Teaching

My teaching areas, and their levels:

Undergraduate: Over a teaching career spanning almost 40 years I have taught all of the following:

Microeconomics; Macroeconomics; Development Economics; Money & Banking; Labour Economics; also Dissertations in Management and in Economics.

Postgraduate: Development Economics and Labour Economics; also Dissertations in Economics and in Management.

Influences:

I owe so much to so many. But the most profound influences upon me, and from amongst a long list, I have to mention the late Professor Tony Atkinson, and the late Professor Walter Elkan. My list will be incomplete without the inclusion of Dr John Curran, Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Professor Jean Dreze, Professor Mehmet Odekon and Professor Lord Nicholas (Nick) Stern. I need to also mention my students many of whom questioned and challenged my thinking and sometimes my delivery too! I am indebted to all of them.

Teaching Philosophy:

I don't teach anymore as I have retired. When I was active I always insisted on linking theory to practice and promoted an experimental approach to learning; I also aimed to inspire curiosity at every opportunity. I achieved this through increasing learner participation in my delivery; I used examples all the time so as to link my classroom to the real world and vice versa, in other words when teaching the world became my laboratory; I firmly believed - and still do - that learning has to be enjoyable and fun and my delivery aimed to facilitate that.

a) An example of connecting theory to a real event:

A classic piece of research I often used in the classroom was based on the work of Professor Frederick W. Bell. He published a seminal paper in the American Economic Review (back in 1968) outlining the impact on the US fishing industry following on from Pope Paul VI's 1966 decree in which he essentially 'released' Catholics from their abstinence towards red meat consumption on Fridays. His study was focused on parts of New England communities across the eastern seaboard of the United States, where large numbers of Catholics (comprising mostly of Italian and Irish migrants) had settled. The papal decree had the effect of making the already challenging conditions facing the fishing industry much worse.

Undergraduate students see the impact of changing tastes and evolving religious beliefs as elements contributing to shifting demand curves and the consequent implications for supply, and ultimately, people's livelihoods.

Reference:

Bell, F. W. (1968). The Pope and the Price of Fish. The American Economic Review, 58(5), 1346–1350. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1814033

b) An example of using a physical experiment to focus on a basic economic concept:

In early undergraduate economics classes I attempted to link a basic idea from the physical world to a well known principle in my own field. I asked learners to focus on a coin balanced on its side on a flat surface, and thus convey the idea and concept of physical equilibrium. Showing that the coin will remain in situ unless it is disturbed enabled me to explain the concept of ceteris paribus which is a cornerstone of basic economics.

c) An example of using an auctioning system to generate revenue and allocate a scarce resource:

A favourite paper of mine is by Professors William Boyes and Stephen Happel (1989) in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Boyes, whilst he was Dean of ASU's College of Business, conducted a sealed-bid auction amongst his faculty as a way of determining who gets to occupy the best offices in a brand new purpose-built building. The proceeds were used to support student scholarships.

One of the reasons for liking this paper as much as I do is that I see quite a lot of humour in the analysis. Also, the paper reveals quite a lot about how we organise our priorities and offers a variety of perspectives on how academics from different disciplines attempt to solve the same problem. The paper introduces students to some revealing concepts such as the winners' curse and encourages the view that economists are the ultimate problem-solvers!

Reference:

Boyes, W. J., & Happel, S. K. (1989). Auctions as an Allocation Mechanism in Academia: The Case of Faculty Offices. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3(3), 37–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1942758

d) An illustration of Akerlof's concept of a 'lemon':

In early classes for microeconomics I used a variety of examples to demonstrate that faulty manufacturing is actually quite common. As an example, I show two perfectly formed teabags, except that one is completely empty of any tea! George Akerlof's 1970 paper focused on second-hand cars that, despite not being that old, had dropped in value quite a lot shortly after leaving the showroom. This can be explained by linking value to utility theory, suggesting that the drop in value must be linked to the potential buyer's concerns over quality issues. Akerlof explained that most owners of newly purchased new vehicles would not ordinarily want to sell up, and that any decision to do so must be due to the vehicle having left the factory with some major defect. Hence the sharp fall in value of fairly new, but second hand, cars is a reflection of the risks associated with making such a purchase.

Reference:

Akerlof, George A. (1970). The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84(3), 488–500. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879431?

e) Another favourite paper of mine was, and still is, the early 1980s work by Max Corden* and Peter Neary on the so-called 'Dutch disease'. As an aside, I first met Max Corden in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1990s at a World Bank event.

Corden and Neary demonstrate that natural resource wealth can end up being quite detrimental to the economy possessing it. The key argument is that leading sectors will attract resources to themselves and thus deprive other sectors from funding and investment. As such, overall, the economy could suffer. To make matters worse, especially in the context of developing and emerging economies, the leading sector could end up as a significant exporter and thus contribute to both short- and long-term upward adjustments to the exchange rate. If this were to happen the remaining economic sectors will struggle to export.

The term 'Dutch disease' was coined by The Economist magazine in the 1970s. The significance of this term is that the problem described was first observed in the Netherlands following the discovery of natural gas around the town of Groningen in 1959.

* Incidentally, Max Corden died in October 2023, aged 96. I met Max at a World Bank sponsored ABCDE (Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics) conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1995. Max Corden was one of the brightest minds I've met, and also incredibly kind.

Reference:

Corden, W. M., & Neary, J. P. (1982). Booming Sector and De-Industrialisation in a Small Open Economy. The Economic Journal, 92(368), 825–848. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2232670?

I always used examples to help students break down complexity. I also used my passion and energy to inspire students to become independent learners and to enable their sense of curiosity.

My earliest experiences of teaching and beyond:

My very first experience of 'teaching' happened when I was 17 or 18 years old. During one summer break from school I spent about 8 weeks teaching a young boy in my city of birth, Tehran, how to read, write and converse in English. That experience left me with a feeling of immense awe for all the teachers I had encountered up to that stage in my own young life.

Years later I entered my first teaching classroom in the autumn of 1983 at the University of Warwick when I taught a class of 1st year economics students.

Warwick prepared me well for my next set of challenges, at Tulane University (USA), which involved delivering lectures and tutorials to much larger groups of students, with an even more diverse set of interests.

The many years I spent at Richmond University introduced me to the experience of teaching heterogeneous groups of students and international students in particular. Some of my best students used their education at Richmond as a convenient stepping stone to other fantastic opportunities. Interspersed with all this I have also enjoyed successful teaching at Skidmore College (USA) and the University of the West Indies in the Caribbean.