BA achievement

2012 Spring Awards Banquet

On April 12, the department convened for an awards banquet that recognized the best among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty. This year’s award recipients are:

Omicron Delta Epsilon inductees:
Kurtis Adei
Alex Amarante
Lyla Eljizi
Elizabeth Fesenmeyer
Clifford Garnet
John Giardina
Levi Jackson
Nicholas Leonetti
Michael Littman
Brett Mauro
Andrew Moynihan
Loi Nham
Shivani Panchal
Marcos Quispe
Thomas Samuels
Vidya Sridhar
Jennifer Stansfield
Matthew Travalini
Suo Wang
Daniel White
Mallika Winsor

Undergraduate Awards
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
William Kimball
Colleen Phelan
Paige Rhymer
Vidya Sridhar

Ross Mayer Scholarship
Nicholas Leonetti
Garrett Rapsilber

Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Kevin Landry
Antonio Spinelli

Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Lydia Kowinko
Yuqi Xing

Graduate Awards
W. Harrison Carter Award
Paul Tomolonis

Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Matthew Schurin

Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Elizabeth Kaletski

Economics Department General Scholarship (for 2012: Recognition for Excellence as a Teaching Assistant)
Eric Gibbons
Sara Kauffman
Matthew Joseph Histen

Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Matthew Schurin
Rong Zhou
Zheng Xu
Peijingran Yu
Bryce Casavant

Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Mikhael Shor

Grillo Family Teaching Award
William Alpert
Oskar Harmon

Congratulations to everyone!

Yuriy Loukachev to Receive SHARE Award

Economics undergraduate student Yuriy Loukachev has been selected to receive a 2012 SHARE (Social Science, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience) Award for undergraduate research. Yuriy will be studying the economic theory of auctions with Professor Mike Shor in the Spring of 2012. He will receive a stipend from the Office of Undergraduate Research, and will present the results of his research at a poster exhibition to be held in the Spring of 2012.

Congratulations Yuriy!

BA alumnus David Stockton receives UConn Distinguished Alumni award October 1, 2010.

The UConn Alumni Association will give the 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award to David Stockton on October 1. After completing his BA and MA at UConn in just four years (1972-76), under the supervision of Professor Emeritus William McEachern, Stockton obtained a second MA and his PhD in Economics at Yale University. A Danforth Fellow, Yale Fellow, and member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi, Stockton joined the Federal Reserve’s Division of Research and Statistics in 1981. Since 2000, he has served as the Director of Research and Statistics, overseeing the Fed’s large staff of PhD economists who conduct research and inform the Fed’s Board of Governors–the architects of U.S. monetary policy.

Both the current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and his predecessor Alan Greenspan have strongly praised Stockton’s expertise and advice on economic matters. In addition to his responsibilities for directing longer-term research projects at the Fed, Stockton presents regular economic forecasts to the Federal Open Market Committee–the group of officials that regularly meets to decide Fed policies and actions that shape banking operations and interest rates in the U.S. and abroad. Stockton’s public service career continues a family tradition. David’s father, Ed Stockton served as Mayor of the Town of Bloomfield, and later was named Commissioner of Economic Development under Governors Ella Grasso and William O’Neill. The Stockton family’s New Jersey ancestor Richard Stockton signed the Declaration of Independence.

Stockton will be officially honored at an Alumni Association event in the South Campus Rome Hall Ballroom, on October 1, 2010. Earlier in the day, he will meet with Honors students and give a talk in the Department of Economics.

For more about this event, the UConn Alumni Association write-up about David Stockton and the list of the other award recipients of the day. The UConn Alumni Magazine also ran a story about David Stockton.

BA alum named President and CEO of Walmart U.S.

William S. Simon, a University of Connecticut Economics BA from 1981, has recently been named President and CEO of the US operations of Walmart. He was previously chief operating officer at Walmart, senior vice president of global business development at Brinker International, which operates Chili’s Grill & Bar and other restaurants, and before that Secretary of the Florida Department of Management Services. He is a retired officer from the U.S. Navy and Navy Reserves after 25 years of service.

Read more at UConn Today

Economics alumnus runs for Senate seat

Noted economist, fund manager, entrepreneur, race car builder, and UCONN alumnus Warren Mosler is seeking the office of US Senate to add ‘fixed the US economy’ to his long list of accomplishments. Mosler, a native of Connecticut who graduated from Storrs with a B. A. in Economics in 1971 is running for the US Senate seat being vacated by Senator Christopher Dodd.

Since graduation, Warren has spent 37 years in various financial institutions from Manchester, Hartford, New York, Chicago, and South Florida, including the founding III Offshore Advisors in 1982 and, in 1983, AVM L.P., a broker/dealer providing advanced financial services to large institutional clients. During these years he developed numerous investing strategies utilizing US Government securities and created the mortgage swap and euro swap futures contract. He maintains strong connections to the academic world as Co-Founder, along with L. Randall Wray, of the Center for Full Employment And Price Stability at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Mosler also has supported research projects and graduate students at the London School of Economics, the New School, Harvard University, and the University of Newcastle, Australia. Additionally, Warren is an Associate Fellow at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Warren is the author of numerous publications, of which the latest is ‘The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy’ (Mosler, 2010), which challenges several contemporary assumptions about the relationship between government spending, federal debt, and taxation and opens the door to an immediate return to economic prosperity.

Warren is the original contemporary proponent of what has come to be called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT begins with the operational fact that Federal taxes serve to regulate aggregate demand, rather than to raise revenue per se, and that funds to pay Federal taxes indeed originate from government spending itself. Warren’s campaign platform is based on three proposals designed to fix the nation’s economy within 90 days. The three proposals are as follows:


  1. Declare a “payroll tax holiday” where the U.S. Treasury will suspend deduction of all FICA taxes. That means the take home pay of someone earning $50,000 a year will rise by approximately $325 per month, fixing the economy from the bottom up, vs the current top-down bailout method.
  2. An unrestricted $500 per capita Federal revenue sharing distribution to all the State governments. This proposal mean about $1.75 billion for Connecticut.
  3. Fund an $8/hr. National Service Jobs program for anyone willing and able to work to facilitate the transition from unemployment to private sector employment, as the first two proposals will cause the large increases in private sectors business sales that quickly translates into the millions of new jobs we desperately need.

Since leaving Connecticut for Wall Street in 1976, Warren has lived and worked in New York City, Chicago, South Florida, and the US Virgin Islands. Additionally, while in Florida, he founded Mosler Automotive, which produces the world’s top performing sport cars. Warren returned to Connecticut this year to run for the US Senate solely as a matter of conscience, and not ambition. He sees himself as uniquely qualified to fix the economic problems facing the US economy.

Stockton to Receive Distinguished Alumni Award

The UConn Alumni Association recently announced that David Stockton has been named to receive the 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award. After completing his BA and MA at UConn in just four years (1972-76), under the supervision of Professor Emeritus William McEachern, Stockton obtained a second MA and his PhD in Economics at Yale University. A Danforth Fellow, Yale Fellow, and member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi, Stockton joined the Federal Reserve’s Division of Research and Statistics in 1981. Since 2000, he has served as the Director of Research and Statistics, overseeing the Fed’s large staff of PhD economists who conduct research and inform the Fed’s Board of Governors–the architects of U.S. monetary policy.

Both the current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and his predecessor Alan Greenspan have strongly praised Stockton’s expertise and advice on economic matters. In addition to his responsibilities for directing longer-term research projects at the Fed, Stockton presents regular economic forecasts to the Federal Open Market Committee–the group of officials that regularly meets to decide Fed policies and actions that shape banking operations and interest rates in the U.S. and abroad. Stockton’s public service career continues a family tradition. David’s father, Ed Stockton served as Mayor of the Town of Bloomfield, and later was named Commissioner of Economic Development under Governors Ella Grasso and William O’Neill. The Stockton family’s New Jersey ancestor Richard Stockton signed the Declaration of Independence.

Stockton will be officially honored at an Alumni Association event in the South Campus Rome Hall Ballroom, on October 1, 2010.

There is more about David Stockton in the UConn Alumni Magazine

BA Alumna named advisor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that she has named Karen Wayland as her new Policy Advisor for energy; Anne Cannon MacMillan as her new Policy Advisor for agriculture, veterans, small business and rural outreach; and Bridget Fallon as her new Director of Protocol and Special Events. All three begin their duties this month.

Congress cannot function without the dedication and hard work of Americans who put public service ahead of private gain. The hard work completed by staff is an integral part of making the Congress work for the American people, Pelosi said. I welcome our talented new additions to the Speakers Office and look forward to working together as we continue to move America in a New Direction.

Karen Wayland currently serves as Legislative Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Wayland holds a dual Ph.D. in Geology and Resource Development from Michigan State University, a masters degree in Natural Resources Management and Engineering and a bachelors in Economics from the University of Connecticut.