UofT Economics Teaching Assistant Interview Questions?

[JuliTheNub]

I applied to be an Economics TA at UofT and was invited to do an interview with a professor.
Do any of you know what kinds of questions are commonly asked during such interviews?

[dealmooch]

How would you measure the market efficiencies inherent in opening free trade in the rights of prepaid labour contracts with individuals and the 3rd party holders of those rights? Can you come up with a better euphemism for slavery than prepaid labour contracts? Can you explain why everyone is poorer now that economists have been running things for the last 30 years? Can you explain the usefulness of a "science" that can sometimes can explain something after the fact but always explains why the wealthy really deserve all that money? Arf.

[JuliTheNub]

Your first few questions are labour economics questions and not exactly in the scope of the position I'm interviewing for. I'm interviewing for Macroeconomics. Labour issues are of concern but more attention is paid to interest rates, exchange rates and policies.
I seriously doubt they would quiz me on the things I learnt in the class. It'll be quite silly.

Can you explain the usefulness of a "science" that can sometimes can explain something after the fact but always explains why the wealthy really deserve all that money? Arf.

This question is very poorly worded. The second part is a non sequitur.
As for explaining something after the fact, this applies to ALL sciences. All that physics and astronomy knowledge can make one think that one is 100% certain that the sun would rise tomorrow but, really, as we know so little of our universe, the sun could in fact not rise tomorrow.

Can you explain why everyone is poorer now that economists have been running things for the last 30 years?

Poorer? WTF?

[raymondh]

check this out or do i quick google search. Lots of results.
http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/189651.aspx

[JuliTheNub]

check this out or do i quick google search. Lots of results.
http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/189651.aspx

The reason I'm asking here is because the questions I found online are for regular school Teaching Assistants, not university Teaching Assistants.

[imflying12]

Show interest in research, you could look into what the profs in that department have been researching recently.