Faculty

Prof. Zimmermann elected senior fellow of RCEA

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Prof. Zimmermann has recently been elected a senior fellow of the Rimini Center for Economic Analysis (RCEA), a private, non-profit international organization dedicated to independent research in Applied Economics, Theoretical Economics and related fields. It is located in Rimini (Italy) where some of the founding trustees and scholars have special ties. The RCEA is the outcome of collaboration between Canadian economists, Italian economists and a group of eminent trustees from academia, banking, government and industry. Research at the RCEA is conducted to enlighten scientific and public debate on economic issues, and not to advance any economic, political and social agenda. The RCEA scholars are drawn from Canada, Italy and other countries, have experience in academia and/or government and may hold different points of view on economic, political and social issues.

Prof. Zimmermann is already a research fellow at the IZA Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn (Germany) and a research network fellow at CESifo in Munich (Germany).

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. Carstensen part of major grant on local biofuel production

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As UConn Today reports, Prof. Carstensen is participating in a major grant lead at the department of Chemistry to study the local production of biofuels. The goal of the $1.8 million grant from the US Department of Energy is to find local sources for biofuels as well as local catalysts and reactors useful for the production process. Prof. Carstensen’s role in the project is to study the economic viability of the biofuel industry in Connecticut, now and in the future.

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.

Chinese PhD student visits department for the term

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Xiaofang Dong, from the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in China, is visiting the Department for joint research with Professor Stephen Ross in the area of urban economics. During her visit, she will be working on developing theoretical models of agglomeration economies.

She has a bachelors degree in Mathematics and masters degree in Finance and is currently in the fourth year of her PH.D program. Her research focuses on both urban and labor economics, including housing policy, unemployment, public-private wage differences, entrepreneurship and agglomeration economies in China. She has published her research in the China Economic Review.

Prof. Ross elected to North American Regional Science Council

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Professor Stephen Ross was elected to the North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) as a Councillor at Large for a three year term beginning in 2011. The North American Regional Science Council promotes the scholarly exchange of ideas and knowledge that apply to urban and regional phenomena in North America and across the globe. Most significantly, the council organizes the North American Regional Science Association meeting, a large, international and interdisciplinary conference attended by Regional Scientists, Geographers, Economists, Planners, and many other disciplines. The annual meeting of the Urban Economic Association is also part of the North American meetings.

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.

Korean professor visits department for the term

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Dr. Sangmok Kang of Pusan National University in South Korea is currently visiting the Department for collaborative research with Professor Subhash Ray in the area of productivity and efficiency analysis. Dr. Kang is a a Professor of Economics back in his university in Korea and served as the Director of the Institute of Management and Economics there. In the past he has been a visiting scholar at Oregon State University, Purdue University, and University of Chicago. His principal areas of research are energy, the environment, and international trade policies. His applied research is focused on Korea and China. He has published a number of papers in well known journals including Journal of Productivity Analysis, Energy Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics, Ecological Economics, and Environment and Development Economics.

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. Miceli listed among top real estate economists

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A recent article published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics ranked Professor Thomas J. Miceli 26th in the world based on publications in the top three real estate journals over the period 1973-2008. Professor Miceli’s research in this area has focused on the operation of the real estate brokerage industry, and property law as it relates to real estate markets. In addition to being professor of economics, Miceli is affiliated with the Real Estate Center in the Business School, which is ranked first in the world in terms of publications in the top real estate journals.

Jang C. Jin and Eden S. H. Yu, “World Rankings of Real Estate Research: Recent Changes in School Competitiveness and Research Institutions,” Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, forthcoming.