How Should the Graduate Economics Core be Changed?

Abstract

The authors present suggestions by graduate students from a range of economics departments for improving the first-year core sequence in economics. The students identified a number of elements that should be added to the core: more training in building microeconomic models, a discussion of the methodological foundations of model-building, more emphasis on institutions to motivate and contextualize macroeconomic models, and greater focus on econometric practice rather than theory. The authors hope that these suggestions will encourage departments to take a fresh look at the content of the first-year core.

Keywords:

• design of core
• graduate economics

JEL codes:

• A23

Notes

1. The Creativity Workshop was organized by the American Economics Association Committee on Economic Education and led by David Colander, Avinash Dixit, and John Siegfried. It was funded by the Teagle Foundation, the Tobin Project, and the American Institute of Economic Research.