Faculty activities

Prof. Couch co-organizes conference at San Francisco Fed

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The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco announces a call for papers for a conference that will explore how job loss, the onset of health limitations, and changes in household structure affect individual and household well-being over the life course. Proceedings of the conference, as well as discussions from invited discussants, will be published by Stanford University Press as a book edited by Kenneth Couch, University of Connecticut, Mary C. Daly, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Julie Zissimopoulos, RAND.

The goal of the conference and the subsequent book will be to provide a systematic empirical analysis of the incidence of these life course shocks and their impact on economic and non-economic welfare of individuals and households. To facilitate a cohesive discussion and book the Editors have agreed on four areas of analysis that will be commonly addressed for each of the three identified life events: job loss, disability, and changes in family structure.

For more details, see the call for papers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Prof. Zimmermann to speak in Colombia

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Prof. Zimmermann has been invited to speak next month at the annual meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) in Medellín (Colombia). LACEA has about 1000 members and its annual meetings are a large gathering where several prominent economists are invited to present the state of the art in their field.

Prof. Zimmermann will have a full session to discuss RePEc, the large bibliographic initiative in Economics he is helping lead. This project is particularly popular in Latin America, as it allows to access without subscription a bibliographic database, which also carries a large proportion of research that is freely available. In particular, Colombia has its own portal that allows journals and working paper coordinators to index their works in RePEc: DotEc.

Prof. Segerson advises U.S. EPA

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Professor Kathy Segerson is a member of the Chartered Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board (SAB), which meets regularly to provide EPA with scientific and technical advice about proposed regulatory changes, research and budget priorities, and other Agency activities. The SAB is an interdisciplinary board comprised primarily of academics, but also includes individuals who work for state governments or in the private sector. While most members have expertise in the biological, physical and health sciences, the Board also includes social scientists, reflecting EPA’s increasingly recognition of the important role that economic and social factors play in advancing its mission. Professor Segerson is currently in her second 3-year term on the Board. Among her most notable contributions while serving on the Board is her leadership as Vice-Chair of the Committee on Valuing the Protection of Ecological Systems and Services, which prepared a comprehensive report (pdf) for EPA that provides advice to the Agency on how it can improve valuation of the ecological effects of its various decisions and programs.

IDEAS reaches one billion page views

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IDEAS, the RePEc service displaying bibliographic data about research in Economics through the web, has recently reached 1 billion page views since inception in September 1997. Currently, the site serves over 20 million pages a month, which averages to about 8 pages a second. Not all this traffic is entirely legitimate though, as the spidering robots of the major Internet search engines keep the server quite busy. Along with users doing repeat views of the same page, this accounts for about 75% of traffic. Still, this means IDEAS should have reached now about a quarter billion page views by humans. To give an idea of what this represents: According to Alexa.com, the repec.org domain, of which IDEAS is the major traffic contributor, has about the same global traffic rank as the uconn.edu domain.

IDEAS is managed by Prof. Zimmermann and hosted by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Connecticut.

Prof. Randolph reports on her sabbatical leave

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So what does one do when on sabbatical? I can’t speak for others, but can tell you a bit about mine. My husband (who is a professor of Sociology at the University of Hartford) and I were fortunate enough to succeed in arranging sabbaticals for the same semester and so decided to spend our sabbatical in Costa Rica. My primary objective for the semester was to complete the draft chapters of a book I am working on with my co-authors Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Terra Lawson-Remer (both at the New School University in New York) on a methodology to monitor countries’ compliance with their obligations of result under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ICESCR. My husband is involved in creating a minor in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at the University of Hartford, and his objective was to enrich his background in these areas. We affiliated with the University of Peace, UPEACE. UPEACE is a United Nations University dedicated to providing education, training and research related to the United Nations’ goal of promoting worldwide peace and security. It offers eight interdisciplinary MA programs in areas related to peace and security, including one on international law and human rights, my interest.

UPEACE is situated just outside of Ciudad Colón about 15 miles southwest of San José, so we rented an efficiency apartment in Ciudad Colón. Our affiliation with UPEACE enabled us to interact with faculty (and students) from all over the world with interests similar to ours through seminars, brown bags, and informal meals and gatherings. It also gave us access to their library. Both factors facilitated our work. TheInter-American Institute for Human Rights, IIHR, (the research and education body charged with promoting and strengthening respect for human rights as set forth in the American Convention on Human Rights) is also located in San José and provided me with additional networking opportunities. Beyond the enrichment gained through our affiliation with UPEACE and interactions with the IIHR, I succeeded in drafting four chapters of my book. And yes, work time was punctuated by several rainforest hikes, white water rafting trips, and beach trips. As the saying goes, “All work and no play…,” and how could one possibly resist Costa Rica’s natural riches?

Prof. Furtado to be on research leave at Yale

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Professor Delia Furtado will be spending the 2010-2011 academic year visiting the Yale School of Public Health on a research fellowship. During her time at Yale, she plans to continue her research on ethnic networks, paying particular attention to their relationship with the take-up of health-related public services and health outcomes. She also hopes to initiate new studies in the fields of immigration and public health.

Professor Furtado is very much looking forward to having a year to concentrate on her research but will miss everyone at UConn. Luckily, New Haven isn’t so far away.

Prof. Ross and Zimmermann to present at NBER Summer Institute

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Every Summer, a select group of economists assembles over the span of four week for the NBER Summer Institute, presenting their latest research. The program is principally composed by affiliates of the NBER, but outsiders are also given the opportunity to attend, discuss and present. Two department faculty will be in attendance this year at the invitation-only event.

On July 23, Prof. Christian Zimmermann will be presenting “Unemployment Accounts versus Unemployment Insurance: A Quantitative Evaluation” (joint with Stéphane Pallage) in the Aggregate Implications of Microeconomic Consumption Behavior Workshop. On July 27, Prof. Stephen Ross will be presenting “Estimating the Effects of Friendship Networks on Health Behaviors of Adolescents” (joint with Jason Fletcher) in the Health Economics Workshop.

Prof. Zimmermann tours Europe

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Prof. Zimmermann is in Europe giving a series of lectures in Italy, Portugal and Germany. His trip started in Rimini, Italy, where he presented at the Rimini Conference in Economics Finance. He then headed to Varenna, Italy, where he attended the NBER Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar. His Italy portion of the journey concluded in Florence, where he gave two seminars at the European University Institute.

In Portugal, he presented and then participated in the concluding panel of a workshop on research evaluation at the University of Minho, in Braga. In Germany, he first participated in a meeting of the scientific board of the International Data Service Center at IZA, in Bonn, and concluded his trip with a presentation at a workshop on macroeconomics at the University of Mannheim.

Prof. Langlois reports about his travels in Europe

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Professor Richard Langlois is currently traveling in the United Kingdom as a Visiting Fellow of the Academy of Advanced International Management. He will be giving a series of talks in Lancaster, London, and Edinburgh. As part of the trip, he will also attend conferences in London, Scotland, and Denmark. Professor Langlois’s first stop in the UK was Nottingham, where he spoke at the Nottingham University Business School and touched base with UConn’s Marshall Scholar Michelle Prairie (pictured), who is completing her M. S. in Economics at Nottingham before moving on for another Masters degree at the London School of Economics in the fall.

On June 13 he visited the Lake District of Cumbria, where he discovered not only another Storrs but also a Storrs Hall, built in the 1790s and famously the home of John Bolton, a Liverpool ship owner who engaged in the “triangular trade” – including slaves – among Africa, the West Indies, and Britain.