Since arriving at Dartmouth in 1994, I have taught an advanced, undergraduate finance course, Economics 36, Theory of Finance. The most recent syllabus is from Fall 2024.
While directing the Rockefeller Center, I developed a course in Social Entrepreneurship. The course is cross-listed as Economics 77 and Public Policy 43, and the syllabus from Fall 2021 is here. I started teaching this course in Summer 2014, about 2 years after hearing a presentation on human centered design by Professor Peter Robbie of the Thayer School. I realized that what engineers at Stanford's d.school were doing to design solutions to social problems in developing areas where traditional public sector institutions were absent was relevant to domestic public policy challenges. Specifically, the ongoing decline in the quality of our public sector institutions will require decentralized, innovative approaches if we are to make progress against social problems in the future. A more detailed description of the course, presented at the 2021 AEA meetings and published in a symposium for the Journal of Economic Education in 2022 is available here. I welcome your ideas on Social Entrepreneurship and how to better support students in this field.
I have also taught two other courses at Dartmouth. For the Public Policy minor, I developed Public Policy 48, Policy Analysis and Local Governance [Winter 2012]. In my own undergraduate education, I had received not a single prompt in the curriculum to think about the challenges of the place where I grew up. I designed this course to provide that prompt for my students and to have them think about the wide variation in economic outcomes across geographies in close proximity.
In the Economics department, the bulk of my teaching prior to leaving for Washington in 2003 was the senior seminar, Economics 46 (now 66), Topics in Money and Finance [Winter 2005]. These seminars are the culminating experience of the Economics major and minor and a great opportunity for students to apply what they have learned in their own original research project. I also taught the initial offering of Economics 81, Advanced Microeconomics [Fall 2000].
Here's a two-minute video excerpt from an interview about my teaching philosophy.