Teaching Economics Using Historical Novels: Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting

Abstract

Undergraduate students are often interested in and benefit greatly from applications of economic principles. Historical novels drawn from real-world situations can engage students with economic concepts in new ways and provide a useful tool to help enhance instruction. In this article, the authors discuss the use of historical novels generally in microeconomics, and examine The Lost Painting, a historical novel by Jonathan Harr (2005), in detail. Topics illustrated in the novel include scarcity, opportunity cost, cost-benefit analysis, tax avoidance, labor market specialization, compensating wage differentials, competition and market structure, pricing, income, and government regulation. The authors include an in-depth description of how to incorporate a historical novel into a microeconomics class and provide some evaluation strategies.

Keywords:

• historical fiction
• microeconomics
• novels
• teaching

Keywords:

• JEL code
• A22

Acknowledgments

The authors thank M. Ryan Haley, Michael Watts, two anonymous referees, and the editors of this journal for helpful comments and suggestions.

This article is based on a paper that was presented at the National Conference on Teaching Economics held at Stanford University from June 1–3, 2011.

Notes

1. We used this approach except for the first discussion, where students were assigned to fill in the economic concept chart with a brief definition of each standard/concept and to identify only a single economic concept from the book's introduction. This serves both as an introduction to the course material, as well as an introduction to the book and discussion format. We also provided a different essay question/assignment for the first reading. For the first essay, students were required to find two news articles about the sale of a piece of art work and comment on why the art work in question fetched the price it did.

2. A wide variety of grading schemes could be used to evaluate the discussion and written assignments. We adopted a scheme in which the discussion and essay formed a total assignment and students could allocate the faction of points they wished to receive for the discussion and for the essay, within constraints. For example, on any assignment, students could choose to receive 75 percent of their grade from discussion and 25 percent from the essay, or could choose a 50–50 split, or 25–75.

3. On the evaluative survey, students could choose to respond to the questions noted in the text with a “yes,” a “no,” or an “indifferent.” Students also provided written comments, which were overwhelmingly positive. One student wrote that, “the discussions tying everything from the novel to economics helped to make it easier to understand and put things into real life examples.” Another student commented that, “I had to think about economic concepts while reading, so they stuck more…It helped connect our material to real world situations. Plus it was a good book that sparked good discussions.”

4. Controlling for these covariates is important because, as we indicated previously, the experimental treatment section had a slightly different student make-up than the control section. The outcomes comport well with standard findings from the literature; GPA is the most important predictor of student success on exams. In addition, as students gain more collegiate experience, they tend to do better in their classes, and female students score about 10 percent lower on exams than comparable male students. Note that the instructor in this study is female.