees on toll roads in Victoria?"
• Why are designer denim shorts so expensive?
• Does McDonald’s three minute Drive-Thru Service lead to better outcomes for society?
• How has the contraceptive pill contributed to the split in the relationship market in Western societies?
• Why are soft drink cans sold on aeroplanes half the size yet double the price of those sold in supermarkets?
• Why are mobile phone calls more expensive than landline calls?
• Why do some people choose to exceed speed limits whilst others do not?
• Was my decision to live in Reservoir rational?
• Will the new red P-plate driver restrictions decrease or increase road safety?

Becker, Gary (1996) “Not-so-dismal scientist”, Business Week , 21 October, p. 19.

Becker, William E. (2001) “How to Make Economics the Sexy Social Science” , Chronicle of Higher Education , 7 December, pp. B10–B11.

Becker, William E. (2003) “Undergraduate Choice: Sexy or non-Sexy”, Southern Economic Journal , volume 70, number 1, pp. 219–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/1061646

Becker, William E. (2004) “Economics for a Higher Education” , International Review of Economics Education , volume 3, issue 1, pp. 52–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1477-3880(15)30145-6

Becker, William E. And Watts, Michael (1996) “Chalk and Talk: A National Survey of Teaching Undergraduate Economics”, American Economic Review: Paper and Proceedings , volume 86, May, pp. 448–54. JSTOR: 2118168

Becker, William E. And Watts, Michael (2001) “Teaching Economics at the Start of the 21 st Century: Still Chalk and Talk”, American Economic Review Paper and Proceedings , volume 91, May, pp. 446–51. JSTOR: 2677806

Bray, Dr Margaret and Leape, Dr Jonathan (2008) “Writing for Economists: Embedding the Development of Writing Skills in Economics Courses” , London School of Economics and Political Science.

Carter, Kathy (1993) “The Place of Story in the Study of Teaching and Teacher Education”, Educational Researcher , volume 22, number 1, pp. 5–18. JSTOR: 1177300

Carter, Kathy and Doyle, Walter (1996) “Personal Narrative and Life History in Learning to Teach”, in J. Sikula, T. J. Buttery and E. Guyton (eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education , 2nd edition, New York: Macmillan, pp. 120–142. ISBN: 9780028971940

Davies, Peter and Mangan, Jean, (2008) “Threshold Concepts in Economics: Implications for Teaching, Learning and Assessment” , The Handbook for Economics Lecturers , The Economics Network.

Doyle, Walter (1997) “Heard any really good stories lately? A Critique of the Critics of Narrative in Educational Research” in Teaching and Teacher Education , volume 13, issue 1, pp. 93–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0742-051X(96)00039-X

Frank, Robert (2007) The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas , New York: Basic Books. ISBN: 9780465002177

Frank, Robert (2006) “The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment”, Journal of Economic Education , Winter 2006, pp. 58–67. https://doi.org/10.3200/JECE.37.1.58-67

Hansen, W. Lee, Salemi, Michael K. and Siegfried, John J. (2002) “Use It or Lose It: Teaching Literacy in the Economics Principles Course”, American Economic Review , volume 92, number 2, May, pp. 473–77. JSTOR: 3083452

Sloman, John and Wride, Alison (2009) Economics (7th edition), Harlow: FT Prentice Hall, pp. 8, 23, 24, 44, etc. ISBN: 9780273721307

Sloman, John and Garratt, Dean (2010) Essentials of Economics (5th edition), Harlow: FT Prentice Hall. ISBN: 9780273722410

Walstad, William B. and Rebeck, Ken (2002) “Assessing the Economic Knowledge and Economic Opinions of Adults”, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance , volume 42, pp. 921–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1062-9769(01)00120-X

Walstad, William B. and Rebeck, Ken (2008) “The Test of Understanding of College Economics”, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings , volume 98:2, pp. 547–51. JSTOR: 29730079

“Embedding the Development of Writing Skills in Economics Courses”: http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/projects/mini/bray_writing.htm

“The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment”: http://www.siue.edu/~wrichar/economic%20naturalist%20writing%20assignment.pdf

“Threshold Concepts: Index”: http://media.pearsoncmg.com/intl/ema/ema_uk_he_sloman_esseconlr_5/thresholdconcepts/index.html

“Threshold Concepts in Economics”: http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/handbook/printable/threshold_concepts.pdf

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More from the “economic naturalist” robert frank.

We recently posted a series of excerpts from The Economic Naturalist , a new book by the Cornell economist Robert Frank (who has another new book out this week, Falling Behind , a brief treatise on income inequality). Because the Economic Naturalist excerpts were well received and vigorously debated , we asked Frank if he would reply to some of the feedback. Kindly, he has obliged:

Guest Blog: Robert H. Frank

When I describe my “economic naturalist” writing assignment to students, I stress that it is not important that the answers to the questions they pose be correct beyond doubt. Far more important is that the questions themselves be interesting and the proposed answers economically plausible. The learning stimulated by this assignment stems less, I think, from the writing of the papers themselves than from the animated discussions provoked by the questions.

I was therefore extremely encouraged by the lively reader responses to the examples from The Economic Naturalist on this blog recently . I was encouraged, too, that a Google search a few days after the post ran turned up over 100 other web sites that had linked to it. To my eye, that’s the real beauty of the writing assignment: Once students manage to pose an interesting question, they immediately want to discuss it with others. And in the process, they find endless opportunities to refine their thinking about what a sensible answer might look like. In short, they learn a lot from these conversations, just as I did from reading your comments.

Such exchanges also provide valuable opportunities to push back, to probe the power of opposing views. So I am pleased to take advantage of an invitation to respond to some of the criticisms of my students’ explanations.

McMansions for Retirees : Several respondents objected that the phenomenon to be explained – that retirees are increasingly buying large houses close to home rather than smaller condominiums in the Sun Belt – was a statistical artifact. In the book, I cited studies purporting to confirm the trend in question, but I’m quick to concede that the practice may not be widespread in many areas. It does seem clear, however, that supply and demand in the retirees’ housing market have shifted in precisely the way my student Tobin Schilke described. Because the number of births per adult American woman has remained roughly the same for several decades, the number of children is no greater now than in the past. Yet because of the secular rise in divorce and remarriage, each child now has more grandparents than in the past (on the plausible assumption that we count the parents of step-parents as grandparents).

The upshot is that the demand for visits by grandchildren has increased relative to the supply of such visits. If we grant Mr. Schilke’s plausible assumption that having a large, conveniently located house makes visits more likely, it follows that retirees are more likely to demand such houses.

Of course, there may have been other offsetting changes in the retirees’ housing market. Rising energy costs, for example, may have reduced the demand for large houses. But that wouldn’t challenge Mr. Shilke’s interesting observations about how demographic changes appear to have altered the demand for grandchild visits.

Square Milk Containers : Regarding the proposed explanation that milk containers have square cross-sections in order to minimize the amount of costly shelf space they occupy in refrigerated storage units (in contrast to the cylindrical containers of soft drinks, which are typically stored on unrefrigerated shelves), several respondents pointed out that containers with square cross-sections could not contain the pressurized contents of carbonated soft drinks unless their walls were so thick as to make them prohibitively costly. It’s a fair point.

But a milk container of given volume could also be produced at lower cost if it were cylindrical in cross-section rather than square. Relative to a container with square cross-section, however, a cylindrical design would definitely increase the cost of storing milk on refrigerated shelves. So it seems fair to conclude that the cross-section of milk containers is dictated at least in part by a desire to minimize the cost of refrigerated storage.

Premium Prices for Black MacBooks : When its newly introduced black iPods quickly sold out in 2005, Apple discovered that customers would be willing to pay premium prices for a machine in a previously unavailable color. So when it brought out its new MacBook models the next year, it posted a higher price for the black version and had no difficulty selling them.

Many respondents apparently mistook me to be saying that Apple was somehow exploiting its customers by charging the premium. But the central point of the example was exactly the contrary. Whenever a seller produces under economies of scale, it is always possible to create additional economic surplus for all parties -buyers and seller alike – by using what I call the “hurdle” method of price discrimination.

The basic idea is that the seller offers a discount only to buyers who are willing to jump some sort of hurdle, such as mailing in a rebate coupon or settling for a machine in a less desired color. These discounts increase the number of units sold, in the process reducing the average production cost per unit. The resulting cost savings often make it possible for even buyers who pay full list price to end up paying less than they would have if the product were sold to the same price to everyone.

Although some complain that it is unfair to charge some buyers more than others for essentially the same product, in The Economic Naturalist I argue that Apple’s pricing scheme actually appears to mete out a certain rough economic justice. This will be true if, as appears plausible, the buyers who are willing to pay extra for the black machines are also the ones who value the company’s innovative design features most highly. After all, somebody has to pay for Apple’s prodigious research and development costs. Why shouldn’t these costs fall more heavily on those consumers who care most about cutting edge design?

Gas Caps on the Right and Left Side of Cars: In response to her question about why fuel filler doors are sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right (causing confusion for rental car drivers), my student Patty Yu argued that if filler doors were all on the same side (say, the driver’s side), lines at the gas pumps would be much longer during peak periods. Numerous respondents suggested other possible reasons for filler door placement. One pointed out, for example, that manufacturers tend to put the filler door on the side opposite the muffler and tail pipe, perhaps to minimize the odds of gasoline spilling onto a hot pipe during an accident. Click and Clack discussed this hypothesis on Car Talk recently, noting that, although the correlation exists, it is far from perfect.

They also mentioned a variant of another respondent’s observation that European manufacturers tend to put the filler door on the passenger’s side, perhaps to minimize the danger to a driver who runs out of gas and must add fuel to his tank while stopped at the side of a highway. Their variant was that manufacturers in countries that drive on the right tend to put filler doors on the passenger’s side, thereby to keep them farther away from shearing forces in head-on collisions. And indeed, Japanese cars do tend to have their filler doors on the left (drivers in Japan, like those in the U.K. and Australia, drive on the left side of the road). Here again, though, there are many exceptions. (My Miata’s filler door is on the left, but my son’s Subaru’s is on the right.)

By far the most common objection to Ms. Yu’s explanation was that it seemed to presume a conscious attempt on the part of manufacturers to coordinate their fuel-filler door placements – something for which there is no evidence. It is this objection that I find most interesting from a methodological perspective. Suppose manufacturers had not, in fact, coordinated their efforts in an explicit attempt to minimize the queues at gas pumps. Would that make Ms. Yu’s explanation any less plausible?

If one views product design features in an evolutionary perspective, the answer is clearly no. Darwinians argue that useful features evolve from random mutations. The eye, for example, developed from a sequence of random mutations because light-sensitive organisms were better able to locate valued objects and avoid harmful ones. The whole point of the theory is to explain how eyes came to exist without anyone having consciously planned them.

A similar point applies to evolutionary explanations in economics. If all manufacturers had happened to place fuel filler doors on, say, the left side of the car, one consequence would have been long gas lines during peak hours, because drivers in most countries would pull up on the right side of the pump. And in that case, manufacturers would have had a problem worth addressing. Ms. Yu’s explanation thus helps explain why the observed distribution of filler door placements is evolutionarily stable. Evolution, as Richard Dawkins once observed, is less aptly described as “the survival of the fittest” than as “the survival of the stable.”

In Summary: In telling my students that their answers don’t have to be the final word, I’m not saying that it’s not a good thing to be right. Rather, my point is that students are more likely to engage with our subject if we demonstrate that it can stimulate them to think about the world in interesting new ways.

I’ll mention another piece of evidence that the questions they pose meet that test with flying colors. Several hours after I had discussed a couple of examples from The Economic Naturalist in a brief interview on NPR earlier this week (“ Econo-reasoning behind everyday things ,” Marketplace Morning Report) a listener copied me on this e-mail in which he posed a long list of economic naturalist questions of his own. Some examples:

1. Why do phones and calculators/computers have different number pads? To wit: Phone: 123 456 789 0 Calculator/Computer: 789 456 123 0 2. Why do hockey games have 3 periods rather than 2 halves or 4 quarters? And why are points used to determine standings, rather than straight won-loss percentages? 3. How are railroads able to use freight cars that belong to other railroads? United doesn’t fly jets belonging to Southwest — so why should Burlington Northern let Norfolk Southern use its freight cars? 4. Why is whiskey sold in fifths? 5. There’s a metric scale for measuring just about everything — weight, distance, volume, even temperature (Celsius is derived from the metric system) — except for one thing — time. How come there’s never been a metric calendar/time system, with, say, 10 metric months of 10 metric days each, each metric day composed of 10 metric hours, each metric hour composed of 100 metric minutes, and each metric minute composed of 100 metric seconds (which would be different from the seconds currently used)? (I’m surprised that countries that use the metric system have no problem with the “non-metric” way we measure time). 6. Why is Newfoundland a half hour different from other time zones? 7. Why don’t doctors dispense medicine or employ pharmacists in their offices, so we can have one-stop health care and save a trip to the drugstore? 8. Why don’t cell phones have dial tones?

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An Exploration of Robert Frank’s ‘The Economic Naturalist’ in the Classroom

This paper begins by asking a fundamental question: why do students who take economics at an introductory level often leave the subject without understanding even the most basic economic principles? The superficial answer seems to be that courses try to cover too many concepts at the expense of mastering the important threshold concepts. Another related issue is the way economics is taught and assessed. This paper will evaluate a pedagogical method pioneered by Robert Frank: ‘The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment’, in which students pose an interesting question based on an event they have personally observed, then use economic principles to solve the question in no more than 500 words—free of algebra, graphs and complex jargon. The paper concludes with a sample of questions (and answers) posed by students when I piloted this writing assignment. It is hoped that this paper will serve as a practical case study for aspiring lecturers who wish to create a more stimulating learning environment. This assignment is a useful means for teaching economics at an undergraduate level through real world examples and may help students who are non-specialists master threshold concepts and develop the ability for self-directed learning.

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An exploration of Robert Frank's 'The Economic Naturalist' in the classroom

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review

This paper evaluates a pedagogical method pioneered by Robert Frank: 'The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment', in which students pose an interesting question based on an event they have personally observed, then use economic principles to solve the question in no more than 500 words - free of algebra, graphs and complex jargon. The paper concludes with a sample of questions (and answers) posed by students when I piloted this writing assignment. It is hoped that this paper will serve as a practical case study for aspiring lecturers who wish to create a more stimulating learning environment.

• Economic Education
• Everyday Economics
• Robert Frank
• Student engagement

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• 10.1016/j.iree.2013.04.008

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T1 - An exploration of Robert Frank's 'The Economic Naturalist' in the classroom

AU - Geerling, Wayne

PY - 2013/1/1

Y1 - 2013/1/1

N2 - This paper evaluates a pedagogical method pioneered by Robert Frank: 'The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment', in which students pose an interesting question based on an event they have personally observed, then use economic principles to solve the question in no more than 500 words - free of algebra, graphs and complex jargon. The paper concludes with a sample of questions (and answers) posed by students when I piloted this writing assignment. It is hoped that this paper will serve as a practical case study for aspiring lecturers who wish to create a more stimulating learning environment.

AB - This paper evaluates a pedagogical method pioneered by Robert Frank: 'The Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment', in which students pose an interesting question based on an event they have personally observed, then use economic principles to solve the question in no more than 500 words - free of algebra, graphs and complex jargon. The paper concludes with a sample of questions (and answers) posed by students when I piloted this writing assignment. It is hoped that this paper will serve as a practical case study for aspiring lecturers who wish to create a more stimulating learning environment.

KW - Economic Education

KW - Everyday Economics

KW - Pedagogy

KW - Robert Frank

KW - Student engagement

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84883313121&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.iree.2013.04.008

DO - 10.1016/j.iree.2013.04.008

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84883313121

SN - 1477-3880

JO - International Review of Economics Education

JF - International Review of Economics Education

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Economics 201

Economic naturalist assignment, introduction.

Robert Frank, a Cornell labor economist and author of an excellent microeconomics text, admonishes his students and readers to become "economic naturalists," observing economic phenomena in the same way that a naturalist observes nature and asking questions such as "Why did this happen the way it did?" In this assignment, you are to play economic naturalist and find some economic phenomenon, pose a question about it that you think is interesting, then try to answer that question the best you can using the theories we have developed in the class.

Suggestions

The ideal place to find interesting phenomena to analyze is in your own experiences, either here at Reed or elsewhere. Alternatively, you may use phenomena that are described in newspapers or other places. You should recognize that Econ 201 gives you a fairly limited toolbox for analysis, so you won't be able to answer as many questions satisfactorily now as you could after completing an economics major. However, the basic tools of supply and demand are very powerful and apply to many situations. Try to keep your question simple and intuitive.

Written Assignment

You should submit a short essay consisting of three parts:

• Facts. S ummarize the phenomenon you are looking at in as much detail as necessary. If you are relying on published sources for your information, you should include a copy of these along with your assignment.
• Question. Pose as clearly as possible the question that the facts about this phenomenon raises in your mind.
• Analysis. Use the theoretical materials of Econ 201 to attempt to answer the question. You may not be able to answer all aspects of the question satisfactorily.

Essays may be submitted electronically or on paper. They are due at class time on Wednesday, October 27 .

Selection and Discussion of Topics

The instructor will select a few of the naturalist topics to be discussed in an upcoming Thursday evening activity session. The essays describing these topics will be made available on the Web site for fellow students to read prior to the lab. The author of each will be invited to lead off the discussion by making a very brief presentation summarizing the topic and the analysis.

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ECONOMIC SCENE

Students Discover Economics in Its Natural State

By Robert H. Frank

• Sept. 29, 2005

WHY do the keypad buttons on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? It is an interesting question, since the patrons of these machines are almost always drivers, none of whom are blind. The answer, according to my former student Bill Tjoa, is that because A.T.M. producers make keypads with Braille dots for their walk-up machines anyway, it is cheaper to make all machines the same way. The alternative, after all, would be to hold two separate inventories and make sure that each machine went to the right destination. If the Braille dots caused trouble for sighted users, the extra expense might be justified. But they do not.

Mr. Tjoa's question was the title of one of two short papers he submitted in response to what I call the "economic naturalist" writing assignment in my introductory economics course. The specific assignment is "to use a principle, or principles, discussed in the course to pose and answer an interesting question about some pattern of events or behavior that you personally have observed."

"Your space limit is 500 words," the assignment continues. "Many excellent papers are significantly shorter than that. Please do not lard your essay with complex terminology. Imagine yourself talking to a relative who has never had a course in economics. The best papers are ones that would be clearly intelligible to such a person, and typically these papers do not use any algebra or graphs."

Over the years, my students have posed and answered literally thousands of fascinating questions. My favorite was submitted by Jennifer Dulski, who asked, "Why do brides often spend thousands of dollars on wedding dresses they will never wear again, while grooms often rent cheap tuxedos, even though they will attend many formal social events in the future?"

Decades ago, when I first started teaching introductory economics, it never would have occurred to me to give an assignment like this. The idea grew out of my participation in an early pilot program in Writing in the Disciplines, a new pedagogical movement that promises to revolutionize the learning process at every level. The aim of the program, which was sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, was to encourage students to write about concepts they were grappling with in the various disciplines.

The initiative was inspired by the discovery that there is no better way to master an idea than to write about it. Although the human brain is remarkably flexible, learning theorists now recognize that it is far better able to absorb information in some forms than others. Thus, according to the psychologist Jerome Bruner, children "turn things into stories, and when they try to make sense of their life they use the storied version of their experience as the basis for further reflection." He went on, "If they don't catch something in a narrative structure, it doesn't get remembered very well, and it doesn't seem to be accessible for further kinds of mulling over." Even well into adulthood, we find it easier to process information in narrative form than in more abstract forms like equations and graphs. Most effective of all are narratives that we construct ourselves.

The economic-naturalist writing assignment plays to this strength. Learning economics is like learning a language. Real progress in both cases comes only from speaking. The economic-naturalist papers induce students to search out interesting economic stories in the world around them. When they find one, their first impulse is to tell others about it. They are also quick to recount interesting economic stories they hear from classmates. And with each retelling, they become more fluent in the underlying ideas.

Many students struggle to come up with an interesting question for their first paper. But by the time the second paper comes due, the more common difficulty is choosing which of several interesting questions to pursue.

The paper is not a complete substitute for the traditional syllabus. But the lasting impact of the course comes mainly from the papers. When students come back to visit during class reunions, the equations and graphs long since forgotten, we almost always end up talking about the questions they have posed and answered during the intervening years.

To answer her question about wedding dresses, Ms. Dulski argued that because most brides wish to make a fashion statement on their wedding day, a rental company would have to carry a huge stock of distinctive gowns -- perhaps 40 or 50 in each size. Each garment would thus be rented only infrequently, perhaps just once every four or five years. So the company would have to charge a rental fee greater than the purchase price of the garment just to cover its costs. In contrast, because grooms are willing to settle for a standard style, a rental company can serve this market with an inventory of only two or three tuxedos in each size. Each suit can thus be rented several times a year, enabling a rental fee that is only a fraction of its purchase price.

Daniel Boorstin, the former librarian of Congress, used to rise at 5 each morning and write for two hours before going into the office. "I write to discover what I think," he explained. "After all, the bars aren't open that early." Mr. Boorstin's morning sessions were even more valuable than he realized. Writing not only clarifies what you already know; it is also an astonishingly effective way to learn something new.

ECONOMIC SCENE Robert H. Frank has been teaching introductory economics at Cornell University since 1972. He is the co-author, with Ben Bernanke, of "Principles of Microeconomics."

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Bob Frank’s legacy as a teacher, behavioral economist, economic naturalist, and author

Robert H. Frank in his office in 2015 (photo by Jason Koski)

In 1966, when Cornell economist Robert H. Frank arrived in Nepal to teach high school math and science as a Peace Corps volunteer, he was surprised at how quickly he felt comfortable in his modest new home, even though conditions of life were dramatically different from what he was used to. “What was astonishing to me was that within a day or two, everything seemed normal,” Frank says. “You get up, you have things you want to get done that day, there are people you interact with … the day-to-day flow of life was really not in any meaningful way different.”

That experience was a defining moment for Frank that informed his outlook on life. “Knowing that when life is lived on a radically different material scale, it doesn’t much matter, is knowing something in a way that’s different from believing it to be true,” he says. “It’s sort of who you are, then.”

Frank, the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and professor of economics in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, has written and spoken extensively about positional goods, cascading expenditures, inequality, and the ever-growing income gap in our society—all prevalent themes in his many books, essays, op-eds, media interviews, and podcasts. “Everybody knows that when the mansions get bigger, rich people probably aren’t much happier as a result,” he says. “Ordinary material conditions don’t do much to improve people’s lives when they happen across the board for everyone. We just get used to the new gadgets and bigger houses and more expensive wedding receptions. And they don’t have any lasting impact on our health or wellbeing or how happy we are.”

Many of Frank’s award-winning books, including Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess and The Winner-Take-All Society , co-authored with Philip J. Cook, are continually cited in both mainstream and business media outlets. Luck and the role it plays in people’s lives and the power of behavioral contagion are themes Frank expounds on in his most recent books, Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work and Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy . (See Books by Robert H. Frank, below, for a complete list of his books.)

A Cornell professor since 1972, an influential teacher of economics, and a thought leader who played a central role in bringing legitimacy to the study of behavioral economics at Cornell, Frank retired from the university on July 1, 2020.

An affinity for teaching

As a mathematics major at Georgia Tech, Frank, then an undergrad himself, had an unprecedented opportunity to teach an undergraduate math class and discovered he really enjoyed the experience. In fact, he liked it enough to shed the “stereotypical life history ambitious students at Georgia Tech envisioned to become president of a company before you were 40,” as he put it. “Being a teacher rose right to the top of my list,” he says, after “an advisor in the math department talked to me about it and said that his family lived quite comfortably; it didn’t mean signing an oath of poverty to become a teacher,” recalls Frank.

So following two years of service in the Peace Corps, Frank studied micro, macro, and labor economics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his MA in statistics and graduated with his PhD in economics in 1972, then interviewed for an assistant professor position in the Department of Economics in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences. “I was lucky to get that job,” says Frank. “They hired seven people that year and I was number seven.”

  A maverick economist

Although he remained an economics professor in Arts and Sciences for nearly two decades—becoming a full professor in 1986 and a chaired professor in 1991—intellectually, it wasn’t the best fit from Frank’s perspective. “Economics departments vary from being overly concerned about mathematical formalism at one end of the distribution to obsessively overly concerned at the other extreme. Cornell’s department was near the obsessively concerned end of that distribution,” he says.

  “I was able to do that kind of work; having been a mathematics major, that was not something that was daunting to me,” Frank says. “But the culture at Berkeley, where I’d studied as a graduate student, was quite different. There, they were concerned mainly with trying to get the right answer to whatever question they were posing. It wasn’t a matter of trying to prove how mathematically sophisticated they were; the ethos of that department was to use the simplest model that would get the job done was.

  “ The Cornell department was not quite to my liking and my own career evolved in reaction to that,” Frank says. “I did what I had to do to get promoted; I published technical papers in the leading journals in sufficient quantity. But once I was freed from that, I spent the lion’s share of my energy working in a much more discursive mode, writing books. And I’ve been lucky to get away with that. That’s not the standard way that economists make any headway in the profession.”

Frank focused his work more and more on behavioral issues and continued to publish in untraditional ways. And he found an intellectual ally in Richard Thaler , who joined Johnson as a professor of economics in 1978. Frank says he and Thaler “spent a lot of time talking to one another about how the conventional economic models didn’t seem to describe the world we knew and experienced.” In 1990, when the Kellogg School at Northwestern offered Frank a chaired professorship, Thaler advised Frank to first take a half-time appointment at Johnson to find out how he liked teaching MBAs.

“I took the half-time appointment at the Johnson School and it was, in fact, a more congenial environment for me,” says Frank. “It was much more behaviorally oriented, and so I think it was a comfortable fit.” In 2001, he decided to join Johnson full time, while continuing to teach introductory economics in Arts and Sciences once every two years for many years. In 2002, Frank became Johnson’s Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and professor of economics.

A champion for behavioral economics

In 1989, Thaler, a professor of economics at Cornell for nearly two decades who later became a Nobel laureate in economics (2017), founded the Behavioral Economics and Decision Research Center (BEDR), an interdisciplinary center co-directed by Frank, among others , that “unites Cornell scholars who share a common interest in judgment, decision making, and behavioral economics.” The center is often cited as the birthplace of behavioral economics.

Behavioral economics challenges the “rational actor” model of human behavior, which forms a big part of the core traditional economics curriculum, says Thomas D. Gilovich , Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Chair of Psychology and a co-director at BEDR. “The ‘rational actor’ model is based on the idea that people are perfectly rational and perfectly selfish, neither of which strikes a psychologist or strikes a behavioral economist as realistic,” says Gilovich, who became friends with both Frank and Thaler after joining Cornell’s faculty in the 1980s.  “Bob was concerned that the focus on the rational actor as a description of human behavior just seemed inaccurate.

“Behavioral economics is an effort to draw upon psychological insights about how the mind works and what people are like to inform models of economics that often left out those considerations,” says Gilovich. “So it’s a way to build a more realistic and therefore effective economics.”

“As an economist, Bob is a big thinker and intellectual leader,” says longtime colleague and friend Michael Waldman , the Charles H. Dyson Professor of Management and professor of economics at Johnson. “He tries to re-orient the profession to be more realistic about how economies behave. Bob and Richard Thaler built behavioral economics at Cornell and created fertile ground for behavioral economics champions like Ted O’Donoghue .” O’Donoghue, the Zubrow Professor of Economics and senior associate dean for social sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, is also a co-director at BEDR. “Young behavioral economists at Johnson like Ori Heffetz and Marcel Preuss are part of Bob’s legacy in terms of the strength of behavioral economics on campus,” adds Waldman.

“I also think of Bob’s legacy in terms of the strength of behavioral economics in the profession,” says Waldman. “When I first started, there wasn’t really anything called behavioral economics; it wasn’t a field. In a sense, Richard and Bob created the field. And it’s not going away. Bob was an important contributor in making it a big part of economics, and it clearly fits in with what Bob was trying to do: Make economics more real.”

The genesis of the Economic Naturalist writing assignment

Most people don’t think of storytelling as a key, integral component to an introductory economics course. Frank does.

He describes the conundrum he sought to address in reforming the course: “Most students take only one economics course; mostly they don’t like it, and they don’t take any other [economics] courses. But more troubling is that six months afterwards, we give them tests that probe their understanding of basic economic principles and they don’t score any better than students who never took the course.”

Why? In Frank’s view, the reason was partly because introductory economics courses are overly mathematical, an approach he says is “not the best pathway” for students to understand basic economic principles. “Most people can absorb ideas most readily and efficiently if ideas are couched in a narrative, where there are actors, people with interests, a problem, a question to be answered, and a resolution,” he says. So he developed an assignment designed to get students to tell stories focused on applying economic principles in their answers to interesting questions.

“The title of the paper has to be a question—an interesting question based on something you’ve come up against in your own experience and that you’re curious about,” Frank would tell his students. “How do you know whether your question is interesting? Ask one of your classmates and see if they react in a way that signals interest. Do they want to know, ‘Yeah, why is that?’ Or do they blink dully and change the subject?”

Launched in 1987 with support from Cornell’s John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines , over the years the assignment shrank from 20-page papers to narratives of no longer than 500 words. And Frank dubbed it the Economic Naturalist Writing Assignment.

“The reform for the course was to make a judgement up front about which six or seven ideas were the most important,” says Frank. “And in economics, at least, it’s fortunate that just a few ideas do most of the heavy work. Put those on display in as many contexts as possible and students can master them at a very high level in just a single semester.”

The proof is in the pudding, and hundreds of alumni have validated Frank’s approach by presenting him with the Stephen Russell Distinguished Teaching Award (established by Stephen Russell ’60, MBA ’61), which is given by fifth-year reunion classes to the Johnson faculty member whose teaching has most influenced them during their post-graduation years. “I’ve won that award four times,” says Frank, “and it’s by far the award I’m most proud of.”

“A lot of us try to teach everything, every detail is so important—‘what if I didn’t tell the students this? They won’t get the full picture,’” relates Ori Heffetz , associate professor of economics, whom Frank and Waldman interviewed and hired in 2005. “Bob was the opposite. Bob always said, ‘Less is more. Focus on a few core ideas and just keep hammering them in with more examples and more applications.’

“This was really influential for me,” says Heffetz.

When alumni honored Heffetz with the Stephen Russell Award in 2015, he says, “I thought, ‘This is Bob!’ The fact that five years later they still remembered insights from my course was because ‘less is more.’”

Why do kids need safety seats in cars but not planes?

Frank describes one of his all-time favorite economic naturalist essays, written by Greg Bellinger ’93, MBA ’99, MEng ’00: “Why do regulators have you strap your toddler into a car safety seat to drive two blocks to Wegmans but then let you fly with your toddler loose on your lap when you fly from New York to Los Angeles?” As Frank says, “Greg reasoned that it had to be on the cost side of the cost-benefit test. And sure enough, if you have a safety seat in the back seat of your car, there’s no extra charge for strapping your kid in other than the few seconds it takes to do it. If you need to strap your kid in a safety seat on a flight from New York to L.A. and it’s full, you have to buy a seat—that’s a thousand bucks. So the cost of strapping your kid in a plane is much, much higher than the cost of strapping your kid in a car, and that’s why we see this difference.

“When you talk about that example with people,” Frank says, “then you understand the cost-benefit principle—which is probably the most important principle we have in economics—just a little better each time you do it.”

Frank compiled some of the best examples of students’ questions and answers into a book, The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas (2007). It quickly became a bestseller in many countries, and sales around the world remain brisk more than a dozen years later. And as Frank wrote in the book’s introduction, he donated half his royalties from the book to the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, “in grateful acknowledgement of my former students’ contributions … with full confidence that … no gift could more enhance the learning experience of future Cornell students.”

Thousands of economic naturalists

Ori Heffetz , associate professor of economics at Johnson, points out that Frank’s textbook, Principles of Economics, co-authored with Ben S. Bernanke and first published in 2001, is full of economic naturalist examples. In fact, as a co-author of the textbook since 2016 (it’s revised with new data and examples every year or two), Heffetz himself has written many economic naturalist question-and-answer summaries. Most recently, he’s been writing several about the corona virus and its effects on the economy and unemployment for the eighth edition of the book, which will come out in 2021.

“There are now thousands of economic naturalists out there,” says Heffetz. “First of all, thousands of our alumni took Bob’s course and turned in two one-page economic naturalist summaries. Plus [there are] tens of thousands of users of the textbook.”

Frank’s ideas continue to gain currency partly because he is a master not only of writing about them in a way that’s clear, direct, and accessible to the layperson; he’s also adept at broadcasting his ideas in a variety of media. “Bob has had several big ideas in recent decades and he just hammered them in, like in his teaching,” says Heffetz. “He would write a book about them, then he would write about them in his New York Times column, then he would give interviews about them everywhere.”

Recently, Bob pushed for the next edition of Principles of Economics to include ten short, animated videos that illustrate the best of the economic naturalist examples, says Heffetz. “So the publisher hired animators and they are making a high-quality production of short videos that you can tweet and that can go viral.”

Context matters and relative wealth

“Speaking selfishly as a social psychologist, I will say that Bob is a social psychologist masquerading as an economist,” quips Gilovich, who is Frank’s longtime friend, research collaborator, and tennis partner. “The biggest lesson of social psychology is that everybody’s behavior is very finely tuned to the environment in which they find themselves. We’re very sophisticated beings with very sophisticated brains that pay attention to the tiniest details of our surrounding circumstances.

“That is to say, context really matters,” Gilovich says. “And almost all of Bob’s work has illustrated the importance of that idea in various ways.”

As an example, Gilovich points to one theme in Frank’s research: the idea that absolute wealth is important, but nowhere near as important as relative wealth. “How you’re doing relative to the people around you is more important to your happiness and is a more important driver of your behavior,” says Gilovich. “Bob illustrated this in his first and absolutely delightful book, Choosing the Right Pond . It continues through Luxury Fever and many of his New York Times columns. And it’s in his most recent book on context, Under the Influence.

“Someone who thinks about human behavior as attuned to the social context is a social psychologist,” says Gilovich jokes, summing up. “So for my field, I’m just going to claim Bob Frank.”

On a personal note, Gilovich adds, “Bob’s got a delightful, self-deprecating sense of humor, he’s tuned into all the amusing things that life offers, doesn’t miss a beat, and has a great wit in commenting on everything going on around him. He’s always giving other people credit, and he’s just a magnificent human being.”

Post-retirement plans include lectures, podcasts, and essays

While he may be retired from Cornell, Frank has “enthusiastically signed up” says Gilovich, to teach a BEDR class on decision making — a class that he and other BEDR co-directors have taught above and beyond their regular teaching load over the last two years.

Frank fully plans to continue publishing his ideas in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other outlets. He’s continuing to speak in video and podcast interviews. And he’ll continue to post to Twitter ( @econnaturalist ), a venue he has found to be effective for developing ideas that he later polishes and publishes as essays.

“A couple of pieces I published recently grew out of threads I first posed on Twitter,” Frank says, “just because that’s a place for getting started. The hardest part of any project is to get started. Once I get started on a book it’s all I can do to keep from working obsessively on it. The first thing I want to do in the morning is read what I wrote yesterday and then get going on it again.”

So stay tuned.

Books by Robert H. Frank

Many of Robert H. Frank’s books are best-sellers around the world. Translated into 24 different languages, they are approachable and understandable for a general audience and have won multiple best book and notable book awards. They underscore the inequality inherent in our society and propose new tax structures that would address this. They clearly and vividly illustrate terms like expenditure cascades, positional goods, and behavioral contagion. And they discuss the role sheer luck plays in people’s lives. Here’s a list.

Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton University Press, 2016)

The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good (Princeton University Press, 2012)

  The Economic Naturalist’s Field Guide: Common-Sense Principles for Troubled Times (Basic Books, 2009)

  Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class (University of California Press, 2007)

  The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas (New York: Basic Books, 2007)

What Price The Moral High Ground? How to Succeed without Selling Your Soul (Princeton University Press, 2004)

  Principles of Economics , with Ben S. Bernanke, and with Kate Antonovics and Ori Heffetz in later editions (McGraw-Hill, first edition, 2001; eighth edition, 2021; brief edition, 2008; fourth brief edition, 2021)

  Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess (The Free Press, 1999; Princeton University Press paperback edition, 2000)

  The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us , with Philip J. Cook (Martin Kessler Books at The Free Press, 1995)

  Microeconomics and Behavior (First Edition, McGraw-Hill, 1991; Tenth Edition, 2021)

  Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions (W. W. Norton, 1988)

  Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status (Oxford University Press, 1985)

  The Distributional Consequences of Direct Foreign Investment , with Richard T. Freeman (Academic Press, 1978)

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