Southern Economic Association 2026 · Working draft

Economics in PPE and Civic Thought Programs

Curricular requirements, disciplinary balance, and the place of economics in civic education

Simon D. Halliday
Johns Hopkins University

Simon D. Halliday, Emily Marshall, Glory Liu,
Anthony Underwood, and Doug NortonUpdated November 10, 2026 · Analysis frozen November 6, 2026

What economics belongs in an interdisciplinary education?

  • PPE places economics alongside philosophical argument and political analysis.
  • Civic thought and leadership programs often organize learning around texts, institutions, history, and public life.
  • We ask what students must study, how disciplines fit together, and where economic reasoning enters the curriculum.
Research questions · Building on Marshall, Underwood & Hyde (2024)

The project now maps three distinct kinds of activity

  • 348 formal programs in the public explorer, including flagged planned programs. Majors, minors, certificates, and other academic credentials.
  • 767 curricular initiatives in the public projection. Civic general education, governed course clusters, and other documented curricular arrangements.
  • 206 institutional entities in the public ecosystem projection. Centers, institutes, and related units with documented institutional roles.
Public website snapshot: November 6, 2026. Separate record counts, not unique institutions or a national census.

Official requirements define the program record

  • Discover candidates through CIP searches, institutional sources, and targeted research.
  • Record official catalog evidence, program status, requirements, and unresolved questions in a structured record.
  • Validate classifications and flag borderline cases for review before extraction.
  • Separate unknown requirements, planned programs, and legacy or teach-out programs in analysis.
Source: canonical collection schema and dated analysis rules

344 programs in the November analysis

344
active or legacy / teach-out programs
332
course-coded programs for requirement rates
12
programs with incomplete requirement coding
4
planned programs retained in a separate appendix
November 6 paper freeze · 337 active + 7 legacy / teach-out = 344 included programs

Program families differ in credential mix

Majors account for 83% of PPE programs and 39% of civic thought / leadership programs.

Hover for counts. Click a bar or use Tab and Enter to inspect programs.
MajorMinorOther credentials0%25%50%75%100%83%16%1%PPE(n = 87)74%23%2%Political economy(n = 86)39%48%13%Civic thought / leadership(n = 171)
Program composition, November 6 freeze. Denominators: PPE 87, political economy 86, civic thought / leadership 171.

Introductory economics is common in PPE

Requirements beyond the introductory level are much less common.

Hover for counts. Click a bar or use Tab and Enter to inspect programs.
PPEPolitical economyCivic thought / leadership0%25%50%75%100%83%77%8%Introductoryeconomics9%23%0%Intermediatemicro1%12%0%Intermediatemacro26%24%2%Statistics1%11%0%Econometrics
Course-coded denominators: PPE 86, political economy 84, civic thought / leadership 162. November 6 freeze.

The pattern persists among majors

Only 10 of 195 coded majors require both intermediate courses. Ten require econometrics.

Hover for counts. Click a bar or use Tab and Enter to inspect programs.
MajorMinorCertificate0%25%50%75%100%66%17%0%Introductoryeconomics5%0%0%Both intermediatemicro and macro23%1%0%Statistics5%0%0%Econometrics
Major n = 195, minor n = 115, certificate n = 20. Two other coded credentials omitted. November 6 freeze.

Economics majors provide a benchmark for depth

The comparison describes different curricular purposes and credential populations.

Hover for counts. Click a bar or use Tab and Enter to inspect programs.
PPEPolitical economyCivic thought / leadershipEconomics majors0%25%50%75%100%1%11%0%95%Both intermediatemicro and macro26%24%2%92%Statistics1%11%0%54%Econometrics
Our coded programs: n = 332. Economics-major benchmark: n = 964, Marshall, Underwood & Hyde (2024).

Disciplinary balance requires a second measurement choice

  • Strict coding: count requirements classified as economics, politics or law, and philosophy.
  • Content-informed sensitivity: retain those assignments and classify additional rows only when course codes or titles give one clear disciplinary signal.
  • Coverage limit: show programs with at least three classified requirement rows. Keep integrative and unclassified rows outside the share denominator.
November 6 paired disciplinary-balance analysis

Disciplinary balance depends on course evidence

The sensitivity analysis retains strict assignments and adds unambiguous course-code or title evidence.

Hover a point. Click to inspect overlapping programs and compare coding.
Strict (n = 202)EconomicsPolitics / lawPhilosophyContent-informed (n = 226)EconomicsPolitics / lawPhilosophyPPEPolitical economyCivic thought / leadership
Required-course shares among the three classified disciplines. At least 3 classified rows per plotted program. November 6 freeze.

What the benchmark can and cannot establish

  • Requirements reveal whether economics is a compulsory part of the credential and how far the named sequence extends.
  • The economics-major comparison locates differences in technical coursework. It does not establish an optimal curriculum for PPE or civic thought.
  • Award type, disciplinary purpose, and institutional context all vary. These descriptive comparisons do not identify causal effects.
Interpretation · Southern Economic Association working draft

Economic education beyond the major

  • The descriptive finding concerns progression beyond introductory economics.
  • Curriculum design can connect theory and empirical reasoning to ethics, institutions, and public policy.
  • The next empirical step is to compare requirements with syllabi and director accounts of what students actually learn.
Implications for economic education

Requirements are one part of the evidence

  • The catalog study documents formal curricular obligations and their variation.
  • Syllabi analysis examines readings, methods, and substantive economic content.
  • Director interviews examine design choices and institutional constraints.
  • The normative paper asks what economics students in these programs should learn.
Research agenda · Simon D. Halliday, Emily Marshall, Glory Liu, Anthony Underwood, and Doug Norton

Evidence limits

  • This is a bounded working map. Omission does not establish institutional absence.
  • More records can reflect discovery or reclassification rather than new program launches.
  • Course requirements do not measure enrollment, classroom practice, or student learning.
  • Uncoded and integrative material constrains claims about disciplinary balance and economics content.
Source scope, coverage, and interpretation limits

What economics belongs in civic education?

How should economic reasoning connect with philosophical judgment and political analysis?

Explore the records, sources, and methods:

ppe-civicthought-requirements.simondhalliday.com

Simon D. Halliday · Johns Hopkins University

Appendix: program mix across institutions

Civic thought / leadership makes up 56% of the R1 program group.

Hover for counts. Click a bar or use Tab and Enter to inspect programs.
PPEPolitical economyCivic thought / leadership0%25%50%75%100%20%24%56%R135%27%38%R224%21%55%Master's24%29%46%Baccalaureate46%25%29%Other
340 programs with Carnegie classification. Four included programs lack classification. November 6 freeze.

Appendix: requirement-coding coverage

332 of 344 included programs have course-level coding.

Hover for counts. Click a bar or use Tab and Enter to inspect programs.
Course codedIncomplete0%25%50%75%100%99%1%PPE(n = 87)98%2%Political economy(n = 86)95%5%Civic thought / leadership(n = 171)
PPE: 86 coded. Political economy: 84 coded. Civic thought / leadership: 162 coded. November 6 freeze.

Appendix: reading the disciplinary triangle

  • Each point represents one program. The location uses shares of classified required-course rows.
  • Strict coding plots 202 of 344 included programs. The sensitivity specification plots 226.
  • A program can move because more courses become classifiable. This does not mean its curriculum changed.
  • Content-informed recoding remains a sensitivity analysis subject to co-author review.
Paired disciplinary-balance data, November 6 freeze