Switching Majors – Into and Out of Economics

Using student transcripts from six institutions over a 23-year timespan, the authors investigate the movement of students into and out of the economics major. Considerable movement between majors occurs with 83 percent of economics graduates switching in after their first principles course. These eventual majors come from a variety of sources, but primarily from business, engineering, science & math. In an absolute sense, weaker students (as measured by cumulative GPA) switch into economics. However, students appear to move to disciplines of relative academic strength (as indicated by relative grades). While females from other majors are less likely to switch into economics, traditionally underrepresented minorities are largely attracted to economics from other disciplines at similar (or higher) rates to which they persist in originally declared majors

FEATURES AND INFORMATION Anyone? Anyone? A Guide to Submissions on Classroom Experiments

The true method of knowledge is experiment. -William Blake A fool is a man who never tried an experiment in his life. -Erasmus Darwin One associate editor's perspective on classroom experiment articles is detailed in this article. The associate editor provides recommendations for manuscripts for the Instruction (those that describe new classroom experiments) and Research (those reporting studies into the efficacy of classroom experiments as a pedagogical tool) Sections of the Journal of Economic Education as well as some general suggestions for authors

Importance of Religious Beliefs to Ethical Attitudes in Business

One would expect a relationship between the ethical attitudes and the religion of individuals. Published research into this relationship has found somewhat mixed results. While some studies have found a significant, positive relationship between religious belief and ethical attitudes, other studies have found either no effect or only a “marginal effect”. In this study, we investigate the relationship between religious convictions and attitudes toward ethical dilemmas. We find strong evidence to suggest that business professionals who self-report higher levels of religious importance are significantly less accepting of ethically questionable behavior – for all 16 vignettes studied. This result is far more consistent and significant than for respondents who simply self-classify as “Christian.” Further, we find evidence, consistent with the literature, that older respondents and females also tend to be less accepting of ethically questionable behavior than are younger, male respondents. Finally, we find that professionals working at larger firms tend to be less accepting of ethically questionable behavior than their counterparts at smaller firms

The High Costs of Large Enrollment Classes: Can Cooperative Learning Help?

We examine the potential for cooperative learning activities to offset costs of large enrollment courses. We use a quasi-experimental research design to examine achievement and course perceptions in small and large enrollment sections of microeconomic principles. While large enrollment sections attain lower levels of achievement (measured by course score) than those with smaller enrollments, this effect is partially mitigated by use of cooperative learning. Furthermore, while students in large enrollment sections report lower levels of satisfaction and learning than students in smaller sized classes, the use of cooperative learning eliminates the negative effects of increased class size on student perceptions

Ethical attitudes of accounting practitioners: Are rank and ethical attitudes related

ABSTRACT. We address a previous finding in the business ethics literature in which accounting professionals in higher rank levels, i.e., ''manager'' or ''partner'' of auditing firms, appear to have lower moral reasoning ability than their junior counterparts. Prior investigations have relied upon a similar methodology for estimating ethical beliefs, namely testing ''moral reasoning ability'' using either the Moral Judgment Interview or Defining Issues Test. In the present study, we use a multiple vignettes approach to test for the existence of the inverse rank-ethical beliefs effect. With only 2 of the 30 vignettes resulting in both managers and partners being more accepting of the ethically charged behaviors, the results presented here using this alternative methodology are generally not supportive of the inverse rank-ethical beliefs phenomenon. We also use a multivariate analysis in order to control for demographic characteristics. Our results suggest that the most robust predictor of ethical attitudes among accounting practitioners is age, not rank within a firm

Income, Environmental Disamenity, and Toxic Releases

The literature argues that income growth leads to increased demand for environmental quality and thus reduction in pollution. Using a utility theoretic model, we hypothesize that the income--pollution relationship should depend on the level of disamenity of the pollutant. We proxy for disamenity using the toxicity of releases. For counties in the United States, the functional relationship between income and releases depends on the level of disamenity: the form is more concave for more toxic releases. We find that environmental improvements occur at lower levels of per capita income for more toxic pollutants. (JEL Q25, Q28, O13) Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.