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.

Professor Enrico Zaninotto Visiting From Italy

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Professor Enrico Zaninotto of the University of Trento, Italy, is visiting the Economics Department for the Spring semester 2012. Enrico was educated at the University of Venice and at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve. He joined the University of Trento in 1994, after stints at the University of Venice and the University L. Bocconi in Milan. At Trento he has served as vice rector and dean, and helped start what is now a well-regarded doctoral program in Economics. Enrico’s research interests are in the economics of organization, especially coordination theory and entrepreneurship and firm dynamics. (His resume is here.) Enrico is in Room 418 Monteith. Please stop by and introduce yourself.

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.

Shalini Mitra Defends, Heads to University of Liverpool

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Shalini Mitra recently defended her PhD dissertation titled, “Essays on the Volatility of Borrowing Constrained Economies” under the supervision of Professor Christian Zimmermann. 

Her dissertation tries to explain using different channels the increasing firm level volatility even in the presence of lower and decreasing aggregate volatility as seen during the period of the Great Moderation. She specifically looks at financial development and organization specific capital in explaining recent trends in aggregate and firm level volatilities. She also studies the role of an informal sector, which is relatively more borrowing constrained, on the macroeconomy. Her findings suggest that financial development as well as firm specific investments are associated with higher and increasing volatility at the firm level and non-increasing volatility at the aggregate with the divergence being more pronounced in the later case. She also finds that a more borrowing constrained informal sector has little effect on economic volatility.

Shalini starts her tenure-track position on February 1, 2012 and is relocating to Liverpool, England.

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.

CCEA, Geography SUNSHOT DOE Award

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 The Connecticut Energy Finance and Investment Authority (CEFIA, formerly CCEF) has asked CCEA to help developing a grant proposal for the Department of Energy (DoE) Sunshot Grant Program.  The objective of the grant is to provide tools and strategies to reduce the non-hardware costs of solar photovoltaic systems, and it is meant to be developed as a multi-phase multi-disciplinary program. The proposal involves a very broad cooperation with private entities and other institutions, among which CEFIA itself and Yale University.

CCEA with the support Prof. Willig (CESE) has recruited and will work along with the Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR) and the Dept. of Geography. UConn participants will be Prof. Fred Carstensen (CCEA, Director), Prof. Daniel Civco (CLEAR, Dirctor), Prof. Jeffrey Osleeb (Dept. Geography, Head) and Prof. Chuanrong Zhang (Geography). The proposal was one of the winners, and UConn has a proposed budget of about $149,000 for the first year, with additional $169,000 for Phase II, which will take place over two years.