Thinking like economists
What effect do low-cost airlines have on airfares overall? Do alcohol taxes reduce drunk-driving fatalities? Under what circumstances do food vendors rip off tourists in Manhattan? Studying such economics problems is usually the province of professors or PhD students. But one Department of Economics course at MIT, 14.33, lets undergraduates spend a semester researching these kinds of issues, with the larger aim of getting them to hone their analytical skills. In the course, students — mostly MIT seniors — produce papers aiming to identify the most likely explanation for a particular phenomenon, rule out plausible-seeming but ultimately incidental causes, and assess the limits of their knowledge in a complex world. “I try to get students to be skeptical,” says James Feyrer, who taught the class in fall 2010 as an MIT visiting professor from Dartmouth. The right explanation for an economic phenomenon, he notes, may not always match received wisdom....