Faculty

Kanda Naknoi to join department in 2012

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Kanda Naknoi, currently Assistant Professor of Economics at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management, will be joining the Department of Economics in Fall 2012.  As Valedictorian, Kanda received her undergraduate degree from Hitotsubashi University and her M.A. in Economics from University of Tokyo.  In 2004, she completed her Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford University.  At Purdue, she has taught Intermediate Macroeconomics at the undergraduate level, undergraduate and graduate courses in International  Monetary Economics, and graduate workshops in Economic Theory and Macroeconomics.  A specialist in macroeconomic aspects of international trade and finance, monetary economics, and economic history, Kanda has published her research in the Journal of Monetary Economics (“Real exchange rate fluctuations, endogenous tradability and exchange rate regimes,” 2008), the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings (“The marginal product of capital, capital flows and convergence,” 2010), and several edited volumes published by the European Central Bank (“Exchange rate regimes, international linkages, and the macroeconomic performance of the new member states,” 2005), Cambridge University Press (“Does the exchange rate belong in monetary policy rules: new answers from a DSGE model with endogenous tradability and trade frictions,” 2011), and the Asian Development Bank (“Competition, labor intensity and specialization: structural changes in post-crisis Asia,” forthcoming).  She also has served as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, and as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the Asian Development Bank Institute, and the International Monetary Fund.  Kanda frequently serves as a referee for academic journals and on several occasions has reviewed grant proposals to the National Science Foundation.  

We are extremely pleased to welcome her to the Department of Economics and Connecticut.

Professor Richard Langlois speaks at George Mason University Law School

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On February 24, Prof. Richard Langlois delivered a breakfast keynote address, entitled “Design, Institutions, and the Evolution of Platforms,” at George Mason University Law school. The presentation was part of a conference called “The Digital Inventor: How Entrepreneurs Compete on Platforms,” sponsored by the Law School’s Information Economy Project. Other speakers included David Teece from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley and Donald Rosenberg, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Qualcomm. Papers from the conference will appear later this year in a special issue of the Journal of Law, Economics, & Policy.

Steve Ross in London

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Prof. Steve Ross is travelling to London for spring break.  He will present “Workplace Agglomeration and Social Network Segregation: Labor Market Returns by Race” at the London School of Economics and “Estimating the effects of friendship networks on health behaviors of adolescents” at the University College London.  He will also take a quick side trip to the Netherlands to present at the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economics Policy Analysis.

Professor Miceli speaks to UConn Alumni about the Economics of Sports

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Professor Tom Miceli presented a lecture on “The Economics of Professional Sports” to the UConn Alumni Association of Greater Hartford on Tuesday, February 7, at Rentschler Field.  The motivation for the talk was the recent movie Moneyball, which described how the Oakland Athletics used computer technology to assemble a winning team using players who had been overlooked by other teams.  Professor Miceli described how the labor market for professional baseball players works, and how the Athletics were able to identify and sign players who had been undervalued by the market.  He also pointed out that this innovation only provided the Athletics a temporary advantage because other teams quickly copied their strategy by hiring their own computer analysts.  In fact, Professor Miceli argued that the quick diffusion of new ideas—like the use of computers or the signing of international players—is desirable from the league’s perspective because it prevents teams from gaining a long-term advantage, which would undermine the goal of maintaining competitive balance.

Professor Ray offers a series of Workshops on Data Envelopment Analysis in India

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In what may be described as an academic marathon, Professor Subhash Ray offered back-to-back workshops on the nonparametric method of performance evaluation known as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in three different institutions in India during January 2-9, 2012.

He started off at Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi (the youngest member of the prestigious IIM family) where he taught the basics of DEA for the MBA students.

From there he moved on to the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, and held a workshop there for two days.

The final leg of his tour took him to Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank of the country, in Mumbai (known previously as Bombay). There he delivered an invited lecture at the Head Office of RBI on the measurement of productivity in banks, and offered an assessment of the impact of liberalization in the Indian banking industry comparing the performance of public sector, private, and foreign commercial banks. Apart from the lecture, he offered two days of hands-on instruction on how to measure efficiency to a group of young officers at the Economics and Statistics Division of RBI.

Professor Ray started teaching DEA in India in 2001 when he visited the Indian Institutes of Management in Calcutta and Ahmadabadas a Fulbright lecturer. Over the subsequent years he has held workshops all over the country at many leading universities and research institutions. Right before his latest visit to India, he was invited by two different academic institutions in India in November 2011 to deliver a keynote address at an international conference on economic and business analysis at Dayalbagh Educational Institute in Agra, and to present a paper on the impact of liberalization on Indian banking at a conference held by the department of WTO studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Delhi.

Professor Harmon in the Journal of Economic Education

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Prof. Oskar Harmon, with his co-authors Dan Mercier (Director ITL, UConn), Betsy Guala & Margaret Brown (Media Developers, IDD, UConn) and Craig Burdick (Webmaster, UConn) had their paper “Graph Tool” published in the Spring 2012 issue of the Journal of Economic Education (JEE).  The JEE is a leading journal in the field of economic education and publishes articles on topics in teaching economics.  Prof. Harmon’s article is included in the section of the journal dedicated to innovative electronic technology.

Prof. Harmon and his co-authors developed a flash-based tool to quickly draw diagrams commonly taught in principles of economics courses.  The article presents several examples illustrating how the tool can be used.

Sandwich an Economics Course Around New Year’s?

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52 students taking Economics 1201 in Winter Session 2012 did just that.  Professor’s Harmon’s Online Principles of Microeconomics continued to be an attractive draw in the University’s ever-growing portfolio of Winter Term Online Courses.  First offered in Winter Term 2010, Harmon’s course drew 29 students and the same number in 2011.  This Winter Intersession, though, enrollment increased by 80%.  The jump may have been related to the recent UConn Today Article 11/16/2011, describing how mobile devices, Facebook, and Twitter are incorporated in the course. 

The course is offered entirely online and condenses an entire semester’s material into an 18-day period, beginning shortly after Christmas, and ending just before Spring term begins.  (See “Boot Camp Economics,” UConn Econ Blog , 4/19/2010, for a description.) The course has 2 proctored exams, and students can elect to take the exams at the Storrs Campus Homer Library or at alternate more conveniently located certified proctoring center.  This winter term 14 students (27%) took their exams at alternate off-campus proctoring centers.  Two of the students took their exams in locations far from Connecticut:  France, and China. 

Bern Dibner took his final exam in Paris, France.  He writes, “I am a dual major in Mechanical Engineering and German Studies and am in my final semester (10th) at UConn. This results in the requirement to take many classes including intersession classes. As a dual degree student, I have to fill the general education requirements of both the College of Liberal Arts and Science and the School of Engineering, which is my general reason for taking the class. I choose this class specifically among those which would fill the requirement, because I thought it would be an interesting departure from my normal course work and useful for my general education. I spent a year abroad in Stuttgart, Germany studying and doing an internship Daimler AG and my trip to France this winter was to visit friends I met in Germany, and, more concretely, to follow-up potential job opportunities in France and Germany after college.  Being able to take a course while away from Storrs is extremely advantageous, especially considering the limited offerings of the Storrs community, particularly when school is not in normal session.  More   importantly, online classes such as this allow students like myself to graduate on time while attempting more ambitious academic programs. I wish I could have taken more intersession courses as I am going to have to take 21 credits this Spring to graduate.”  Another student took the final exam in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province China.  She is a freshman majoring in accounting and visited her parents during the winter break. 

Winter Intersession online courses are increasing popular at Uconn.  University statistics show a steep acceleration in growth since 2010.  In 2010 the online enrollment was 102 students, in 2011 it grew by 70% to 173, and in 2012 it grew by 115% to 371.  Enrollments in the traditional face-to-face class have not increased as quickly, and the share of online enrollment in total winter intersession enrollment has risen from 20% in 2010 to 58% in 2012.

Here are pictures of the alternate proctoring centers in France and China:

(Left) American Library in Paris, France. (Right) Ceramics School in Chaozhou, China.

Professor Ross Receives NIH Funding

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Professor Ross receives NIH funding to study the effect of friendship networks on the health behavior of adolescents.  Professor Ross with Professors Fletcher at Yale University and Cohen-Cole at the University of Maryland were awarded a major R21 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.  Under this award, they will develop and implement new approaches to identify the causal effect of the friendships that a student forms in school on key health related behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, weight gain and sexual relations.  In the proposed research, the authors will attempt to isolate the causal effect of friends from confounding factors, such as students sorting into specific friendships based on their unobservables or choosing friends who exhibit similar behaviors by exploiting across grade differences in the environment experienced by students whose families selected into the same school, but who happened to have children of slightly different ages.  One aim of their study will be to compare students who made very similar friendships as other students in the same school, but due to their grade were exposed to friends who exhibited different levels of smoking or drinking. In another aim, their study will the examine differences in friendship network structure between adjacent grades and the impact of those differences on health behaviors.

Yuriy Loukachev to Receive SHARE Award

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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!

Prof. Carstensen on Swedish Television

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On Tuesday, December 7, Prof. Carstensen hosted more than a dozen foreign journalists at the request of the U.S. Department of State.  The journalists represented China, Bosnia, Germany, Switzerland, France, Sweden, and a slew of other countries.  Prof. Carstensen provided an overview of Connecticut’s economic performance and the new initiatives the Governor has implemented; he highlighted the importance of the Biosciences Connecticut development and the commitment of Jackson Labs to developing a major research facility in Farmington at UCHC.  Prof. Carstensen also discussed the current national economic situation and the complex situation with the euro narrowly and European economic health broadly.

Among those participating, was a film crew from Swedish television.  At the end of the lively discussion with the foreign journalists, the Swedish crew filmed a five minute interview with Prof. Carstensen, which was sent to Sweden for inclusion in a national news program.