Prof. Bill Alpert was quoted in the Stamford Advocate in an article regarding job growth in Connecticut for the month of November.
Faculty
Couch organizes Conference at AARP
Couch organizes Conference at AARP
Professor Couch along with his collaborators, Julie Zissimopoulos (USC) and Mary Daly (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco), organized a one-day conference on Social Insurance and Lifecycle Events Among Older Americans held at the national headquarters of AARP in Washington, D.C. on December 5th. Researchers from major universities, federal agencies, consulting firms, and think tanks made presentations. About 80 people attended the event including representatives of two Congressional committees, multiple federal agencies, several philanthropic organizations, the NIA, and numerous universities and think tanks. The papers presented will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of Research on Aging. The event was supported by a grant from AARP to the University of Connecticut.
Prof. Ross’s research mentioned in Slate Magazine
An article on the American Melting Pot in Slate Magazine on October 31st discusses one of Professor Ross‘s recent working papers. In this paper, Professors Ananat, Fu and Ross find that African-Americans benefit less in terms of earnings for working in locations with lots of economic activity. Exposure to economic activity allows workers and firms to learn from each other and raises productivity and thus wages. However, these spillovers appear to accrue along racial lines so that African-Americans do not benefit from a vibrant work location when most of the individuals working in that location are white.
Prof. Hallwood’s Press Release
Prof. Paul Hallwood’s (with Professor Ronald MacDonald of University of Glasgow) Press Release on Wednesday of his position paper (submitted to the Smith Commission) outlining a new fiscal settlement for Scotland – following September’s Independence Referendum – had within 24-hours received widespread coverage in the Scottish Press; five newspapers covered it in six reports or editorials. The headlines of the news pieces were: “No Scots bail-out by Westminster, academics warn” (Daily Express), “Pressure mounts on Labour to review tax proposals” and an editorial “Party labours with its powers plan” (The Herald), “Scotland should have to wait 15 years for a bailout it its spends too much” (The Scotsman), “Tight rein on spending needed” (Aberdeen Press and Journal), and “Put up and Shut up” (Daily Record).
Prof. Hallwood’s Position Paper on Rearranging Scottish Finances Released
An excerpt from the Press Release is below.
A copy has been lodged with the Smith Commission on Scottish finances
NEWS RELEASE
22 October 2014
WHAT IS THE RIGHT BUDGET CONSTRAINT FOR SCOTLAND?
An analysis by Professor Paul Hallwood (University of Connecticut) and Professor Ronald MacDonald (University of Glasgow)
Highlighted recommendations include:
- Block grants from Westminster should not be elastic in the sense that if the Scottish Parliament cannot finance its chosen spending level out of the existing block grant and own-sourced taxes, the block grant is not automatically or quickly increased.
- Any extra taxes raised by Scotland are not shared with Westminster.
- If the Scottish Parliament’s tax policy led to a smaller tax base (a shrinking economy), it should have to live with that during the extended period of non-adjustment.
- Borrowing by the Scottish Government should be regulated.
The fiscal design proposals of all the main Scottish political parties are examined against these criteria. Only those of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Conservatives are shown to be workable.
CHOICE reviews Prof. Hallwood
![hallwood[1]](http://production.wordpress.uconn.edu/econ/wp-content/uploads/sites/681/2012/04/hallwood1.jpg)
CHOICE magazine reviewed Professor Hallwood’s Economics of the Oceans: Rights, Rents and Resource, Routledge, Oxford, 2014. It awards the book a “highly recommended” saying: “This unique study combines ecological concepts and neoclassical economic models with case studies to analyze critical problems relating to the oceans. Using the perspectives of law and economics, Hallwood (Univ. of Connecticut) provides both historical context and a discussion of how conflict resolution institutions may help solve problems pertaining to oceans. The book’s parts describe the study’s topical domain: historic wrecks, modern pirates; enclosure; fisheries economics; fisheries regime formation; marine mammals; coral reefs, marine protected areas, wetlands; pollution; and minerals. Each part includes one to four chapters. In every instance, the author couches problems in economic terms: free rider problems relate to maritime piracy; microeconomics concepts apply to resolving maritime boundaries; the Coase theorem applies to fisheries management.”
Sining Wang at IFREE
As other graduate students battle the winter snow, PhD student Sining Wang will be spending a week in January in Southern California. Sining has been selected to participate in IFREE’s Twentieth Annual Visiting Graduate Student Workshop in Experimental Economics. IFREE is the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics and was established in 1997 by Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Prize winner for his pioneering research bringing experimental methods to economics. The workshop will be held at Chapman University, Vernon Smith’s academic home. In the week-long session, Sining will participate in experiments, learn about experimental results and techniques, and have a chance to present his own research to leading faculty in experimental economics.
Prof. Agüero on Leave
Professor Jorge Agüero is spending this academic year at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the leading source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Professor Agüero will be part of the visiting scholar program at IDB, a program created to address the Bank’s growing demand for knowledge to support the design of public policies and operational loans in public policy areas to prevent and reduce violence in Latin America and the Caribbean. Professor Agüero will contribute to this goal through his research on domestic violence in the region.
Prof. Ling Huang ‘s Research Accepted at AER
Research by Assistant Professor Ling Huang and her co-author, Martin Smith has been accepted for publication in the American Economic Review. The article, entitled “The Dynamic Efficiency Costs of Common-Pool Resource Exploitation” makes use of a dynamic game to understand the Common-Pool resource extraction. Natural resources management is a dynamic problem by its nature. Economists have worked on this important area for a very long time in the context of optimal control theory. However, the theoretical framework is very hard to be directly applied to empirical quantification. Based on multiple generations of research, hinged on the data availability and recent methodological development in dynamic discrete choice modeling, this paper is novel in its use of real data and a comprehensive dynamic game framework to empirically quantify the effect of the “tragedy of the commons.” It is the first paper in the fishery field published in AER after three decades.
Abstract
We conduct the first empirical investigation of common-pool resource users’ dynamic and strategic behavior at the micro level using real-world data. Fishermen’s strategies in a fully dynamic game account for latent resource dynamics and other players’ actions, revealing the profit structure of the fishery. We compare the fishermen’s actual and socially optimal exploitation paths under a time-specific vessel allocation policy and find a sizable dynamic externality. Individual fishermen respond to other users by exerting effort above the optimal level early in the season. Congestion is costly instantaneously but is beneficial in the long run because it partially offsets dynamic inefficiencies.
Prof. Segerson appointed to NAS climate change committee
Professor Kathy Segerson was recently appointed to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) National Research Council (NRC) Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) (http://www.globalchange.gov/) was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 to “assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” Every four years it prepares the National Climate Assessment (NCA), which provides an overview of what is currently known about the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future. In May 2014, the USGCRP released the third NCA (http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/). The NRC Committee provides ongoing and focused advice to the USGCRP, including formal reviews of the NCAs. It is comprised of 20 individuals from academia, government, and the private sector, with a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including economics, engineering, risk communication, sociology and ecology. Professor Segerson’s appointment to the Committee is for three years.