Faculty

Xiaoming Li defends dissertation and heads to Freddie Mac

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Xiaoming Li defended his PhD dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Ross on Monday, April 25, 2011.

Theoretical models and empirical analyses argue that mortgage underwriting is a dynamic process in which previous mortgage and housing market conditions affect current mortgage approvals. Neighborhoods likely differ in important ways and over important events or shocks that influence both housing prices and mortgage underwriting decisions. This potential endogeneity complicates the causal analyses and failure to control for neighborhood heterogeneity risks confounding spurious and true state dependence. Xiaoming’s dissertation attempts to examine the housing dynamics and distinguish between sources of time persistence on neighborhood mortgage underwriting. Specifically, Xiaoming extends traditional and recently developed dynamic panel data techniques for use of repeated, clustered cross-sectional individual mortgage applications linearly and nonlinearly, respectively.

Xiaoming now heads to Freddie Mac as a Credit & Prepayment Modeling, Senior. We wish him the best of luck!

Prof. Carstensen evaluates University of Maine’s School of Economics

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Last week, Prof. Fred Carstensen participated in the external evaluation of the School of Economics at the University of Maine.  The U.S.Department of Agricultural assembled the four member team, drawing on faculty from Boston University, Washington State University, Clark University, and UConn.  The team reviewed voluminous written materials, including an extensive self-study, and then spent two and half days in intensive interviews with all administrators who engaged with the SOE in any capacity as well as the senior administrators of the University. Friday morning the team delivered an oral summary of their draft report to the Provost and Vice Presidents, the Dean and Associate Deans, and the School faculty.

The School of Economics at the University of Maine, in the team’s judgement, is a remarkably highly productive department, engaged in a remarkably wide array of scholarship, with a very strong record in external funding.  The most notable were the three-year $1.8 million EDA grant to support a Knowledge Transfer Initiative, aimed to helping small and medium size businesses resolve critical challenges from technical production and design issues to marketing and personnel questions, and the five-year $20 million NSF grant (largest in University history) to support a comprehensive, state-wide Sustainable Communities initiative.  In both grants, SOE faculty have leading roles.  The School, with only seventeen faculty, supports a vigorous and nationally recognized Master’s program and participates in two multi-disciplinary doctoral programs.  Notably, each faculty member negotiates the distribution of their time between research and teaching; the merit evaluation then follows from that contracted work load.  Thus teaching varies from 3-3 loads down to 1-0, and, because of the balanced treatment of teaching and research, the SOE faculty enjoyed high morale and collegiality. And senior administrators look to SOE as a model for other departments and schools.

Members of the evaluation team all planned to bring elements of the SOE model back to their home universities.

Prof. Carstensen named Educator of the Year

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On Thursday, April 28, the Undergraduate Academic Affairs committee of the UConn Undergraduate Student Government hosted its annual banquet to recognize Professional Excellence in Education among staff, advisers, and faculty at the University. The Committee received 26 nominations for the three categories of awards; based on these nominations, the Committee selected Professor of Economics Fred Carsensen as the Academic Educator of the Year. The student nomination cited his innovative and
challenging class on Contemporary Economic Issues: Globalization, and in particular his use of a “real time” textbook, the Financial Times. Students appreciate his discusion of current events, peppering in anecdotes and personal advice along the way. He also offers his students a rare level of academic freedom. This style encourages creativity and imagination, and his
students are always grateful, even if at first intimidated as they are whet they describe as “the audience to an improv
performance.”

Prof. Couch to be promoted to Full Professor

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Professor Kenneth Couchis a labor economist whose work focuses on disadvantaged groups in the labor market and public policies to assist them. Among other topics, his work has examined disparities in pay and employment for women and minorities, the extent of economic mobility among different groups in society and the influence of the business cycle on the lives of workers. Couch is also known for his research on differences in labor markets in Europe relative to the United States. His work has been published in leading economic journals including the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Labor Economics.

Reflecting his reputation as a leading researcher on issues of applied economic policy, Professor Couch is the Editor of the Methods for Policy Evaluation, Point/Counterpoint, and Professional Practice sections of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the journal of the national Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. He is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Income Distribution. Couch currently holds a research contract with the Social Security Administration and is a Visiting Scholar at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. In the past he has worked as a visiting professor at Cornell and Yale universities and leading public policy institutes including the American Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Research on Poverty, and the Urban Institute.

Prof. Furtado to be granted tenure

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Prof. Delia Furtado will start next academic year as a tenured Associated Professor of Economics.

Professor Furtado’s research to date has focused on immigration and ethnic assimilation. She has several well-cited papers on the economics of interethnic marriage, but has also worked on issues ranging from racial segregation to female labor force participation and fertility decisions. Her work has been published in Economic Inquiry, Journal of Population Economics, and the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. Through her current fellowship at the Yale School of Public Health, she is moving into the area of immigrant health and specifically immigrant utilization of health-related public programs.

In addition to research, Prof. Furtado has been active in teaching labor economics at both the undergraduate and PhD levels at UConn. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany.

Prof. Aysun to leave department

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Prof. Uluc Aysun will be leaving the department this Summer for the University of Central Florida, in Orlando. There, he will be joined by Melanie Guldi, currently Economics faculty at Mt. Holyoke College.

Prof. Aysun has been teaching macroeconomics, international economics and money and banking at the Stamford campus, as well as PhD international finance on the Storrs campus. His recent research has concentrated on financial frictions, emerging markets and the banking sector. We all wish Melanie, Uluc and the triplets a happy continuation in Florida.

UConn faculty to address plagiarism in Economics

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Plagiarism is to be taken seriously in all areas of scientific research. When an offense is detected, it is typically the duty of the institution where the accused offender is employed or, in the case of a thesis, where he/she studied. Not all institutions follow procedures with the same diligence, which often leads to frustration for those who were plagiarized.

A group of 21 Economics faculty from across the world, including from our department Prof. Cosgel and Prof. Zimmermann, have recently formed a plagiarism committee to deal with plagiarism in the profession. The goal is in particular to expose plagiarists who are too often repeat offenders that can get away with their deed because sanctions are local. By naming and shaming them, it is hoped that plagiarism will be perceived to be more costly. This should discourage potential offenders, and plagiarized authors should find a public advocate for their case even when local administrative channels are not willing to pursue the matter.

Alumna Yanna Wu reports on life after UConn

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Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke could unfortunately not make it to the “Life after UConn” event organized by the Association of Graduate Students in Economics last Friday. Instead, Yanna Wu spoke.

Dr. Wu graduated with a Ph.D. in economics from UConn in 2004, under the supervision of Prof. Ray. Right after that, she joined PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. in their New York office. She currently is a manager in the transfer-pricing group, which is a part of the tax practice, providing tax and economic consulting services for multinational enterprises on their inter-company pricing arrangements. Transfer pricing is a multidisciplinary field that encompasses accounting, tax, economics, finance, and law. Her main responsibilities include project solicitation and management.

Dr. Wu covered the following topics: (i) the current job market for new Ph.D. graduates in economics; (ii) potential job opportunities; (iii) differences between working in academia and in industry; (iv) how graduate students can prepare for the job market; and (v) her experience. After the lecture, Dr. Wu answered questions from graduate students.

Workshop to address state of economic rights

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The Economic & Social Rights Research Group (ESRG) of the UConn Human Rights Institute will be hosting its annual workshop this Saturday. This year’s theme is to investigate the status of each economic right. Lead by Prof. Minkler as well as Prof. Hertel from Political Sciences, the members of the group and its associates will meet in Room 304B of the Student Union all day with an agenda comprising 18 presentation. The department contributes three, with Prof. Randolph on the right to food, Adjunct Prof. Derek Johnson on the right to education and Prof. Zimmermann on the right to social security.

Next Austin Forum on Economics and Public Policy to address health care reform

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This year’s Austin Forum will feature a presentation by Prof. Jonathan Gruber, entitled “Health Care Reform in the U.S.: What Happened and Where Do We Go Now?” It will take place on Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 4:00 p.m. in the Konover Auditorium of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. This event is open to the public.

Jonathan Gruber is a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He was a key architect of Massachusetts’ health care reform effort and has been a consultant on health care reform for the Clinton, Edwards, and Obama presidential campaigns. The Washington Post called him “possibly the [Democratic] party’s most influential health-care expert.” In addition, in 2006 he was named the 19th most powerful person in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare Magazine.

In addition, Professor Gruber is the Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a Research Associate, and the author of a leading undergraduate textbook Public Finance and Public Policy. He is also a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Health Economics.

The purpose of the Forum is to provide an opportunity for discussion and debate about U.S.: What current public policy issues from an economic perspective. The Forum is funded through the Philip E. Austin Endowed Chair, which is currently held by Professor Kathleen Segerson in the Department of Economics.