The UConn Economics Department was well represented by faculty and graduate students attending the annual Conference of the Southern Economics Association held in New Orleans at the beginning of the Thanksgiving break. Those in attendance included Jorge Agüero, Ken Couch, David Simon, William Alpert, Matt Ross, Tao Song, Ling Huang, and Oskar Harmon.
Announcements
JPAM, Edited by Kenneth Couch at UConn, Ranked in Economics Top 40 and Top 3 of Public Administration
Based on Journal Citation Report data released this week, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) is ranked 31st within economics based on the two-year impact factor (2.58) and 37th based on the five-year impact factor (3.03) among 333 listed journals.
JPAM is also ranked second among 46 listed journals in the field of Public Administration using either the two or five-year impact factor. University of Connecticut Professor, Ken Couch, serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.
The Department mourns the loss of Prof. Kimenyi
Photo credit: BMI Murithi and Nation Media Group
The Department mourns the loss of one of its own. Prof. Kimenyi was a former member of the Department before leaving to join the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. According to BMI Muriithi of the Daily Nation, he passed away on Saturday, June 6, at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, after a long illness. BMI Muriithi’s article in Daily Nation is available here.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, his wife, Irene, and his three sons. Condolences and sympathy can be sent to: Irene Wangui Kimenyi , 2011 Wheaton Haven Court, Silver Springs, MD 20902.
The following is a note of memorium written by Prof. Richard Langlois:
A note in memorium of Mwangi S. (Samson) Kimenyi
from his friends and former colleagues at the University of Connecticut
We in the Department of Economics at the University of Connecticut were truly grieved to hear of Samson’s passing.
Samson came to us in 1991 and left to form KIPPRA in 1999, and was thereafter only sporadically in residence in Storrs. But he was with us for almost the entire decade of the nineties. We had hired him away from the University of Mississippi and awarded him the rank of Associate Professor less than five years after his Ph.D., which is an extraordinary rate of advancement. What attracted us to Samson was his astounding rate of publication, on a variety of topics. Among these publications was work on poverty in the United States, which focused on the importance of family structure – and which won the prize for best paper in the Southern Economic Journal. What we discovered after Samson had been with us a short while is that we had hired a wonderful man as well as a wonderful scholar. Those of us who came to know him well found that family was just not an intellectual interest for him but was part of his being, and we admired his devotion to his wife Irene and his three boys, who largely grew up here in Mansfield.
The problem with hiring a superstar, however, is that the world beckons. As Samson’s interests moved in the direction of African development, and as he became increasingly well known in that field, he was tapped to form KIPPRA and then called to the Brookings Institution. But we always considered Samson to have remained a member of our faculty in spirit. Many of us remember his visit part-way through the KIPPRA experience, which was memorable for a seminar in which he shared with us some of his accomplishments and challenges in Kenya.
In a way, we at UConn had already learned to miss Samson. Knowing that the parting is now final is a tragedy to us. But we will always remember his tenure here; and the spirit of his intellectual achievements and his warm personality will always remain part of our department legacy. We wish his family comfort in their time of grief.
Professor Shor publishes in Operations Research Letters
Professor Mikhael Shor has had his paper, “How collaborative forecasting can reduce forecast accuracy,” accepted by Operations Research Letters.
The brief article compares an independent supplier and retailer who each forecast consumer demand with a jointly-profit-maximizing supplier and retailer who share their forecasts of consumer demand. The move from non-collaborative to collaborative forecasting can have the unexpected impact of decreasing demand forecast accuracy while still increasing profit. Therefore, collaborating firms should maintain a focus on profits, not forecast accuracy, as the appropriate measure of success.
Prof. Langlois receives CLAS award
Prof. Langlois is named a recipient of the 2015 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Excellence in Research award. Congratulations!
Prof. Ozabaci accepts position at UNH
Prof. Deniz Ozabaci, visiting assistant professor, has accepted an appointment to the University of New Hampshire. The Department thanks her for her service and wishes her the very best in the future. Congratulations!
Prof. Heffley retires
Photo L to R: Dennis Heffley, Perry Shapiro, Subhash Ray
Prof. Dennis Heffley retired from the Department of Economics after 41 years at the University of Connecticut, including 4 years as the Department Head, 2005-2009. About 45 family members, current and former colleagues, many former graduate students, and Dennis’s major adviser, Perry Shapiro, who traveled from California, gathered for a retirement party and to celebrate his many achievements in late December at the end of the fall semester.
Dennis expects to keep busy in his retirement and would love to hear from everybody. We thank Dennis for his many years of service to the Department and the University and wish him and his family the very best.
Latest RePEc Rankings- Economics is Up
According to the latest RePEc rankings, the UConn Department of Economics is currently ranked 55 out of 491 U.S. institutions. This latest increase in ranking is a true reflection of the university’s recent investment towards national prominence. With continuing hard work from faculty and students, we expect our rise to continue in the future.
See the rankings here: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.usecondept.html
Dr. Benny Widyono to Speaks at CKS Headquarters
On January 13, Dr. Benny Widyono will give a talk titled “Economic Globalization and the impact on the Cambodian economy,” at the Center for Khmer Studies’ Headquarters in Siem Reap.
Dr. Widyono is currently an adjunct professor at the UConn Stamford campus. He is also an advisor at Leopard Capital LP. Previously, Dr. Widyono served as a United Nations diplomat in Cambodia, Thailand, Chile, and New York. He was a peacekeeper in Cambodia with UNTAC from 1992 to 1993, and then returned to Cambodia as the UN Secretary-General’s Representative from 1994-1997. Dr. Widyono published Dancing in the Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cambodia while he was a visiting scholar at Cornell University.
For more about Khmer Studies, please click here.
Economics Department Receives New Trust Fund
The Economics Department is very pleased to announce that it has been designated as the beneficiary of the Eleanor Bloom Trust. The trust is a permanent endowment, and Ms. Bloom left instructions that the funds be used to provide financial aid to the Economics Department, preferably for research assistants. Funding of this type provides critical support for our department and graduate program, allowing us to provide greater opportunities for the enhancement of research and teaching, and the education and training of graduate research assistants. And it is particularly gratifying when the source is a former student who chose to give back to the University and the Department in this way.
Ms. Bloom received her B.A. in Economics with Honors from UConn in 1955. She went on to receive her MA from Trinity College and taught Latin at E.O. Smith High School in Storrs. The Department is very grateful for her support.