Daniel Hamermesh is the Edward Everett Hale Centennial Professor of Economics at the University of Texas -- Austin. The author of more than 70 scholarly articles, he is best known for his work in labor economics. His labor economics text, The Economics of Work and Pay, has been through various editions since 1984. His most recent book, Economics Is Everywhere (McGraw-Hill, 2nd edition, 2006), highlights the ubiquity of economics in everyday life and shows how the simple tools of a microeconomics principles class can be used to illustrate this point. A Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Fellow of the Econometric Society, he previously taught at Princeton and Michigan State and has presented lectures in more than 20 countries. Past President of the Society of Labor Economists and of the Midwest Economics Association, he received his B.A. from the University of Chicago (1965) and his Ph.D. from Yale (1969).
Professor Hamermesh has an uncanny ability to communicate economics in an interesting and understandable manner. He also has a missionary attitude about teaching. He believes that it is vitally important that students leave the university understanding markets and the role of incentives. Even though he is one of the leading research scholars in America, he highlights the importance of teaching in the following manner:
The ideas and, more important, methods of thinking planted in the heads of one of the 17,000 principles students I have taught will, I am absolutely convinced, have a more durable impact than any of the articles or books that I have written. Indeed, other than the legacy of our two sons and five grandchildren, this is the most important thing I have done.
Interview with Daneil Hamermesh
» You have been a successful teacher of introductory economics for many years. Has your teaching style changed through the years?
When I started teaching introductory micro in 1968 I tended to "go by the book." I followed the text very closely and worked out numerical examples. Even in my first big class, at Princeton in 1973, I was much more technical than I am now. I discovered that even Princeton freshmen could not comprehend constrained maximization (graphically), so over the years I dropped the teaching of any tool that would not subsequently be used in the introductory class. Through the years, I have incorporated more and more examples from newspapers, everyday life, and my personal life, so that now my class typically proceeds with an explanation of the idea (often graphically), then numerous illustrations of its applicability. These are designed to stimulate the students to cook up examples that are relevant to them and show that they can use the concepts I am teaching.
» Who has had the biggest influence on your teaching?
That is very hard to say. I never had a principles course as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, instead starting in as a 17-year-old freshman being assigned 100 pages of George Stigler's Theory of Price in intermediate micro for the first week! So my role models came from upper-division courses, particularly from labor economics. An important role model was H. Gregg Lewis. I enjoyed watching him teach, seeing his enthusiasm for the subject, and his ability to convey that enthusiasm. The teaching by Al Rees, who made it clear that economics is, to a large part, story-telling about the real world, was also influential. These are, not coincidentally, the same people who became role models for the research part of my professional life.
» Sometimes unexpected things happen in the classroom. What are your two or three most memorable classroom experiences?
One of the most amusing things happened in introductory macro, where I tried to convey a lot of the ideas by using the equation of exchange, MV=PT. On the last day of class, while I was summarizing, three masked students came from the side door onto the stage, turned around, dropped their pants, and "mooned" the classroom with M V = P T crayoned across their respective six buttocks. My students were convinced I had paid the "moon squad" to do this--it is the kind of unusual thing I do--but I hadn't. Interestingly, two years later I was walking across campus and a student said hello, that he had been in that class and had taken a photo of the incident. He sent it to me, and I then sent it to Milton Friedman, my former undergraduate teacher, with a note telling him that monetarism was alive and well in East Lansing. He wrote back an amused "Wonderful!"
Sad things happen too. I give a short policy lecture on the economics of health, talking about the potential costs of insuring the care even of catastrophic illnesses. Suddenly a young woman in the front row began sobbing loudly. I had to stop the class and comfort her. She later explained that her mother had recently been diagnosed with a serious cancer and that my lecture made her think about this. There was no pedagogical value in my stopping the class; but at least the students might have concluded that it is important to behave decently with each other.
» What should we be doing in the introductory course at the college level? What are the most important things we should try to get across to students?
We need to get across the idea that economics is useful and that it provides a way to understand the real world. That is why I have collected the anecdotes and stories I use in my little book, Economics Is Everywhere, McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2nd edition (available April 2005), so others can use these stories. Students need to learn that this is not a matter of equations and graphs, but a way to make sense out of things around them. We should not be preparing students to major in economics, but to deal with economic issues in public life and daily life. Perhaps the most important of these is the role of incentives, prices, and scarcity in affecting behavior. If students really understand that idea when they leave my class, they are way ahead of most of their fellow citizens and, sadly, of the majority of politicians.
» A number of instructors either use your Economics is Everywhere or draw from the numerous examples provided there. How do you use the book and what are two or three of your favorite stories or examples from the book?
I assign each chapter in sequence throughout the intro micro course, and I occasionally discuss some of the examples in my lectures (although I try to cook up new ones to keep the students on their toes). Also, the Supplemental Instructors (advanced undergrads who lead discussion sections) are told to include one or two examples each week in their sessions. The 400 vignettes in the book are all my children--I love them all, so it's hard to pick a few special ones. Perhaps the story illustrating elasticity by the Cookie Monster (for whom the price elasticity of demand for cookies is –1, and the income elasticity is +1) is a favorite. So too, the illustration using my wife and me moving and preparing fencing for pick-up by the trash collectors (since all the tasks depended on strength, I probably had an absolute advantage at all, but she completed the tasks at which she had a comparative advantage) is one of the better ones.
» What are one or two of your favorite topics that you look forward to covering in your class? Why are they favorites?
Strategy and game theory are way up there. The idea of strategic interactions is ubiquitous in students' lives and formalizing it with them allows for a lot of participatory demonstrations involving groups of students. Another favorite topic is externalities which for me is probably the easiest topic to get students to understand, since it, too, pervades their daily lives. Here too, participation is important. I ask students to give examples, and in many cases I use those examples the next time I teach. I learn from the students' experiences. These two are at the top of my list because of the importance of both ideas and the fun that I can have explaining and illustrating them.
» What are some of your favorite activities or stories that you use to get concepts across to students?
I introduce the idea of diminishing marginal productivity of a variable input by asking 1 student to come to the board and write "Hook 'em Horns" as many times as possible in 1 minute with 1 piece of chalk in a fixed space. I then ask 2 students to do the same (only the number of students increases), then 4 students, then 8 students. I always find that the marginal product is lower going from 4 to 8 than from 2 to 4.
A new example that I will use next year came from a student this year. When I asked about externality examples, she raised her hand diffidently and described a negative externality: Her roommate's boyfriend is really ugly, and the roommate has a large picture of him on the wall above her bed, a picture that my student must view many times a day. After the laughter died down I asked her why, if the boyfriend is so ugly, her roommate goes out with him. My student answered, "Because he goes to Harvard," a response that illustrated the role of human capital, which I had covered earlier in the course. A two-for-one example!
» If there were just one or two things that you want your students to remember about economics five or ten years after taking your course, what would they be?
The idea of opportunity cost would top the list. The phrase "no free lunch" is completely trite these days, but that doesn't make it any less important. Because it is so important I bring in examples throughout the term, even though I teach the concept on the second day of class. The second would be the importance of prices affecting behavior--quantities supplied and demanded do respond.
» What are some of the things you do in an effort to get these important points across to students?
I go through many examples of opportunity cost in class, but perhaps the one that provides the best insight describes the archetypal student, who either studies or socializes. Even though dollar prices aren't involved, students realize very quickly from the discussion that if they study more, there is less time for socializing, so that studying has an implicit price. For the idea of supply and demand responding, I again go through many examples/illustrations. One of my newer gimmicks is the old song, "Surf City," with lyrics, "Goin' to Surf City, gonna have some fun, two girls for every boy..." The singers (boys) are responding to the price (the relative shortage of boys, relative surplus of girls) in Surf City, so the supply of boys there is going to increase. (This also illustrates how equilibration occurs.)
» What do you think is the biggest misconception beginning students and others have about economics? Are there points that you figure students do not understand that you take extra care to explain carefully?
Students often enter the course believing that they will learn about the stock market and/or how to get rich. I quickly disabuse them of the notion—this is not a course in finance, and economists are no better at getting rich than anyone else. They also occasionally enter the course believing the material will be dry and useless, that economics is something they have to take to get into the business school. (Many of my students are "business school wannabes.") While everybody understands scarcity in the abstract, they have trouble applying it in their own lives. I repeatedly bring up scarcity examples, and I motivate a lot of the discussion by references to the ultimately scarce resource, their own time.
» Beginning with Adam Smith, economics has focused on how and why people prosper. How do you discuss this topic with your students?
This is more of a macro topic, less relevant for micro. Yet I do cover it, perhaps tangentially, when I discuss the role of human capital in generating income and income inequality. This discussion, because it explicitly considers these issues in both the U.S. and other countries, might help them realize some of the sources of our prosperity.
» America is a prosperous nation. Do you think your students have any clue about why Americans have such high-income levels? Do they care about this topic?
My intro students are, on average, from the upper middle class, a fact that I demonstrate by conducting a survey of their parents' incomes each year and graphing the income distribution (skewed with a long right tail, median far above the national median). So my goal is at least to get them to realize how well off they are compared to others and to link their parents' well-being to its causes--their education and experience.
» Have changes in technology influenced your teaching? If so, how?
In my first intro course I used chalk and a board. By the mid-1970s, I had switched to writing on a roll of plastic displayed using an overhead projector in a big class. UT is one of the most high-tech schools I know. I now have a document camera on which I write and occasionally display a news story, a table, or whatever. That is shown on two of the three giant screens in front of the auditorium. On the third screen I display throughout the lecture a set of "Main Points" that are also posted on my course website. The website has a variety of other things, including several readings and the semester's new examples ("Economic Thoughts of the Day" to which I add new entries at least several times a week). I also use the website to post the answers to the weekly 6-question quizzes as soon as I return to my office after the quiz.
» Quality teaching often goes un-rewarded at many colleges and universities. What advice would you give to a young assistant professor just beginning his or her professional career?
The advice is simple: Do a good enough job so that your teaching is not in the bottom quartile of teaching in your department. An increasing number of schools want at least their junior faculty to be active in research. Since I believe that the marginal productivity of effort diminishes more rapidly in teaching than in research, a junior person can reach his/her satisfactory level of teaching and still leave much time for the research that is most important in acquiring tenure. A junior person can meet classes, hold office hours, and prepare sufficiently; but he/she should not let teaching be the residual activity when nothing else is in mind. It is the foremost activity, but it should not be allowed to crowd out research. I've tried to keep this in mind throughout my career by calling my research "work" (work being something I value) and calling my teaching "my job," something I have to do. This doesn't devalue teaching in my mind; rather, it reminds me of what the priorities are in my institution.
» Does one have to be a good researcher in order to be a good teacher?
Of course there is a trade-off, due to the scarcity of time for any individual. But I have found that the better teachers tend also to be the better researchers. Some people are energetic, smart, and organized, all of which are characteristics that feed into being more productive as a researcher and better in the classroom. I believe there is a causal relation from research to teaching, even in teaching introductory micro. One can profitably bring a few current research topics, even one's own research, into the classroom. (For example, I center much of my lecture on the economics of discrimination around my work on the economics of beauty.) I know that there is a feedback from teaching to research, even from principles classes. One of my recent papers, an economic analysis of the Pharaoh's optimization problem when confronted with Joseph's dream of the seven lean and seven fat years, was directly inspired by using Joseph's prescription as a classroom example to illustrate speculation. One doesn't have to be a good researcher to be a good teacher; but I believe it helps.
» Suppose one wanted to become a great teacher. What advice would you give to a young person on how to achieve this objective?
I think the biggest secret in teaching, or in lecturing, is to pay attention to the class/audience's reaction. Are you losing them because they don't understand what you are saying? Are you losing them because you are oversimplifying? Answering these questions can only be done by observing reactions. Asking "Do you understand?" is disastrous. Also important is preparation, but not over-preparation. Over the years I rely less and less on detailed notes and increasingly more on a one-page outline of points. This means that one should be able to react well on one's feet--to switch gears in response to a question or point. Finally, it is crucial to give students the impression that you care about their learning because you believe that the subject and the topics you are handling are important.
» What do you consider to be your greatest teaching success? Your greatest failure?
My greatest success is clearly the method of teaching introductory micro that I have developed--the progression from theoretical point to specific examples, with the goal being inducing the student to link the theoretical point to his or her own experiences. This approach, which has developed over the past 35 years, is partly unique to me; but I believe it is replicable mutatis mutandis.
My biggest failure was in teaching introductory macro. While teaching national income accounting and measurement issues generally was great fun and, I believe, useful to students, teaching income determination was increasingly a disaster. No matter what approach I used I felt that the material could not be explained satisfactorily at the principles level. My lecturing failed what I call the "truth in teaching" criterion--I just could not lecture on this stuff with a straight face. (Teaching intermediate macro is a different story--at that level one can explain things in a consistent fashion.) That's why I stopped teaching introductory macro after 1992.
» If you could choose only one course to teach, what would it be and how would you structure it?
That's easy--it would be introductory micro. In fact, I intend to begin a phased retirement in 2010, during which time I will only teach at Texas for one semester, doing a large section of intro micro and perhaps also a small upper-division course. Revealed preference, at least about my plans, thus suggests that this is the one course. And I would structure it just as now--teaching only tools that are used to get across substantive ideas; teaching by going from idea to example; and involving the students with as many examples of their own as possible. I think my model of teaching "works," and I can’t see any point in fixing it if it isn't broken.
» What do you want your teaching epitaph to say?
His enthusiasm enlightened his students.
