Show Me the Money! An Interactive Lesson on Demand, Total Revenue, and Pricing in Professional Sports
Publication: Journal of Economic Education
Volume: 39, No. 2
Issue: Spring 2008
Pages: 207
Author(s): Dennis Kaufman, Norman R. Cloutier, and, Rebecca S. Kaufman
Address (Principal Author):
Dennis Kaufman
Associate Professor and Chair of the Economics Department
University of Wisconsin-Parkside
900 Wood Road - Box 2000
Kenosha, WI 53141
Office Phone: (262) 595-2192
Fax Number: (262) 595-2120
E-mail Address (Principal Author): dennis.kaufman@uwp.edu
Title: Show Me the Money! An Interactive Lesson on Demand, Total Revenue, and Pricing in Professional Sports
URL: http://www.uwp.edu/departments/economics/cee/teaching_resources/lesson03.html
Descriptive Note:
The web-based interactive tutorial “Show Me the Money!” is a complete lesson that incorporates a substantive narrative along with images and graphics to explain and demonstrate the functional relationship between demand and total revenue. The tutorial has proved to be an effective learning tool for students because it 1) utilizes an inherently interesting application of professional athlete salaries and ticket prices, and, 2) engages students through user-controlled interactive graphics. Students are able to examine the total revenue implications of alternative prices along a fixed demand curve. Total revenue is illustrated numerically both as an area under the curve and as a point on the total revenue curve itself. All three representations are displayed simultaneously on consistently calibrated curves. More importantly, students are able to explore and demonstrate for themselves the impact of a shift in demand on the entire total revenue curve.
Because the tutorial was developed using Adobe’s Flash software, the interactivity is accomplished not by simply clicking on buttons and passively viewing the resulting animation, as in a typical PowerPoint presentation. Instead, students are able to drag a demand curve to alternative positions and simultaneously observe the impact on the total revenue function. As a result, students learn more and learn more quickly. The tutorial has been used effectively in college-level courses in microeconomic principles and the economics of sports, and in training workshops and online pedagogy courses for high school economics teachers, which were conducted through the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Center for Economic Education and sponsored by EconomicsWisconsin, the state council of the National Council on Economic Education.
Accepted Web Sites
Journal of Economic Education WWW Page