Faculty activities

Prof. Zimmermann co-organizes conference on the Macroeconomics of Health

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Prof. Zimmermann is co-organizing a conference on the Macroeconomics of Health this week at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The study of health economics has traditionally been the realm of applied microeconomics. There is, however, an increasing awareness that health issues also have macroeconomic consequences. A prime example is the AIDS epidemic, which has fundamentally changed the labor market, as well as many other markets, in parts of Africa. Closer to home, the cost of health care is putting a new burden on governments and businesses; indeed, in his recent press conference, President Obama said that health care reform was at the forefront of economic and public policy. Also, demographic changes can change households’ saving behavior to a point of affecting capital accumulation and thus growth.

The conference seeks to build new synergies between macroeconomics and health economics, first by assembling the macroeconomists working on health issues, second by encouraging interaction with traditional health economists. The covered topics are broad, from the impact of tropical diseases on developing economies to health care reform in the United States.

For more details about the conference, see the UCSB Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance.

Prof. Zimmermann encourages blogging on economic research

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Blogs have become a popular medium to discuss all sorts of things, and this blog is an example of that. With the predicted decline of academic journals, new models of disseminating and discussing research are explored, and blogs could be one of them. In economics, however, most blogs are discussing current events and are rather politicized. Those that discuss research are few and unknown. To promote them, Prof. Zimmermann (IDEAS) has created a year ago a blog aggregator devoted to economic research, Econ Academics. The future will tell whether research blogs will be successful.

Economic Rights Group Begins 6th Year

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Initiated by Lanse Minkler (Economics) (IDEAS) and Shareen Hertel (Political Science) (IDEAS) in the fall of 2004, the Economic Rights Group (ERG) has grown to include sixteen UCONN faculty members and nine “Affilitate” scholars. Participating Economics faculty also include Samson Kimenyi, Susan Randolph (IDEAS), Christian Zimmermann (IDEAS), and, most recently, Thomas Miceli. But the group also features a wide range of scholars from departments and schools like Political Science, Sociology, and Geography, to Law, Social Work, and Medicine. The ERG operates under the umbrella of the Human Rights Institute, itself a result of the Human Rights Initiative of the university.

The central purpose of the ERG is to investigate issues surrounding the fundamental human right of to a decent standard of living, as described in article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The group meets four or five times a semester to discuss seminal readings, and increasingly to consider original research generated by ERG members. Some of that research is included in the nascent ERG Working Paper Series. Additionally, the group meets at an annual day-long workshop to intensively investigate a specific topic annually. At this past April’s most recent ERG workshop in April 2009, for example, ERG members and affiliates presented their research on the state of economic rights in the U.S. The topic of the 2009 workshop mirrors the upcoming conference to be sponsored by the Human Rights Institute, entitled Human Rights in the USA.

Human Rights in the USA is an international three-day conference will take place from October 22 to October 24 that takes place at both the Storrs and Law School campuses. While we often think of human rights violations as only occurring elsewhere, the purpose this conference is to assess the state of human rights right here at home. There will be three economic rights themed panels: Economic Rights and Poverty; Katrina Through an Economic Rights Lens; and Researching Economic Rights in the USA. The entire UCONN community is invited to attend the conference and to learn about the state-of-the-art research in human rights.

For more information see: Economic Rights Group, Human Rights in the USA conference, Human Rights Institute.

Prof. Segerson president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

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Prof. Kathleen Segerson (IDEAS), the Philip E. Austin Chair of Economics, was recently elected to a 2-year term as President of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE). AERE is an international professional association for economists working on the environment and natural resources. It was founded as a means for exchanging ideas, stimulating research, and promoting graduate training in environmental and resource economics. AERE currently has over 800 members from more than thirty nations, coming from academic institutions, the public sector, and private industry. It has two journals, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM) and the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (REEP). It sponsors sessions at several meetings, including those held by the Allied Social Science Associations, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, Southern Economic Association, and Western Economics Association International. Segerson has previously served as Vice-President and a member of the Board of Directors of AERE.

Prof. Zimmermann gives plenary talk at Open Access conference in Geneva

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Prof. Christian Zimmermann (IDEAS) spoke last week at the sixth CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI6) in Geneva. This meeting assembles digital librarians from around the world as they discuss issues about the digital and open dissemination of research (open access).

Zimmermann’s talk discussed on how to engage a community in a research dissemination project by catering to the various incentives of its participants. By taking as example the RePEc Author Service he administers, he showed that one can push a major bibliographic project without any funding by letting everyone who benefits from it help out. This decentralization of the work has been critical to the success of RePEc.

Report examines impact of mass layoffs on workers’ long-term earnings

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From the UConn Advance:

For workers losing jobs due to mass layoffs in the current economic downturn, the bad news is that more people than ever are looking for work right now, making it the toughest job market in at least two decades.

But for those lucky enough to find another job, there is more bad news: they will likely suffer lower wages for many years compared to similar workers who are not laid off.

A new study (pdf) from UConn and the Connecticut Department of Labor shows how the business cycle plays a determining role in the extent of wage losses for workers let go in mass layoffs and plant closings.

The study finds that for workers losing jobs during a recession, the damage to their earnings can linger for years. By contrast, for workers who lose jobs as part of a mass layoff or plant closure in more favorable times, long-term earnings losses are negligible.

Kenneth Couch (IDEAS), an associate professor of economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, teamed up with researchers at the Connecticut Department of Labor, economist Nicholas Jolly (MA, PhD) and analyst Dana Placzek, for the study.

Read more in the UConn Advance

CLAS faculty snapshot features Prof. Ross

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Stephen Ross (IDEAS) studies urban economics and how economic forces affect the lives of people in disadvantaged groups. One area he has studied closely is discrimination in mortgage lending. Another, which he began to track several years ago, is the subprime mortgage market. He saw a significant increase in risk in lending practices from 2004 to 2005 and 2006, when evidence mounted that risky loans were likely to lead to foreclosures.

Listen to the podcast of this snapshot.

UConn hosted RePEc Author Service has now 20,000 registered authors

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The RePEc Author Service, managed by Prof. Christian Zimmermann (IDEAS) and, since 2005, hosted by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn, has reached a major milestone with its 20,000th registered author. This service allows economists to create an online profile of their works to be used by other services such as IDEAS (also hosted by CLAS). It also allows authors to obtain monthly updates on the online popularity and newly discovered citations of their works.

To put things in perspective, the largest association in economics is the American Economic Association, which has 18,000 members, including many outside the United States. The RePEc Author Service has authors in all US states and 119 countries.

Prof. Ross presents his research on mortgage lending discrimination at the Cleveland Fed

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Professor Ross presented his research on mortgage lending discrimination as part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s conference on the Community Reinvestment Act on Feb 6, 2009. Professor Ross discussed the lessons learned from his research concerning the Boston Fed study and a major paired testing study of mortgage lending discrimination conducted by the Urban Institute. Professor Ross also discussed his experiences working as a consultant on a Fair Lending case for the New York State Attorney General’s Office. Professor Ross emphasized that a much of the discrimination in the mortgage market occurs because of the discretion available to individual loan officers or mortgage brokers, and discrimination is often non-existent at lenders that have good command and control systems. He recommended that fair lending investigations focus on lenders’ entire business model as opposed to just their fair lending monitoring systems.

For more see the Cleveland Fed website.

CLAS faculty snapshot features Richard Langlois

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Prof. Langlois (IDEAS), who has been at UConn since 1983, studies the economics of organization – that is, why entities such as business firms are organized in a particular way. In the late 19th century, mass production of goods and the vertical integration of companies radically transformed the economy. In the late 20th century, independent suppliers and market coordination were more effective than large, vertically integrated corporations. Langlois argues that the type of organization that succeeds depends on the conditions of the economy at the time.

Listen to the podcast of this snapshot.