The webpage for my spring, 2010 Graduate Public Choice II course is now up, including the syllabus, complete lecture notes, and homeworks. About half of the material is from my Graduate Public Finance I course; the rest is new. Highlights of the new material include an extra week on voter motivation and religion, personality, and genes; a full week on behavioral political economy; and one week each on dictatorship, constitutions, and anarchy. I’ve also re-done all of my party identification and ideology regressions using the GSS (I used to just use the smaller, more obscure SAEE for the sake of convenience).
By the way, in my entire career, I have never turned away a student from one of my courses. In fact, I’ve never turned away anyone who wanted to attend any of my lectures. The class meets every Thursday from 4:30-7:10, beginning on January 21.
READER COMMENTS
Carl Jakobsson
Nov 18 2009 at 4:33pm
Ah, I would really like to attend this course. Unfortunately, the Atlantic is just too big to cross. Can’t you record your lectures and post them on the web? Please =D
Bean_Counter
Nov 18 2009 at 4:39pm
Agree w/Carl. Don’t turn away folks just because they don’t live in the DC area. Create an MP3 podcast of the lectures. MP3 recording has gotten quite cheap.
Brandon Robison
Nov 18 2009 at 4:48pm
Will you be teaching this class next year as well, or will you be switching back to public finance?
Bean_Counter
Nov 18 2009 at 4:58pm
PS David Friedman is already doing it for some of his courses….
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-virtual-talks.html#links
Bryan Caplan
Nov 18 2009 at 6:17pm
I’ll be teaching this course every spring for the foreseeable future.
I’ll ask my RA about podcasting to see how high the labor cost is…
Scott Wentland
Nov 18 2009 at 7:27pm
I recorded your lectures when I was in Micro II a few years back for my own personal use. The device I used was a generic MP3 player (iRiver or something like that), which was really cheap and easy to use.
Adding MP3 versions of your lectures to your website would not only be beneficial for people in the blogosphere but useful for your students as well. I used it for studying and taking more thorough notes after I got home, but the more obvious use is for the foreign students who may miss some parts of the lecture.
Ryan Vann
Nov 19 2009 at 10:04am
Mark Thoma, over at UOregon, has been pre-recording his lectures for a long time now. As a student living a bit off campus, I thought it was of great value that he did this.
Anyway, I would definitely enjoy attending a lecture from pretty much any of the Economists at GMU.
John Fast
Nov 19 2009 at 3:23pm
Bryan Caplan wrote:
> I’ll be teaching this course every spring
> for the foreseeable future.
What other graduate courses will you be teaching, and when?
> I’ll ask my RA about podcasting
> to see how high the labor cost is.
I’ll bet the labor cost of podcasting is far less than the tuition of the course for one student (~ US$3,000). I’ll wager she’d be happy to do the podcasting for a measly thousand bucks.
Bryan Caplan
Nov 19 2009 at 4:29pm
My other spring course is Ph.D. Micro II.
If a student volunteer will do the legwork, I’m happy to have my lectures recorded. Anyone?
Yusuf Ezzat
Nov 23 2009 at 8:56am
Professor Caplan,
I can volunteer for that position if you’d like.
Comments are closed.