Paul Grimes
Initial Publication Date: February 23, 2009
Professor of Economics
College of Business
312 McCool Hall, Box 9580
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762-9580
Phone: 662.325.1987
Fax: 662.325.1977
Background Information
Paul W. Grimes is Head of the Department of Finance and Economics in the College of Business at Mississippi State University. In addition, he is the Director for the MSU Center for Economic Education and Financial Literacy. A native of Missouri, Dr. Grimes earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in economics from Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. In 1984 he received his Ph.D. in economics from Oklahoma State University.
Paul specializes in the areas of labor economics and the economics of public policy. During the past twenty years, Paul has been heavily involved in the field of economic education. He has served as a project consultant and evaluator on several programs for the National Council on Economic Education, and conducted the effectiveness review for The Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting's national telecourse, Economics U$A.
Paul is the author of more than fifty scholarly research articles published in academic journals. He has been recognized for his work by being named a Visiting Fellow by Princeton University and a Senior Evaluation Scholar by the National Council on Economic Education. In addition he is the recepient of the 2004 Outstanding Alumni award presented by Pittsburg State University and in 2005 he received the Henry H. Villard Research Award from the National Association of Economic Educators.
Related Pedagogical Projects
Paul currently serves as the Associate Editor for the Instruction section of the Journal of Economic Education. This section disseminates scholarship on innovative classroom pedagogy and instructional design. Along with William Bosshardt of Florida Atlantic University, he was recently contracted by the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and St. Louis to conduct a comprehensive assessment and evaluation of the Fed's educational outreach programs for K-12 teachers and the general public.
Paul is also a coauthor of Economics of Social Issues, an introductory college economics textbook. Instead of the traditional approach of teaching economic theories and models first and then applying them to specific topics, the pedagogy of Economics of Social Issues is to begin with important social issues (e.g. crime, pollution, health care, etc.) and through their exploration develop basic economic concepts and tools. Hundreds of colleges and universities across the United States have adopted and used this text in a wide variety of courses. In the fall of 1997, the publisher, McGraw-Hill, introduced a Canadian version of the text and in 2003, it was translated into, and published in, Chinese.