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Kiss and Sell: an economic love story
By Steve Leer
 Students in a Purdue University economics course are learning about dollars and cents in a language they understand: the language of love.
A textbook written by three Purdue professors borrows a page from dimestore romance novels to teach basic economic principles. The book, "Life, Love and Economics," follows two college graduates and the economic decisions they make as they meet, marry, take jobs and raise children.
Written by Gavin Sinclair, assistant professor, and Dee Cuttell, adjunct professor, in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision, and Robert W. Taylor, professor of agricultural economics, the nearly 300-page book is being used in entry-level macroeconomics classes. They say they wrote the textbook to reach a generation of students turned off by traditional economics texts. "There are a lot of good economics texts. The trouble is, students don't like them," Taylor says.
End-of-course surveys bear that out. When students are asked to evaluate their macroeconomics classes, they usually give instructors high marks but assign low grades to course texts, which they consider dry and difficult to wade through, Taylor says.
"We wanted a textbook they would read," he says.
The idea for "Life, Love and Economics" took root about a year ago when Taylor and Sinclair discussed the problem of getting students excited about economics. Sinclair suggested the pair pen a romance, weaving economic tenets into the story line. Sinclair soon brought Cuttell, with whom he'd written another book, into the project.
Sinclair and Cuttell did most of the writing, with Taylor contributing economic material. A final draft was finished a year ago, in time for Sinclair to test it out on his students last fall.
The book tells the fictional story of Jason Cooley and Samantha Fletcher. Cooley, a graduate of "Bloomington University, " meets Fletcher, an alumna of "West Lafayette University," while the two are in line at a frozen custard stand. They discover they've accepted positions at the same computer company, and their relationship blossoms from there.
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