Teaching
Teaching, textbooks, and pedagogy
Courses taught
PubPol 310 — Understanding Public Policy Using an Economics Framework
An undergraduate introduction to thinking like an economist, aimed at students who want to understand the economic forces shaping the world around them but who only plan to take one semester of economics. The class develops the "supertools" of economic thinking, applies them to see why policymakers don't always get the outcomes they hoped for, and lets students carry that framework into work, home, and community decisions.
PUBPOL 330 — Microeconomics for Public Policy
A core course for Ford School MPP students that develops the ability to use microeconomic analysis to analyze public policy. Major topics: models of consumer and firm behavior, how market systems operate, public goods and externalities, market failure, benefit-cost analysis, and the impacts of government regulation.
PUBPOL 744 — Economics of the Public Sector
A graduate course in public finance — how governments raise and spend public money, and how people respond to tax and spending policy. Examines the economic case for government intervention and its limits, the design of tax systems, and the successes, failures, and compromises inherent in policies on education, healthcare, Social Security, the environment, and taxation.
Textbook and podcast
The Principles of Economics textbook with Justin Wolfers (and the companion Think Like An Economist podcast) is Stevenson's primary contribution to teaching introductory economics. It's available in full-year and split editions, with Australian / New Zealand and Canadian adaptations and translations in Italian and Korean.
See Textbooks → and Podcast →.
Research on teaching
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Sparking Student Curiosity
Journal of Economic Education · 2022
On designing intro economics around student curiosity rather than canonical diagrams.
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Representations of Men and Women in Introductory Economics Textbooks
with Hanna Zlotnik · AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2018
Documents systematic gender biases in how leading principles textbooks depict characters, experts, and roles.
Recent talks on pedagogy
- "Both Governments and Markets Fail: Teaching Economics with Real-World Insights" — EconEd, September 2024.
- "How we can teach students about labor market discrimination" — EconEd, 2022. (Video on the Textbooks page.)
- "New Approaches in Teaching Economics" — Toronto Teaching Summit, March 2023.
- "Generational Change in Teaching Introductory Economics" — CTREE keynote, 2021.
- "Teaching Economics More Inclusively" — Michigan State, November 2022.
- "Gender and Racial Diversity Challenges in Undergraduate Economic Education" — University of Georgia Women in Economics, October 2020.
Honors
- Presidential Award for Public Engagement, University of Michigan, 2023
- Faculty Recognition Award, University of Michigan, 2019