TEACHING TOOLS: SHOULD WE TEACH MICROECONOMIC PRINCIPLES BEFORE MACROECONOMIC PRINCIPLES?

Economics departments offering courses in both microeconomic and macroeconomic principles must make decisions relating to the sequencing of these courses. Although many economists have strong opinions on this subject, no broad consensus exists on the efficacy of teaching one course before the other. While many departments stipulate that one course must (or should) serve as a prerequisite for the other, other departments do not specify an ordering. As well, little research exists on whether student learning is influenced by the order in which micro and macro principles are presented. In this paper we report the current sequencing requirements of 25 top-ranked research universities, 25 top-ranked liberal arts colleges, and 20 comprehensive universities. We also report the current sequencing patterns in 20 principles textbooks. We then empirically address the issue of whether student learning is affected by the ordering of the two-course principles of economics sequence using a new nationwide economic education data base. Specifically, we ask whether students learn more in macroeconomic principles courses if they have already taken a course in micro principles and/or whether they learn more in microeconomic principles courses if they have already taken a course in macro principles. We find that although most of the colleges and universities in our study require microeconomics before macroeconomics when specifying an ordering, most textbooks present macroeconomic topics before microeconomic topics. Our regression results indicate that students score significantly higher on a post test in principles of microeconomics if they have a prior course in principles of macroeconomics. In contrast, students who have a prior course in principles of microeconomics do not score significantly higher on a post test in their macroeconomic principles class. I. BACKGROUND Since student learning of economics is clearly a goal of the principles course, one relevant dimension to the sequencing question is the "intellectual" basis for sequencing decisions provided by learning theory. Saunders [1990, 67-72] has identified four generally accepted propositions of the basic learning process that have implications for learning college economics: (1) students have a limited capacity to process information; (2) prior experiences are important; (3) motivation is important; and (4) visual information dominates verbal information. While propositions 2, 3, and 4 have implications for the micro/macro sequencing decision,(1) the implications are conflicting. That is, these propositions could be interpreted to justify requiring no specific ordering of economic principles, or teaching either macro first or micro first. For example, if micro and macro principles overlap, the "importance of prior experience" suggests that sequencing is irrelevant because students who already know some micro will perform better in macro, and vice versa. However, if macroeconomics creates greater motivation than microeconomics by focusing on current events, proposition 3 implies that macroeconomics should be placed first. Alternatively, if microeconomics includes more visual aids or "pictorial representations" than macroeconomics, student learning may be enhanced by teaching microeconomics first. Thus, learning theory does not appear to provide concrete conclusions about the optimal sequencing of microeconomic and macroeconomic principles, unless unambiguous assumptions can be made about propositions 2, 3, and 4. This comports with Saunders's assessment [1990, 62] that there is no "single, generally accepted theory of learning that can be used as an infallible guide to teaching." The ambiguity in learning theory is probably not a major issue in the sequencing decision since it is probably safe to assume that few economists examine learning theory prior to structuring their classes. Economists may, however, examine the theoretical underpinnings of microeconomics and macroeconomics that have implications for sequencing. …