Faculty

Economist Named to Austin Chair

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Another story about Segerson’s Austin Chair, this time from the UConn Foundation:

When Philip E. Austin announced his retirement from the University presidency in 2007, longtime donors quickly came together to create a lasting tribute and preserve his legacy of service. In keeping with Austin’s dedication to education and research, a $1.5-million endowed chair was created in his name to memorialize his tenure and support the work of a nationally renowned scholar. The University of Connecticut’s Board of Trustees recently awarded the chair to Kathleen Segerson (IDEAS), a highly regarded professor of economics with 22 years at UConn.

Specializing in law and the environment, Segerson is at the cutting edge of scholarly inquiry and research into some of the most pressing questions of the twenty-first century. She is an expert in three areas critical to the future: natural resource and environmental economics; law and economics; and applied microeconomics. Support through the Philip E. Austin Endowed Chair will enable her to delve deeper into these focus areas.

“This position will allow me to enhance my own research on the links between economics and the environment and the design of public policies to address environmental problems. It will increase my ability to participate in interdisciplinary collaborations and exchanges, which are essential in my research,” says Segerson.

She also notes that the endowment will have effects beyond her own research.

“The position brings recognition not only to the University but to the economics department as well,” she explains. “I hope the chair can be used to advance the contributions of the department, through, for example, fostering exchanges related to a variety of public policy issues, such as education, health care and housing.”

Segerson joined UConn as a visiting assistant professor in 1986. She holds a joint appointment in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, where she headed the Department of Economics from 2001 to 2005, and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

In 2007, she was appointed to the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. Last year, she was selected to be a fellow of both the American Agricultural Economics Association and the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

As a nationally recognized expert, Segerson’s counsel has been requested on a number of government and professional committees, including an expert panel on climate change economics for the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Her teaching and accomplishments have earned her recognition from students and colleagues alike. Segerson has received the Most Appreciated Faculty Award from the Association of Graduate Economics Students three times. She also has received the Research Excellence Award from the UConn chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching from the UConn Alumni Association.

Segerson earned a B.A. in mathematics from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in environmental natural resource economics from Cornell University.

As UConn’s thirteenth president, Austin led the University through a period of remarkable transition from 1996 to 2007. He oversaw UConn’s dramatic physical transformation and steep rise in national prominence for academic excellence. Austin’s tenure also was marked by a fivefold growth of the endowment.

“It is a real honor to be appointed to a chair that was endowed in recognition of President Austin’s many contributions to the University of Connecticut. Under his leadership, the University made great strides forward, and I am very pleased to be a part of honoring his legacy,” says Segerson.

Prof. Zimmermann on lecture tour in Europe

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As part of his sabbatical semester last Fall, Professor Christian Zimmermann (IDEAS) has given a series of talks through Europe, talking about various aspects of his research. At the Swiss National Bank, Universität St. Gallen, Banque de France and Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), he talked about the impact of bank capital regulation on credit. At the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva and Université de Toulouse, he talked about the interaction of malaria with the economy. At Universität Konstanz, he discussed his work with RePEc. He also gave five lectures on macroeconomic theory with heterogeneous agents at the Paris School of Economics.

In addition to his travels in Europe, Prof. Zimmermann spent several weeks at the University of California Santa Barbara, giving three lectures on the topics above and gave another talk at York University of his work on the economics of malaria.

Senior wins prestigious Marshall scholarship

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From CLAS in the news:

Michelle Prairie, a Presidential Scholar from Vernon, Conn., with a perfect 4.0 grade average, will spend the next two years in the United Kingdom studying for two master’s degrees in development economics.

She is the only student at a public institution in New England selected as a Marshall Scholar for 2009. The other New England winners were four students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three from Harvard, two from Boston College, and one each from Princeton and Middlebury.

Prairie will study for one year each either at the University of Nottingham and the London School of Economics and Political Science, or at the University of Warwick and the School of Advanced Study of the University of London.

She plans to become a professor of development economics, focusing her research on income inequality, particularly in Latin America, and on the effects of trade, aid, and government policies on the distribution of wealth. Eventually she hopes to be a policy analyst for the United Nations, the World Bank, or the U.S. government.

Prairie, who was valedictorian of her senior class at Rockville High School, entered UConn hoping to study international business. In her second semester she took an economics course and “something just clicked,” she recalls. She became an economics major in CLAS, where she has interned for the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis and for Associate Professor Susan Randolph (IDEAS), whose research focuses on development economics.

President Michael J. Hogan, whose letter of endorsement capped Prairie’s application to the Marshall committee, called her “thoughtful, astute, and very articulate.”

“Few students get as excited about economic theory and analysis as Michelle,” he wrote.

Prairie’s interest in development economics was born on a trip to Brazil with her church group when she was in high school.

She played soccer with 16-yearold Brazilians who had no shoes, she recalls. Riding on a bus from the airport through the outskirts of Sao Paulo, she was shocked by the stacked-up shanties on the mountainsides.

At UConn she found opportunities for study abroad in Sweden, where she observed the welfare state, and, through the campus Christian group, Reformed University Fellowship, in Peru, where she taught English as a volunteer and assisted a fledgling microfinance program.

“This is when I knew for certain that I wanted to become a development economist,” she wrote in her Marshall application. “I had found a way to serve the poor by using my passion for economic theory.”

She was reluctant at first to apply for a Marshall, questioning her chances among so many qualified applicants.

“In my mind, she had what it takes. She was a winner. She just needed to feel it,” says Jill R. Deans, director of the office of National Scholarships at UConn.

Deans arranged several mock interviews to prepare Michelle. Among the interviewers were history professor Christopher Clark, chair of the campus Marshall Scholarship nominating committee, and Sandra E. Shumway, adjunct professor in residence of Marine Sciences, who was herself a Marshall Scholar.

Prairie interns at the Travelers Insurance Company in the market research division. As a senior, she won the Travelers Insurance Company Scholarship, the top undergraduate award in the Economics Department.

Her mother, Ellen Prairie, works in the One-Card Office at Wilbur Cross, and her father, Robert Prairie, is a 1981 UConn alumnus in mechanical engineering technology.

“My whole four years at UConn, I could never have foreseen half of the things I’m doing now. I’m so appreciative to UConn for giving me these opportunities,” says Michelle.

She is UConn’s second student to win a prestigious Marshall scholarship, named for America’s first five-star Army general, George C. Marshall. In 1947, as President Harry Truman’s secretary of state, he proposed American economic assistance to post-war Europe.
UConn’s first Marshall Scholar, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, CLAS ’76, is now a professor of history at the University of Colorado. As an undergraduate at UConn she was advised by Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History Richard Brown.

UConn Board of Trustees names Segerson to chair

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From CLAS in the news;

Kathleen Segerson (IDEAS), a professor of economics in CLAS, has been named by the Board of Trustees to fill the Philip E. Austin Chair for a three-year term.

The chair was established with contributions made in honor of Austin, who stepped down last year after 11 years as president of the University.

Segerson, who specializes in environmental and natural resources economics, law, and applied microeconomics, joined the University in 1986 and served as chair of the economics department from 2001 to 2005.

“Dr. Segerson is extremely qualified to serve in this position and brings to it an outstanding reputation as a researcher and teacher,” says Provost Peter J. Nicholls. “We are pleased to have someone in the chair who is regarded as a national expert in her field and who has dedicated her life not only to teaching and research but also to public service.”

A fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association and the Association of Environmental and Resources Economists, Segerson was nominated for the position by former CLAS Dean Ross MacKinnon, who recently retired.

Segerson was awarded both the American Association of University Professors UConn Chapter Research Excellence Award and the UConn Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching last year.

“It is a great honor to be chosen to fill the Austin chair in its first three years,” says Segerson. “President Austin was very dedicated not only to the University of Connecticut as an institution, but also more generally to research and teaching related to public policy and the use of economics to understand and solve social problems. It is my hope that I’ll be able to contribute to his legacy through my work in environmental economics and the support made possible through this chair.”

Segerson serves on the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and was recently a member of the U.S. General Accounting Office’s expert panel on climate change economics. She is the president-elect of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

Segerson holds a PhD from Cornell University and a BA from Dartmouth College. — Karen A. Grava, CLAS ’73

Samson Kimenyi discusses obstacles to delivering aid in Africa

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Mwangi Samson Kimenyi (IDEAS) studies the African economy and the institutional factors that seem to thwart development on a continent renowned for its rich natural resources.

On July 2, he delivered the keynote address to a meeting of economists in the African Division of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., focusing on how to improve service delivery in fragile states that are characterized by low accountability.

Low accountability hinders economic development in many African countries, he believes.

Kimenyi, associate professor of economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, coordinates a long-term study on institutions and service delivery in Africa on behalf of the Nairobi-based African Economic Research Consortium.

He also has served on the Public Universities Commission in his native Kenya, and is founding executive director of the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis.

Many sub-Saharan African countries do not have the financial resources to pay their teachers and doctors or to build the infrastructure that would provide education, health, and sanitary services needed for an efficient economy, he notes.

They also lack qualified personnel to lead the effort, and their governments do not have the institutional capacity to deliver public services.

Some are also ethnically fragmented, which affects both their politics and their public service delivery, he says.

Read more in the UConn Advance