The impact of analyzing economic events on the learning of undergraduate economic theory

We look at the effect of having students read and respond to articles regarding economic events on the learning of economic theory in both Intermediate Microeconomics and Intermediate Macroeconomics. Having students apply theoretical material to real world situations has spillover effects into the learning of theoretical material itself. By assigning articles and measuring performance on midterm exams in four intermediate theory courses during the 2007-2008 academic year, we find that each additional article a student completed resulted in an improvement of approximately two and one-half to three percentage points on that exam. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.