Micro or Macro? UNA’s Imbrogno Speaks the Language of Economics Fluently
Jan. 12, 2015
Bryan Rachal, Public Affairs and Media Relations
FLORENCE, Ala. – Economics. It’s something we hear about on a daily basis, whether it’s the economy of the country, the economics related to building a new business downtown or talk of minimum wage increases and inflation. Economics is the language of the world and if you don’t want to get left behind, you better learn to speak it.
At the base level, economics is the study of economic activity to better understand the processes that govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in an economy. So what is an economy? An economy or an economic system is basically the production, distribution or trade, and consumption of limited goods and services by different groups in a specific location. Those groups could be individuals, businesses, organizations or governments.
Dr. Jason Imbrogno, assistant professor of economics at the University of North Alabama, said it all really boils down to two categories. “You can split economics into two areas: macro and micro. Macro has to do with how we talk about the economy as a whole, whether at the national or world level. These are the headlines you see in the New York Times: This is last year’s GDP, this is what the current unemployment rate is; it has to do with large scale business indicators,” he said.
“Micro is much more what I’m interested in and has to do with either consumers deciding what they buy, or producers deciding what to make. So how do you decide what you buy in a given day?”
Imbrogno said there are three things that determine what a person decides to buy: how much income they have, the price of the item or items and what their preferences are.
“Basically in my intro class we spend the semester discussing what we mean by those three concepts. How we can model them. How we can think about them. How do preferences affect the price of goods? For example, why does a BMW cost more than a Toyota? One reason may be that it costs more to make a BMW. But it could also be that consumers want BMW’s a lot more. So if they want them more, the price for a BMW goes up,” said Imbrogno.
In simpler terms, this could be described as supply and demand. But Imbrogno said it’s the consumers and producers that drive the supply and demand curves. “So we start with more fundamental concepts like consumer preferences and build that into a demand curve. Supply and demand then become quick shorthand to talk about how prices are affected by changes in supply and demand, but it does leave out a lot of background information.”
Imbrogno is new to UNA’s campus having just finished his first semester teaching. He grew up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, went to Johns Hopkins for his undergraduate degree and Carnegie Mellon for his master’s and Ph.D. “I like research, but I really enjoy teaching so I was actually looking for a different type of institution”
The institution that fit his needs was UNA; part of the reason is where the school has placed its economics department. “Econ can be housed in a business school or in a social science setting. I prefer to be housed in business and I also prefer finance and marketing folks as my colleagues. For me, I feel like economics, when taught from a business school perspective, is more useful for our students. So I like the fact that we were housed in the College of Business,“ said Imbrogno.
It’s also useful in terms of those same students finding jobs outside of college. Imbrogno said that jobs for econ majors are extremely plentiful in today’s world.
“The thing that I tell any student who asks about this is, the more math you take the better off you’ll be. The more capable you are of using a computer, the better off you’re going to be. But with an econ degree, you’re going to find work because we teach a way of thinking. Say you’re 18 and you want to find a job when you graduate; if you’re in economics you can do a wide array, consulting, banking, or perhaps even run a small business. Because one of the things we learn here is how to run a small business, how to choose your prices, how to decide what product to have etc…”
Imbrogno said that Econ goes past just consumerism and areas like that; it also deals with policy. He said he’s currently working on a paper with colleagues from Tulane University in New Orleans that looks at school choice policies.
“So another active area of policy debate: Should we allow open enrollment or charter schools? The way most kids get assigned to school is neighborhood reference,” he said. “Of course now we have charter and magnet schools which differ from typical public and private schools by combining aspects of both. Magnet schools are something a lot of urban areas have, they remain completely under the public district authority but they allow students from different parts of the city to go to another high school. However, that school then usually becomes geared to a specific theme like a math and science high school or foreign language high school. So a lot of the work I did in graduate school was trying to evaluate whether these magnet schools were effective in improving high school outcomes.”
In previous educational research conducted for his dissertation, Imbrogno found that allowing parents and students to pick a school based on different factors rather than proximity didn’t have much of an effect on test scores, but it did improve other measures like disciplinary incidents and being on time to school etc… Factors that down the line may be more important than a standardized test score.
Imbrogno also discovered that parents have a strong preference for proximity. “And that’s what we’re looking into, not the effectiveness of the school, but rather how parents choose which schools rank high on their list. For New Orleans, Mardi Gras plays into it too. Some school bands get to play in certain Mardi Gras parades and parents like that. Some parents are aligned by sports. Which school has the best athletic program? If you survey parents they say they want their kids to go to the best academic schools, but when you leave the choice up to them they value proximity and extracurricular activities more than they do academics.”
Imbrogno said this type of study will have policy implications on how to run the public schools in New Orleans more to the preferences of the parents involved. “At the end of the day, why school choice is better than neighborhood assignment is because it causes competition between schools. Hey, we’re losing kids how do we get them back? Let’s add this program, opposed to the simpler, they’re in our neighborhood and they go here, regardless.”
In regard to economies, competition is often something that makes the system work well. The reason being it allows for more choices, improves the quality of products and generally enhances economic growth. Whether it’s competition among schools or downtown boutiques, it’s clear that the impact of economics and finance in the world is profound and far-reaching, you just have to learn the language.
For more information on UNA’s Economics and Finance Department:
http://www.una.edu/business/departments-majors/economics-finance/