Abstract:

This paper considers the use of SAGE in the teaching of economics at the Faculties of Business and Economics.
As globalization continues to increase the complexity of nearly every industry in the world economy, there is increasing demand for economics students with quantitative skills to analyze and forecast business and economic trends. However, students often experience difficulty in mathematics, and hence, in making the transition from their mathematics courses to the use of mathematics in their economics courses. Symbolic computation software is a mathematical tool that allows students to deal with elaborate calculations using a computer, and hence, it can potentially smooth the mentioned transition. This paper illustrates a few ways in which one symbolic computation program, Sage, can be used in the undergraduate economics curriculum. In particular, SAGE has been selected as a complementary tool to teach the “Organization and Internal Management of the firm” course, with the main objective of leading students to achieve a better understanding of the agency model.

Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the General Public License that allows direct experimentation with mathematics. Although SAGE can be considered as an excellent tool containing outstanding mathematical capabilities, it is important to note that SAGE has a high and long learning curve. Then, for some students, whether because of their own inexperience or poor teaching, the use of SAGE could contribute to these students becoming easily frustrated and disenchanted with mathematics as a whole. As most students do not understand what computers can do for them in economics at the undergraduate level, it is up to each professor to design labs properly to achieve maximum comprehension and enjoyment of the student´s perspective.

Keywords:

SAGE, Economics, Principal-agent model.