This spring the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences awarded its first ever Excellence in Research awards in the four divisions of the college. Professor Ross (IDEAS) of the Economics Department won the award in the Social Sciences for his research on a broad array of topics in Urban Economics including mortgage and housing discrimination, school segregation, and the impact of concentrated povery on labor market outcomes.
For more details about this award, see the CLAS announcement.
The slumping economy has made Connecticut’s budget front-page news: state revenues are down 20 percent from a year ago, while surging demands for public assistance have governments at all levels stretched thin. The recession raises serious questions about the nature of the slump and public policy responses to it.
What is driving the recession in Connecticut is the focus of the Summer 2009 issue of The Connecticut Economy: A University of Connecticut Quarterly Review. Articles explore the likely impact of collapsing asset prices on the state’s GDP, the size of government in the Nutmeg state relative to the other 49 states, sources of family income inequality across Connecticut, and UConn’s vexing Health Center problem. Also in this issue, guest commentaries by House Majority Leader Denise Merrill and Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero offer contrasting insights on solving the state’s budget crisis.
For free access to this and other issues of The Connecticut Economy, visit: http://cteconomy.uconn.edu/.
Prof. Mwangi S. Kimenyi who previously had an appointment as a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institutions has joined the Washington-based think tank as a resident Senior Fellow. Prof. Kimenyi will be joining the Global Economy and Development Program and will be concentrating on policy issues concerning Africa’s economic growth. In addition to working closely with other colleagues at Brookings, Prof. Kimenyi will also be collaborating with researchers in African think tanks and policymakers. For more information, see the Brookings website and in particular this news release.
A new edition of a popular health economics textbook, “Health Economics: Theory, Insights, and Industry Studies,” written by two of the Department’s former Ph.D. Students, Rexford Santerre (PhD, 1983) and Stephen Neun (PhD, 1988), will be published this June by South-Western/Cengage Learning.
Formerly a Professor of Economics at Bentley College, Rex Santerre (IDEAS) is now a Professor of Finance and Healthcare Management in the UConn School of Business. He has published extensively in the fields of health economics, local public finance, and industrial organization.
Steve Neun is currently the Academic Dean at Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts. Prior to that he served as Professor Economics, Assistant VP for Academic Affairs, and Dean of the School of Graduate and Extended Studies at Utica College in upstate New York.
After seven years with the department, Prof. Dharmapala is leaving us for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Hired as an assistant professor in 2002 following postdoctoral positions at Harvard and the Australian National University, he was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2008. A specialist in public finance who holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, Dharmapala’s interests also encompass tax policy, corporate finance, and the economic analysis of law.
At UIUC, Dharmapala will join the College of Law, which has a substantial group of scholars in Law and Economics. In addition, he will hold an appointment as Professor of Finance (by courtesy) in the College of Business. His wife, Jennifer Delaney, who holds a PhD from Stanford University’s School of Education, will join the faculty of the College of Education at UIUC. We regret the departure of one of our more outstanding professors, and wish him all the best in his new appointment.
Prof. Susan Randolph (IDEAS) has been awarded the 2009-2010 Human Rights Fellowship at the UConn Human Rights Institute. The Human Rights Institute Fellowship is competitively awarded to one faculty member each year. Application for the fellowship is open to all tenure track faculty in all disciplines at Storrs and regional University of Connecticut campuses. The fellowship was announced in 2006 and provides one semester course release time for research projects on human rights. Professor Randolph is the 4th winner of the fellowship.
In response to an increasing demand for rigorous monitoring of States’ accountability in meeting their human rights obligations, a growing literature has emerged on measuring human rights fulfillment. However, the monitoring and promotion of human rights have emphasized political and civil rights; comparatively little attention has been focused on economic and social rights. Data are increasing used in human rights assessment and advocacy, but, especially with regard to economic social rights, ad hoc approaches dominate. Along with her collaborators, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Terra Lawson-Remer, Prof. Randolph has developed two alternative rigorous methodologies for monitoring State accountability in meeting economic and social rights obligations. The Human Rights fellowship will be used to write a book that fully documents the index and compares the alternative methodologies, investigates ways of integrating the principle of non-discrimination, and explores the policy implications of the index. The project ultimately seeks (a) a broad understanding of the sorts of policies and private initiatives that effectively foster the fulfillment of economic and social rights, (b) an understanding of the synergy between political, civil and economic and social rights, and (c) an understanding of the trade-offs and synergies between economic policies fostering income growth and economic efficiency versus those fostering economic and social rights provisions. To facilitate the realization of these broader goals, the fellowship will be used to apply for external grants to establish an Economic and Social Rights Accountability Program.
Recent graduate Rimvydas Baltaduonis (IDEAS), advised by Vicki Knoblauch (IDEAS), is finishing up his post-doc fellowship at the Economic Science Institute at Chapman University where he worked with a world renowned team of experimental economists including a 2002 Nobel laureate in economics Vernon L. Smith (IDEAS). In August, Rim will begin a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. During last two years as a post-doc fellow at George Mason University and then at Chapman University, Rim continued his research of electric power markets and helped organizing numerous workshops in experimental economics for graduate, undergraduate and high school students, public utility regulators, businessmen, faculty and high school teachers. He conducted workshops in Virginia, California, Colorado, Guatemala and recently in Lithuania. These workshops in experimental economics are designed to promote research, teaching and learning of economics through laboratory experiments. Before Rim assumes his position at Gettysburg this fall, he will spend summer (actually winter!) months as a Visiting Fellow in Experimental Economics at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Professor Paul Hallwood will publish his eighth book in July this year: The Political Economy of Financing Scottish Government: Considering a New Constitutional Settlement for Scotland (with Ronald MacDonald), Edward Elgar Publishers, Cheltenham, 2009. Series editor Wallace Oates writes of the book “Hallwood and MacDonald make a compelling case for the devolution of fiscal authority to Scotland to increase fiscal autonomy and improve fiscal performance. They suggest not only the need for such devolution but provide a careful analysis and blueprint of how to do it.” Additionally, the book is motivated to find a fiscal settlement for Scotland that is most likely to hold the United Kingdom together at a time when the separatist Scottish National Party forms the Scottish administration. The topic is creating quite a stir already, see this article in the Scotsman.
The book is also available on Amazon
Natalya Shelkova (IDEAS) defended her thesis on Thursday, May 21 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Zimmermann (IDEAS). In her research she studies the possibility of collusion by low-wage employers at the non-binding minimum wage. She tests this hypothesis empirically in the chapter titled “Low-wage labor markets and the power of suggestion”, a version of which is a part of both our department’s working paper series as well as Princeton University’s Industrial Relations Section working papers series. She also constructed a search-theoretic model that allows for partial collusion at the minimum wage, resulting in replication of both the minimum wage spike and wage dispersion.
In August Natalya starts her new job as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. Guilford College, established in 1837 as one of the country colleges founded by Quakers, is strongly committed to the ideals of peace, social justice and equality. The Quakers of Greensboro cared for the wounded soldiers on both sides during the American Revolutionary War, and harbored runaway slaves seeking to escape to the North during the antebellum era. Natalya is very excited about her new job and about the opportunity to work and contribute to such a historic place.