Making Economics Exciting by Constructing a Quasi-Debate: The Samuelson-Minasian Controversy

In sport, hearing a football result on the radio is much less exciting than see ing the game. In politics, a debate is more thrilling than a speech. In economics, however, it is hard for students to follow original debates. Articles and comments in high-quality economic journals are written for specialized colleagues, not for students (at least not for under graduates). When they read such papers without any guidance, students feel as if they are reading an unknown langua ge. Fortunately, suitable textbooks are available in many cases. Nevertheless, it is sometimes worth trying to g ive a more authentic impression of the original debates.1 The following approach was developed for an introductory course in public economics and regulation, in which students already had some basic knowledge of microeconomic s. The debate between Samuelson and Minasian focused on a pseudo-dialogue that was distributed to the students. Samuelson is especially sharp tongued, which aroused the students’interest. The sheet distributed to the students is r eproduced in the next section. It is follo wed by three simple figures used to clarify the issue .