UAA economics professor Paul Johnson wins $20,000 Harold T. Caven Professorship

Dr. Paul Johnson, associate professor of economics and chair of the UAA Department of Economics, was recently awarded with the prestigious University of Alaska Foundation Harold T. Caven Professorship, a $20,000 award to enhance the field of business and finance at the University of Alaska.

Johnson came to UAA's business administration department in 1989 and is now the chair of the economics department. His primary academic focus is macroeconomics-a study of the performance, structure, behavior and decision-making of the whole economy.

He plans to use his award money primarily to hire a programmer to help create a new class of macroeconomics teaching experiments that will utilize the handheld devices most students already bring to class with them.

The first planned experiment will immerse students in a banking system that is vulnerable to a banking panic. These types of experiments integrate the theory and practice of macroeconomics.

"Quite often the theory falls flat on its face when confronted with live people," says Dr. Johnson. "But that's why the experimental method should be explored."

Johnson explains that this award offers the opportunity to develop new pedagogical tools for teaching macroeconomics and the economics of banking systems in a way that no one else has before.

UAA's Dr. Kyle Hampton was the first to start using handhelds for economics experiments, but with microeconomics as the focus. Johnson's project is a part of a broader program in the economics department to make UAA a leader in the field of economics pedagogy at both the K-12 and college levels.

"Up until now, using advanced technology in the classroom required buying expensive equipment, which usually quickly became obsolete," says Johnson. "If instructors can exploit technology that most students bring to class anyway, it will represent a quantum jump in usefulness, since the instructor can focus on being a teacher and not a computer technician. It's very satisfying to integrate teaching with the creation of new experiments in the field."