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The authors describe an undergraduate economics elective focused on the Great Recession and the recession resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. They have taught the course with great success at both liberal arts colleges and research universities and at all levels of the curriculum ranging from a first-year seminar to an upper-level elective. They present a roadmap for instructors interested in offering the class. Although intermediate macroeconomics is assumed as a prerequisite, the authors discuss how they have adapted the class for students with different backgrounds. The course is divided into seven units: the housing bubble and asset pricing, housing policy and history, propagation and panic, monetary policy, fiscal policy, aftermath and international perspectives, and the macroeconomics of COVID-19. Sample assignments and readings are both provided.

From 2012 to 2019, the proportion of undergraduate economics degrees denoted as "Econometrics and Quantitative Economics" (STEM-eligible) conferred annually increased from 1 percent to 22 percent. The authors present results from a survey of the 73 institutions conferring at least one STEM-eligible economics degree in 2017 or 2018. They find that most institutions (59%) offer both traditional and STEM-eligible degrees and report needing departmental, college/university committee, and provost/dean approval to (re-)classify. The main motivation for this change is maintaining consistency with an increasingly quantitative discipline (73%). The significant differences in requirements between STEM-eligible and traditional economics degrees are the proportion requiring single variable calculus (91% vs. 69%), multivariable calculus (70% vs. 31%), linear algebra (48% vs. 21%), basic econometrics (96% vs. 77%), and advanced econometrics (48% vs. 8%).

The authors of this article examine the potential for increased student learning and retention through more frequent assignments. They conduct a field experiment that investigates whether student knowledge retention can be improved by increasing the frequency of homework assignments, motivating students to have more exposure to the material, and reducing the incentives for students to procrastinate. They find that the impact of the treatment on student performance varies based on the student's past academic performance. Students on the lower end of the academic performance distribution benefit from the structure imposed by more frequent assignments and perform better. However, students with high prior academic performance are harmed by the intervention. The final exam scores of high-performing students are lower in courses with higher assignment frequency.

The authors of this article examine trends in the economics discipline regarding the classification of some undergraduate economics majors, i.e., econometrics and quantitative economics degrees, as STEM. According to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the number of institutions conferring undergraduate econometrics and quantitative economics (STEM-eligible) degrees rose from 25 in 2012 to 71 in 2018, with total degrees conferred increasing 12-fold. By 2018, STEM-eligible economics degrees comprised 13.2 percent of all undergraduate economics degrees conferred, up from just 1.2 percent in 2012. This brief note outlines trends in undergraduate economics majors regarding STEM and non-STEM degree distinctions and discusses potential motivations for these changes.

The authors of this article describe an empirical research project as a component of an upper-level undergraduate economics writing-in-the-discipline course, thus aiming to reduce the high fixed costs associated with designing an empirical research project assignment and encourage more undergraduate economics research. This project is central to the course structure and has a dual-purpose: to teach students economics writing conventions and reproducible empirical research methods. The authors present a sequenced project design and replication documentation protocol and posit that this promotes student learning and leads to improvements in organization and coherence throughout the entire research and writing process. As an essential element of the course, students learn to do econometrics through effective writing, data management, and empirical analysis.

The undergraduate economics curricula for most of the 793 U.S. colleges and universities that conferred an economics bachelor's degree in 2019 are described in this article. Besides updating the prevalence of the economics major core requirements and their differences by institution type, the authors record new information on requirement variations across economics degree types, as classified by the National Center for Education Statistics, including STEM-designated degree types. They also investigate the prevalence of calculus-based intermediate courses and find that 63 percent of economics degrees require calculus for intermediate microeconomics and macroeconomics. In addition, 67 percent of degrees require single-variable calculus, 10 percent require multi-variable calculus, and 54 percent require basic econometrics (up from 41% in 2010). These requirements also vary highly by degree type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]