Rangan Gupta, an ’05 PhD graduate under the advisement of Christian Zimmermann, was named one of the top 20 Young Economists (10 years or less) by RePEc. Rangan defended his dissertation titled “Essays on Financial Repression,” in May 2005 and headed to the University of Pretoria, where he is now a full professor.
To view the full rankings, please click here.
Congratulations Rangan!
Jorge Agüero will be joining the department this Fall as assistant professor. A graduate from University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is a development economist with a particular interest in the applied microeconomics of development. Professor Agüero has published several articles in the area of Economic Development, including articles in the Journal of Human Resources, American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, and Journal of African Economics and has several papers under re-submission in top Development Economics field journals. The position he fills is a joint position with El Instituto: Institute of Latino/a , Caribbean, and Latin American Studies.
Professor Vicki Knoblauch has been named an associate editor of the Economics Bulletin, an open access journal that provides extremely rapid scientific communication among research economists by publishing short, peer-reviewed papers using an accelerated review process. She has assumed responsibility for submissions in the area of collective decision making.
Economics Ph.D. alumnus Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy has been named the next Egyptian Finance Minister. Prior to his appointment, Hegazy was a professor at Alexandria University, specializing in Islamic Finance. He was sworn into office on January 6.
Hegazy defended his dissertation titled “The Contribution of Oil to the Economic Development of Kuwait (1962-1981): a Macroeconomic Approach,” under the advisement of Professor William Lott, in January 1985.
Read the UConn Today article about Hegazy here.
Prof. Oskar Harmon, with his co-author Prof. James Lambrinos (Union Graduate College) had their paper Active Learning Exercises for Principles of Economics Courses” published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Journal of Economic Education (JEE). The JEE is a leading journal in the field of economic education and publishes articles on topics in teaching economics. Prof. Harmon’s article is included in the section of the journal dedicated to innovative electronic technology. In the paper Prof. Harmon and his co-author design a wiki to utilize current events and flash-based tools for instruction of concepts commonly taught in principles of economics courses.
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Professor William Alpert and Professor Oskar Harmon were panel discussants in the session “The Effects of Online Economics Courses on Student Learning” and presented the paper “The Effectiveness of Interactive Online Exercises across Delivery Format”, co-authored with Professor James Lambrinos (Union Graduate College) at the American Economic Association, Annual Meetings, San Diego CA, Jan 3-6, 2013. Their paper evaluates the effectiveness of online activities controlling for delivery format. The data are from a Principles of Microeconomics class taught in three different delivery formats: traditional lecture, fully online (no in class meetings), or blended (combination of online lecture and in-class discussion. Overall the empirical estimates are consistent with the hypothesis that participation in interactive learning exercises has a positive effect on exam score at a statistically significant level. Professors Alpert and Harmon were also panel discussants in the session “The Effects of Online Economics Courses on Student Learning.”
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Professor Nishith Prakash was recently awarded a Faculty Large Grant by the Office of the Vice President for Research for his proposal entitled Affirmative Action, Public Service Delivery and Well-Being in India. Below please find the abstract for this project.
The world’s biggest and arguably most aggressive form of affirmative action policy in employment exists in India, where government jobs are explicitly reserved for historically disadvantaged minority groups. In this research project, we aim to study the impact of employment quotas for “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs) mandated by the Mandal Commission on public service delivery and well-being. The Mandal Commission reserved approximately 27% of government jobs for OBCs. The specific outcomes we examine include implementation of government sponsored schemes, provision of public infrastructure, mobility, and education, health and employment outcomes. We are not aware of any existing study that rigorously quantifies the effects of any aspect of the Mandal Commission.
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One of Connecticut’s National Public Radio stations, WSHU, launched a program Thursday November 28th called the “State of Disparity.” The program focuses on inequality in Connecticut. The research of Professor Susan Randolph, Emeritus Professor William Lott, and Ph.D. candidate Patrick Flaherty provided background information for the program, some of which was published in The Connecticut Economy. Both Professor Randolph and Patrick Flaherty and were interviewed by Craig LeMoult.
The launch of the program along with some sound clips from the interview can be heard on Morning Edition (See November 28th entry) can be found at the website devoted to the program: http://www.stateofdisparity.org/ .
Click below to see the two articles from The Connecticut Economy that provided background to the program.
What Drives Income Inequality Among Connecticut’s Families?
Nutmeg Haves and Have Nots: How Wide the Divide?
The National Climate Assessment, which is conducted every four years and submitted to the President and Congress, provides an assessment of the state of knowledge about climate change and its impacts in the U.S. The report was mandated by the 1990 Global Change Research Act. The first assessment was produced in 2000, and the next one is due to be released in 2013. By statute, before release, it must be reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences. NAS has recently put together the panel that will review the report. The 23-member panel is comprised of scholars from across the country in a wide range of fields. Professor Kathleen Segerson has been appointed as a panel member. As part of her appointment, she will be responsible for providing comments and feedback on the draft report to the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program, which is responsible for preparing the report. After the review process is completed, the final report will be available to the public at http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment/nca-overview.
Professor Paul Hallwood will have a paper published in Defence and Peace Economics entitled “Quantifying Greed and Grievance in Civil Wars: The American War of Independence”. A strand in the political science literature asks ‘why do civil wars happen’? With blood diamonds in mind one possibility is greed; but in many other cases civil wars are provoked by grievances against the central power – Chechnya and Kosovo come to mind. Hallwood collects data on the cost of British Empire membership and war costs to the American colonists and passes them through his economic model to find that the Americans were over-whelmingly motivated by grievance. In over 200-years of scholarship, while some historians argue as much, others emphasize the greed hypothesis, to be rid of the economic burdens of colonial status. As one historian observed a generation ago, the debate raged on because of a lack of a scientific model to settle the dispute. Hallwood offers such a model.