From Maria Alejandra Madi This post was written by Carmelo Ferlito. He is a senior fellow at the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) I taught economics in Malaysia for seven years. My students were mainly second and third year university students who attended my economics classes (microeconomic theory and policy and history of economic thought) after having already learnt the basic notions of macro and microeconomics. Most of my students were double majoring in economics and finance. My impression is that, in general, they could see the relevance of finance in their daily lives (it can help in making or saving money) while they struggled to get enthusiastic about economics, which instead was perceived as a set of abstract graphs and formulas, somehow alien from real
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from Maria Alejandra Madi
This post was written by Carmelo Ferlito. He is a senior fellow at the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS)
I taught economics in Malaysia for seven years. My students were mainly second and third year university students who attended my economics classes (microeconomic theory and policy and history of economic thought) after having already learnt the basic notions of macro and microeconomics.
Most of my students were double majoring in economics and finance. My impression is that, in general, they could see the relevance of finance in their daily lives (it can help in making or saving money) while they struggled to get enthusiastic about economics, which instead was perceived as a set of abstract graphs and formulas, somehow alien from real people’s lives.
Students’ cold relationship with the subject goes hand in hand with the growing disillusionment with the discipline that followed the global financial crisis in 2007 and the apparent inability of economists to see it coming and to deal with it afterwards. read more