Econ vs. Ag Econ Bowling a Success

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On Thursday, March 8, 2012, students and faculty from the Economics Department and the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department gathered at Willi Bowl for a bowling competition. While it appears no one kept score and there was no official winner, it was of little consequence considering how much fun was had by all.  Approximately 10 students and 1 faculty member represented the Ag Econ department, while 20 students, 5 faculty and 1 staff member represented the Econ department.  AGES, a big promoter of the bowl-off, hopes to organize more events like this in the future.

Professor Minkler working on a strike.

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.

Nicholas Jolly to Join Marquette University

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Nicholas Jolly will joint the faculty of the economics department at Marquette University in a tenure track position in the Fall of 2012.  Nick’s work focuses on issues related to the experiences of displaced workers as well as the impact of the onset of health problems on subsequent labor market activity.  His work has been published in numerous journals including Industrial Relations, Economics Letters and Contemporary Economic Policy.  He was the recipient of the Ribicoff and Waugh Fellowships as a graduate student at UConn.  Nick has been employed at Central Michigan University prior to joining Marquette.  He completed his PhD in 2008 working with a committee consisting of Ken Couch, Delia Furtado and Gautam Tripathi.

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.

Advice to Economics Students

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Economics students, what can you do to protect yourselves against jokes such as the classic, “You could lay all the economists in the U.S. end to end and they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion?” or, “How many economists does it take to fail to change a light bulb?–Just three.  One to detect a faint glow in the bulb and forecast a stronger glow in the next quarter; one to advise the President that the bulb is too hot to touch at the present time and will remain so in the forseeable future; and one to write a grant proposal for a study of the effect of darkness on productivity.”

How can you answer such scurrilous slanders?  By arming yourselves with examples of economic theory’s successes, from the well-designed and profitable government auctions of the air waves to the lesser-known empirical study by Mark Walker and John Wooders showing that, in the serve and return game, pro tennis players play mixed strategy equilibria.  Dozens of examples available in Storrs (in your classes)–don’t leave home without them.

Best of Luck!

Vicki Knoblauch
Professor of Economics

PS  Faculty, Students and Members of the UConn economics community:  please send news you would like to share on our blog to Kasey.Kniffin@uconn.edu .

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.