W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

The Norton Economics Speakers Series

Engage with top economists, researchers, and teachers—including Norton's award-winning authors—for thought provoking talks and student lectures throughout the academic year.

Featured Events

ATTEND LIVE
“Entrepreneurial Strategy and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems”

Hosted by Scott Stern (MIT) and Erin Scott (MIT)

Wednesday, March 13th at 2 PM ET

This webinar introduces a choice-oriented approach to entrepreneurship and a framework for mapping how entrepreneurs can effectively leverage their entrepreneurial ecosystem. Founders exploring an idea face many alternatives that cannot be pursued at once, and so must make choices – about their beachhead customer, which technologies to pursue, their founding team, and their path to market. Citing research from their university and beyond, Erin Scott and Scott Stern will present a practical and grounded tool for navigating these decisions – the Entrepreneurial Strategy compass. This tool allows founders to choose an entrepreneurial strategy and also to identify how their choice of strategy shapes what ecosystem resources to prioritize.

WATCH ON DEMAND
“The Past and Future of Economic Growth: Ideas and New Thoughts on Teaching the Romer Model”

Chad Jones, Stanford University

The date of this workshop has passed

The nonrivalry of ideas gives rise to increasing returns--a fact celebrated in Paul Romer's recent Nobel Prize. One implication is that the long-run rate of economic growth is the product of the degree of increasing returns and the growth rate of research effort; this is the essence of semi-endogenous growth theory.

One of the key revisions for the 6th edition of Chad Jones' Macroeconomics is an updated Romer model that captures this insight. In this talk, Jones explores the motivations behind the updates to his textbook, and applies his framework to the past and future of economic growth.

WATCH ON DEMAND
“Teaching the New Monetary Policy Tools”

Hosted by Lee Coppock

The date of this workshop has passed

Lee Coppock, Co-Author of Principles of Economics, 4th Edition, will presents his approach to teaching the Fed's new monetary policy tools.

WATCH ON DEMAND
“Digital Resources Webinar: Mateer and Coppock's Principles of Economics, Fourth Edition”

Hosted by Julie Sindel and Meg Leary

The date of this workshop has passed

Two members of the Norton Economics team will walk instructors through how to get started with the assignable, digital resources for Mateer and Coppock's Principles of Economics, Fourth Edition, as well as the Norton Teaching Tools for the text.

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Archived Events

“Chat GPT Has Mastered the Principles of Economics: Now What?” Hosted by Dirk Mateer and Wayne Geerling, April 2023

Using the research explored in their Norton Learning Blog post and their recent paper in SSRN, Dirk Mateer and Wayne Geerling will discuss the unique challenges posed by artificial intelligence and natural language processing models in the economics classroom. Informed by their decades of teaching the principles course, Dirk and Wayne will present ideas for adapting both instruction and assessments in ways that circumvent the tempting (but potentially harmful) shortcuts offered to students by AI.

“Does Cryptocurrency Have a Future?” Hosted by Connel Fullenkamp, February 2023

Cryptocurrencies had an awful year in 2022, and their future doesn't look very bright. Prices crashed because of huge, unanticipated disasters such as the Terra collapse and the FTX bankruptcy, and these events also crushed many people's confidence in both crypto assets and decentralized finance. In addition, regulators around the globe are cracking down on cryptocurrencies and scrambling to keep them out of the mainstream financial system.
In this talk, Professor Fullenkamp breaks down the main problems in the crypto ecosystem using fundamental concepts from economics and finance and describes how cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance will have to evolve in order to survive.

“Using Economics to Save the World: A Former White House Economist on Why It Is Time to be Optimistic about Climate Change” Hosted by Benjamin Ho, April 2022

Many students are perplexed to see an environmental economics class in their course catalog, often saying, “Don’t economists only care about money? What could they possibly say about the environment?”. In fact, economics can say quite a lot—economics is all about balancing tradeoffs. For a question like what to do about climate change (where there are no easy answers), economics provides a framework for answering them.

“If Economics is So Important, Why Are So Few People Listening?” Hosted by Charles Wheelan, March 2022

To a shocking degree, much of our public policy discourse neglects the most basic concepts in economics. For example, the public reaction to COVID-19 has been devoid of explicit discussion of the fundamental idea underlying economics: tradeoffs. Our tax code bears little resemblance to what basic public finance would suggest. The world is moving away from the free flow of goods, services, and labor (which, beginning around 1990, delivered the sharpest drop in global poverty in the history of human civilization). A generation of young people is advocating for "socialism" without much sense of what that term means and with little appreciation of the benefit of markets.

“Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” Hosted by Charles Jones, March 2022

In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. This talk presents a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply. Across a broad range of case studies at various levels of (dis)aggregation, Charles Jones will discuss how ideas—and in particular the exponential growth they imply—are getting harder and harder to find. Exponential growth results from the large increases in research effort that offset its declining productivity.

"Economic Growth" Hosted by Lee Coppock, March 2021

Join Professor Lee Coppock (University of Virginia), coauthor of Principles of Macroeconomics, Third Edition, COVID-19 Update, for a lecture on economic growth, which will cover concepts from Chapter 11: Economic Growth and the Wealth of Nations.

"Externalities and Public Goods" Hosted by Brian O'Roark, March 2021

Join Professor Brian O'Roark (Roger Morris University), coauthor of Essentials of Economics, Second Edition, for a lecture on externalities and public goods, which will cover concepts from Chapter 10: Government in the Economy.

"Business Costs and Production" Hosted by Dirk Mateer, March 2021

Join Professor Dirk Mateer (University of Texas at Austin), coauthor of Principles of Microeconomics, Third Edition, COVID-19 Update, for a lecture on business costs and production, which will cover concepts from Chapter 8: Business Costs and Production.

"Chat GPT Has Mastered the Principles of Economics: Now What?" Hosted by Dirk Mateer and Wayne Geerling, April 2023

Using the research explored in their Norton Learning Blog post and their recent paper in SSRN, Dirk Mateer and Wayne Geerling will discuss the unique challenges posed by artificial intelligence and natural language processing models in the economics classroom. Informed by their decades of teaching the principles course, Dirk and Wayne will present ideas for adapting both instruction and assessments in ways that circumvent the tempting (but potentially harmful) shortcuts offered to students by AI.

"Lee Coppock on Teaching the New Monetary Policy Tools" Hosted by Lee Coppock, November 2022

Lee Coppock (University of Virginia) discusses current monetary policy teaching. With all the recent changes in monetary policy, many instructors are curious about the best material to teach and how to relate the new tools to traditional monetary policy. Lee will share his approach which he has used in class since 2020.

"Why Does Choice Matter in Entrepreneurship?" Hosted by Erin Scott and Scott Stern, October 2022

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? Why do some fail while others succeed? Using two decades of award-winning research, working with hundreds of start-ups, and with more than a decade of classroom experience with potential entrepreneurs of all types, we have come to see the importance of choice in being an entrepreneur. This has led us to create and now use a new framework for success in the field, one that synthesizes, reconceptualizes and reorients practical and academic insights to teach the important choices facing new entrepreneurs. In our talk, we will discuss lessons we have learned from entrepreneurs like Melanie Perkins, Walt Disney, Lonnie Johnson, and Jeff Bezos. We will also introduce new tools and techniques, including tools for decision-making (Test Two Choose One) and a novel start-up strategy template (The Entrepreneurial Strategy Compass).

"Dirk Mateer on Adapting to Today's Challenges in the Principles Course" Hosted by Dirk Mateer, October 2022

Dirk Mateer (University of Texas at Austin) discusses the current state of economics teaching in this practical and interactive workshop. Find out how Dirk has adapted his Principles course including both low- and high-tech strategies. Dirk will feature stories with images, Kahoot!, and collaborative learning exercises to keep his course relatable.

"Teaching COVID-19 in Your Economics Course" Hosted by Dirk Mateer and Lee Coppock, December 2020

Join Dirk Mateer and Lee Coppock, coauthors of Principles of Economics, Third Edition, COVID-19 Update, for a virtual workshop to learn how you can incorporate the economic changes brought on by the pandemic into your Spring principles course. Dirk and Lee will guide you through a number of modules they created to help instructors plug pandemic content directly into their presentations.

"How I Learned to Love Teaching Online" Hosted by Hosted by Brian O'Roark, October 2020

Brian O'Roark, coauthor of Essentials of Economics, Second Edition, shares how he learned to love teaching online and tips for how you can too. In this workshop, Brian will cover topics including online course design; keeping students engaged and the incentive of assessment; stay engaged yourself; let your students see you in action; how to use music, movies and more; and taking it online with the ultimate Interactive Instructor's Guide.

"Teaching Economics Online: An Interactive Workshop" Hosted by Diana Bajrami, July 2020

Diana Bajrami will demonstrate the effective integration of learning resources into learning management system (LMS) step-by-step to create seamless and intuitive course navigation as well as accessible course content. She will also share her experiences using InQuizitive and Smartwork in her principles of economics courses as robust formative and summative assessments, which both safeguard academic integrity and promote diversity in the field of economics.

"Teaching Remotely Effectively" Hosted by Diana Bajrami, April 2020

Diana Bajrami, professor of economics at the College of Alameda, brings her tips and expertise from years of teaching both face-to-face and online in this practical and informative workshop.

"Office Hour: Current and Future Engagement Techniques for Your Econ Courses" Hosted by Dirk Mateer, April 2020

Professor Dirk Mateer (University of Texas at Austin) discusses the current state of economics teaching in this practical and applied workshop. Find out how Dirk has adapted his principles course using both low- and high-tech strategies.

"Teaching Economics Online Effectively" Hosted by Diana Bajrami, June 2020

In this online workshop, Diana Bajrami, professor of economics at the College of Alameda, will draw from her experiences teaching online economics courses to discuss best practices for keeping students engaged by using innovative course design that scales up equitable student success.

"Norton Economics—Transitioning to Online Teaching" Hosted by Brian O'Roark, March 2020

Norton's online tools provide two ways to engage your students in economics. InQuizitive provides students the opportunity to build knowledge and self-study in a formative, adaptive gamelike environment, and Smartwork online homework provides critical practice in solving the types of economic problems students need to answer on exams.

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Copyright © W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2022

Image Credits: (Line and Dots) iStockPhoto.com/Ani_Ka; (Scott Photo) Photo by Darren Pellegrino; (Ho Photo) Karl Rabe / Vassar College; (Stern Photo) Scott Stern; (O'Roark) Jeffry Konczal Photography; (Coppock) Kara Coppock; (Mateer) Kara Coppock.