Cancer struggle teaches economic principles
Joab Corey loves teaching. In his second year toward a Ph.D. in economics at WVU’s College of Business & Economics, Corey found a unique approach to teaching supply and demand, price elasticity and cost/benefits analysis—by telling stories of his cancer treatment.
Corey, 25 of Charleston, W.Va., was diagnosed with testicular cancer, a disease that affects between 7,000 to 8,000 men each year, mostly those aged 15-35 years. The good news: testicular cancer has one of the highest cure rates of any cancer: 90 percent or even 100 percent if the disease has not spread.
But Corey’s had spread, which required him to undergo chemotherapy. Last year he was in and out of the hospital—surgery and chemotherapy—yet he kept up with his coursework, prepared for comprehensive exams, and maintained his graduate assistantship duties (helping another teacher with grading, office hours, etc.).
All the while he took notes on his cancer treatment, relating his experiences to economic ideas. By the fall his health had returned, and he was ready to teach undergraduates, using his recent health-care experience and his notes to illustrate economic principles. Corey has even written a paper related to his experience, “The Economic Principles of My Cancer Treatment: How to Use Medical Experiences to Teach Economics,” now under review by a professional journal.
He uses chemotherapy as an example of an inelastic good, one toward which consumers are not very responsive when it comes to price changes.
“My doctor said I needed four cycles of chemotherapy to treat my cancer. If the price of chemotherapy increased dramatically, I would still want four cycles,” he said. “Conversely, even if the price dropped to one cent per cycle, I wouldn’t want more chemotherapy. I would still only demand four cycles. Other rather inelastic consumer goods are tobacco or gasoline, or even cocaine. An addict’s demand for cocaine would be fairly inelastic: the amount he would demand would not significantly fall, even if the price substantially increased.”
“Students tend to have trouble understanding economic concepts because they get caught up in the abstract theory and unrealistic over-simplified models that permeate many economic textbooks,” Corey said. “I enjoy helping students, and I want to convey to students that economics can be an interesting subject that is already a part of their lives.”
This passion for the subject, and for teaching, he attributes to his professors, especially Dr. Russell Sobel, James Clark Coffman Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies and professor of economics. “Dr. Sobel enjoys teaching and explaining things in terms that relate to the real world,” the soft-spoken graduate student said. “He was a major influence on the teaching style I have tried to adopt.”
Dr. Brian Cushing, one of his professors, said: “Joab Corey has turned what most would view as a very negative event into something positive, and his openness regarding his cancer has also helped students who have suddenly had to deal with a relative or friend with cancer or some other severe medical affliction.”
Corey explained this in the introduction to his paper. “Economics is a method of thinking that revels itself in all aspects of life, and a good economics instructor should be able to see and adapt these economic concepts in even his or her most severe life experiences,” Corey said. “The real events of my (cancer) treatment serve to illustrate and further clarify basic economic concepts …”
For Fall 2008, Corey is developing a new undergraduate course: Behavioral Economics. This course has never been taught at West Virginia University and is rare among all universities, Cushing said. It is almost unheard of for a graduate student to develop a new course, especially such an uncommon course for which there is no standard format or text, he said.
Corey tries to demonstrate that economics is about decision making, something his students need to know.
“Many believe economics to be primarily concerned with the study of money and business, making those who are unconcerned with such issues quickly lose interest,” he said. “It is important to show students that economics is the art and science of decision making in all aspects of life and using real examples from a life event that is seemingly unrelated to the study of economics will help students appreciate how they can adopt the economic way of thinking in their own lives. After all, the simple act of being alive requires one to engage in economic decision making. The only thing that separates the economist from the non-economist are the terms and definitions used to describe this way of thinking.”
One day Corey brought a bunch of bananas to class and asked for volunteers for an extra-credit activity. They were to eat a banana and write down the benefit they got from eating it. Then another…then another. By the time a student has eaten the seventh or eighth yellow fruit, the economic concept of “diminishing marginal utility” has been aptly demonstrated, and an undergraduate vowed to never eat another banana.
“This concept can be demonstrated with any eating contest, but bananas were chosen for their inexpensiveness, health benefits (over unhealthy food such as candy) and quiet consumption (over louder foods such as apples). It has also been shown that an individual can eat over twenty bananas without suffering any severe gastro-intestinal problems,” he noted in another paper he wrote titled Using Interactive Games and Examples to Teach Basic Economic Concepts. The paper gives details on seven games that can be played in class to demonstrate economic principles.
“It is important that these bananas not vary in ripeness or quality as that could jeopardize the outcome of the game. If there are no variations in ripeness or quality then the utility received from consuming each banana should eventually diminish as the person eats more and more bananas until the utility reaches zero, at which point the person won’t eat another banana,” he advised further.
Corey hopes to finish his dissertation in 2009 and then to begin teaching as a professor. His dissertation is on the relationship between resource endowment and economic freedom, and how that relationship affects economic growth across the nation.
“My cancer treatment is going fine,” he said. “I just had my one-year check up, and I am still cancer free.”
That’s good news, for Joab Corey -- and classrooms of undergraduate students he’ll be teaching at WVU and on other campuses in the future
