BAI Yanjia (2015)
In the Summer of 2015, Yanjia approached me for the possibility of doing some work with me. Instead of hiring her as my research assistant, I encouraged her to take her Introductory Macroeconomics textbook and develop the figures into interactive ones, using GeoGebra. I promised to guide her.
In less then two months, she created all the graphs -- with only limited guidance from me. I would call it an accomplishment!!
I am sure Yanjia learned a lot from it. Nevertheless, we hope that our work will inspire other teachers and students of Economics to develop and share similar resources. To view and edit the files, you will need to install GeoGebra, available at http://www.geogebra.org/cms/download. Right click to save the files.
---- A Sharing by Yanjia BAI
I am Bai Yanjia, an undergraduate majoring in Economics at HKU. Before the 2nd semester of my sophomore year ended, I asked Dr. Wong what I could do in the summer to enhance my learning of Economics, and producing GeoGebra graphs for an introductory Macroeconomics textbook was his suggestion. With his generous help, I worked on this GeoGebra project during the summer break. Many thanks to Dr. Wong for supervising me and making this mini-project possible!
Producing graphs using GeoGebra is enjoyable. The software is very easy to use, even for someone who has never done programming before, yet can draw nice and instructive graphs. The interactive feature of graphs potentially makes teaching and self-learning easier.
For me, drawing these graphs deepens my understanding of introductory Macroeconomics not only because I need figure out the mathematical expressions of those graphs, but also because I need think from the perspectives of the authors and teachers. One of the many inspiring suggestions given by Dr. Wong was that instead of simply following the notes on the book, I should ponder how to explain the insights more clearly and make the graphs self-contained. I gain from this thinking process and would recommend anyone interested to explore and generate their own graphs using GeoGebra.
While personally learning a lot from this mini-project, I would be very happy if these graphs help people in their teaching and learning. If you have any questions or suggestions using the graphs, please feel free to email me (joybai@connect.hku.hk). Thank you!
Figure 10.3.ggb: Equilibrium in the Market for Loanable Funds
Figure 10.4.ggb: Loanable Funds Market: Technological Advantage
Figure 10.5.ggb: Loanable Funds Market: Budget Deficit
Figure 11.4.ggb: Per-worker Production Function
Figure 12.3.ggb: Consumption Function: MPC
Figure 12.9.ggb: Macroeconomic Equilibrium: Decomposition of AE
Figure 12.10_a.ggb: Macroeconomic Equilibrium 1
Figure 12.10_b.ggb: Macroeconomic Equilibrium 2
Figure 12.11.ggb: Recession on the 45 Degree Line Diagram
Figure 13.4.ggb: Equilibrium in the Basic ADAS Model
Figure 13.5.ggb: Basic ADAS Model: A Decrease in AD
Figure 13.6.ggb: Basic ADAS Model: An Increase in AD
Figure 13.7.ggb: Basic ADAS Model: Supply Shock
Figure 13.8.ggb: Dynamic ADAS Model
Figure 13.9.ggb: Dynamic ADAS Model and Inflation
Figure 15.4.ggb: Equilibrium in the Money Market
Figure 15.9.ggb: An Expansionary Monetary Policy in the Dynamic Model
Figure 15.10.ggb: A Contractionary Monetary Policy in the Dynamic Model
Figure 16.6.ggb: An Expansionary Fiscal Policy in the Dynamic Model
Figure 16.7.ggb: A Contractionary Fiscal Policy in the Dynamic Model
Figure 16.11.ggb: Expansionary Fiscal Policy and Interest Rates
Figure 16.12.ggb: The Effect of Crowding Out in the Short Run
Figure 17.2.ggb: ADAS Model and the Phillips Curves
Figure 17.6.ggb: Short-run Phillips Curve
Figure 17.7_a.ggb: Shifts in the Short-run Phillips Curve: Upward
Figure 17.7_b.ggb: Shifts in the Short-run Phillips Curve: Downward
Figure 18.2.ggb: Equilibrium in the Foreign Exchange Market