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Showing posts with the label pedagogy

Decision Making as Output and Bounded Rationality

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  The classical economics theories proceed on the assumption of rational agents. Rationality implies the economic agents undertake actions or exercise choices based on the cost-benefit analysis they undertake. The assumption further posits that there exists no information asymmetry and thus the agent is aware of all the costs and benefits associated with the choice he or she has exercised. The behavioral school contested the decision stating the decisions in practice are often irrational. Implied there is a continuous departure from rationality. Rationality in the views of the behavioral school is more an exception to the norm rather a rule. The past posts have discussed the limitations of this view by the behavioral school. Economics has often posited rationality in the context in which the choices are exercised rather than theoretical abstract view of rational action. Rational action in theory seems to be grounded in zero restraint situation yet in practice, there are numerous restra
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A Course in the Digital Economy

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  It would be an understatement to talk that the world is very different than it was let us say twenty years ago. When the new century dawned, there were number of things that one could not have imagined would exist barely twenty years later. In 2000, the Google was not yet born. While the www was in its infancy about to slowly evolve into an adult, it was very different. The connections were very slow and the internet penetration was minimal. The emails were making an appearance. It would not be unusual to find in those days many creating their first email ids during their post graduation days. Those were the days when the teachers of information technology would offer assignments on basic MS-Word, which perhaps is now taught to kids in the primary school. People were barely exposed to MS-office or its numerous facets. There was hardly anything called a smart phone. The internet enabled phones could perhaps be counted in a hand. Yet twenty years down the line the world has changed. It
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Teaching Economics: Some Observations

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  Economics is something very interesting yet at the same time sounds drab and abstract. Perhaps this has to do with the way economics evolved. From the beginning, there seems to be something disconnected between economics theory and its applications. While Adam Smith built up his foundations of economics through the learnings he inculcated in his decades long observation of human life and behaviour, yet with passage of time, economics moved away from reality into a world of geometry and algebra and what not. Mathematical formulations intensified dragging economics away from reality. It might be a case of prisoner’s dilemma wherein the world was away with collectively being worse off because the objective seemed to be individually getting better off relative to others. The zero sum games turned economics into something dull and drab with no connection to reality. It naturally spilled over to economics teaching. Text books barring some exceptions focused on theory rather than the eviden
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The Decline of B-School Summers

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To a student of management, corporate internship or summers as is popularly known is an unforgettable moment. The roots can be traced to the early days of management teaching in the US and other Western countries. When a course was introduced on Masters in Business Administration or MBA in popular lingo, it was perceived to be course with practical hands on knowledge to complement the theoretical aspects taught in the class. In fact case study method of teaching, a derivative from the law school, was developed and fostered to build better models and pedagogy to teach the concepts of business decision making. A student would be taught basis foundation skill sets and concepts of business management in the first year. There was to be time for reflection before the student moved on   to the second year. Instead of holidays between the first and second year of course study, the business school culture developed the concept of summer internship. The students were expected to land up a
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B-School Survival Dilemma

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B-Schools mushrooming all over the place have created their own set of problems. While normally B-Schools entrepreneurs attribute to market conditions for their plight, I argue that it might not be the case. Blaming the market is simplistic and to a good extents the entrepreneurs have to the share of their blame. More on this here
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