California Vacation/ Ski Lift

p. 276-278

Barro took his family to Disneyland in California. The economic problem that he came home with was, why did the park have such long lines for rides? To Barro it was obvious, market failure caused the long lines at the theme park. He concluded that if Disney raised their prices, they would do better as a supplier. Barro and Romer were avid skiers and compared this to the lines to get on the ski lifts. They concluded that maybe the operators should charge to ride the life to solve the problem of free use for a scarce resource. They concluded that they were looking at the wrong aspect of it. They needed to look at the price per ride, instead of the daily lift ticket.

Augmented Solow Model

p. 318-321

With the new developments of adding on human capital onto the Solow growth model by Mankiw, Romer, and Weil, everyone thought that all observations of the differences of the wealth of nations had been accounted for. Many thought that convergence truly was important to the steady state after all. Alwyn Young discusses the different approaches of the island states of Hong Kong and Singapore. Instead of having a more laissez-faire attitude like Hong Kong, Singapore picked favorites among industries, thus stunting their economic growth even though the were spending double of their annual GDP compared to Hong Kong.

The Open Source Movement

p. 363-365

A new threat out side the legal system emerged against the company of Microsoft. It was an operating system known as Linux. What separated this system from any other operation system is the ability it has to change. It was the start of an open-source software movement that helped Linus Torvalds create a system that could be freely modified an thus become more robust as time went on. Very much an anti-Bill Gates ideal ( Gates wanting a Windows system code that could not be cloned or modified).

Ch 27. Pages 392 - 395.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when the sun shines down and bestows a blessing of good fortune. For some, it comes in the form of health, fortune, or fame. For me, it was writing the last blog post of the semester.

My hands sweat as the pressure mounts to write the final conclusion, a summary of all that we have learned. I am nervous that the dew of my fingertips may some how destroy my keyboard, or give me some sort of shock. As if that wasn’t enough, I am nervous I’ll write something stupid that shows that I don’t know what I am talking about. What if something just slips out and I write something that I don’t really mean, like “Romer is an idiot and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Could all my blog posts be re-graded as D’s?

Maybe it’s because I have that summer fever, but I just want to be done. I want to say “the end” and call that a conclusion to it all. I just feel my last section was a little anti-climatic for the last post - a little boring. There’s no exciting Hollywood ending, more of an unfinished story, one that is still to be written (which could include any of us). So here is the summary for the section:

- Romer has a plan for Aplia

- Aplia was another major gamble of Romer

- He took a two-year leave of absence from Stanford.

- As with most things, Romer was also a good business man

- Romer went into a “near-total stealth” as he built his platform and business

- With Aplia, Romer was creating a system to corner this whole textbook/student segment. Giving a nonexclusive license to publishers, more information to students and a more convenient way to teach, Romer would get $30 from every Econ student. His own piece of a $3.9 billion a year business.

While I’ve learned some things I will soon forget, there are many things that I won’t; especially that we study and learn these things to not only better our lives, but for all of those around us. To make the world a better place.

Chapter 27 Pages 390-392

During his time as governor of Colorado and in his work after, Paul's dad Roy Romer focused on education policy. Roy chaired the National Education Goals Panel, may have been a candidate for Al Gore's secretary of education had Gore been elected, and sought out the position of superintendent of schools in L.A. Deemed "the Donald Rumsfeld of education," Roy Romer was more interested in doing something than being someone. Weary of publisher's "expensive and uninspiring" texts which were only useful with master artisan teachers, Roy Romer contracted a company to create achievement-based math tests and set about administering the tests every ten weeks. His system was intended to enable teachers to react quickly to students who weren't learning.

Himself somewhat weary of publisher's and their antics, Paul Romer decided to begin his own publishing company to market his online learning creations. So, while his father crusaded for the L.A. school system, Paul began Aplia with a $11.2 million commitment from Swedish venture capitalists.

pg. 386-388

In the 1990’s there was a publishing battle between Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman on who was to be the leader of the new intermediate textbook in economics. The goal was “to integrate the insights of both New Classical and New Keynesian economics.” Mankiw decided to switch things up by publishing a book that began with the growth theory and making his text book significantly shorter than his predecessors. He also decided against using his former publisher and instead, put the book up for auction. It was bought by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for $1.4 million dollars, making Mankiw the leader in economic textbooks. Everyone was expecting Paul Krugman to overtake him, but because of a move back to MIT and a new job as a columnist at The New York Times, his textbook publication was put on hold. In 2005 he was finally able to publish his book.

Pg. 388-390

In 1996, Romer encountered a new problem in behavioral economics. Romer struggled to get his M.B.A. students at Stanford to keep up with the material in his macroeconomics classes. He made this discovery by "cold-calling" in class, and decided that his students were in need of a coach, or a person who knew "wanted them to succeed" and knew various shortcuts of the game. School is a lot like a sport in that the student gets as much out of their education as they put into it. Romer was able to improve class grades and participation by assigning more homework, before class, that would be graded via a server online, and by giving more quizzes. He also used current invents in the classes problem sets. Afterwards, students were more confident, better prepared , and learning more while other business professors soon began requesting to use his teaching tools.