Introducing Feedback Thinking and System Dynamics Modeling in Economics Education

TL;DR

This paper explores integrating feedback thinking and system dynamics modeling into economics education, highlighting benefits, teaching approaches, and future directions.

Contribution

It introduces a course hierarchy and discusses pedagogical tradeoffs for incorporating system dynamics into economics curricula.

Findings

A pricing feedback model demonstrates educational benefits.

Different teaching approaches depend on student background and objectives.

Authors share experiences and suggest future research directions.

Abstract

System dynamics is a methodology that is widely used in many academic fields. It explains the behavior of social and economic systems with models that capture complex causality and feedback effects. This 'practice paper' discusses the opportunities and barriers for introducing feedback thinking and system dynamics models in the economics curriculum. We start by providing a pricing feedback model that illustrates some of the benefits that system dynamics can provide in enhancing economics education. Then we summarize the experiences of each of the authors in teaching system dynamics on economics educational programs. This includes different approaches to teaching economics with system dynamics that depend on the learning objectives, the preparation of students, and the background of the instructor. We also develop a four-level course hierarchy for using system dynamics in economics teaching. We then point out the tradeoffs that instructors must consider as they introduce new pedagogies for delivering economics material. Finally, we provide some concluding comments with some suggestions for future work. The expected audiences for this paper are instructors as well as graduate students who are considering academia as a profession.