Richard Suen to join faculty in Fall

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Richard M. H. Suen has recently accepted to join next Fall the department as Assistant Professor. A native of Hong Kong, he obtained his undergraduate degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and then his PhD at the University of Rochester. He is currently at the University of California, Riverside.

Prof. Suen is a macroeconomist with both theoretical and applied interests. He has published on suburbanization in the International Economics Review, on process approximation in the Review of Economic Dynamics and growth theory in the Journal of Macroeconomics. His current research pertains to understanding the consequences of time preference as well as the link between technological progress and health care spending.

Prof. Ross obtains major grant

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Stephen Ross is part of a team that combines researchers from Indiana University, New York University and Northwestern University that was recently awarded an $800,000 grant for their proposal “The Effects of Housing Instability on Children’s Education Outcomes.” This study will examine the effects of foreclosures in New York City plus three large school districts in California and Florida on the educational outcomes of children. The proposed research employs data sets that geographically links the foreclosure of specific buildings or housing units to longitudinal student administrative data in the following K-12 public school districts: New York City; San Diego, California; Fresno, California; and Pinellas (St. Petersburg/Clearwater), Florida. These districts are particularly appropriate for this study because each experienced widespread foreclosures recently, and New York City experienced other forms of housing upheavals, providing a rich context for linking housing instability to student outcomes. Longitudinal student level data will be available for all three sites for 2003 through 2008 allowing us to examine whether exposure to foreclosures or to neighborhoods with high foreclosure rates can explain changes in students test scores over time.

For details, see the MacArthur Foundation.

PhD student wins research prize

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Annually the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) holds a research paper competition. This year first-prize (making it a “Hirsh Prize Recipient”) was awarded to the paper “Calculating Return on Investment for US Department of Defense Modeling and Simulation,” authored by, among others, William E. Waite, a UConn 2nd year PhD student. The paper will be presented during the DAU Acquisition Community Symposium on Tuesday 12 April 2011, and published in April’s edition of Defense Acquisition Research Journal.

Within any complex organization there exists a need to measure and monitor the effectiveness of expenditures; that is, there is a ubiquitous necessity to monitor how well agents allocate limited resources between the many potential projects they are presented, within a specific institutional context. Such measurement is particularly challenging for institutions (or, in situations) where a market mechanism for pricing different outcomes is not available. The United States Department of Defense (US-DoD) is one such institution.

Each year, the US-DoD allocates billions of dollars to external contractors, as well as internal departments, to pursue modeling-and-simulation (M&S) projects. The benefits of these initiatives are generally not monetary – or easily convertible to a specific monetary value. Rather, the desired results are seen in measures of increased readiness of the country’s armed forces, better trained individuals, improvements in procedures or approaches that result in fewer human casualties during combat missions, and the like. Given the nature of these benefits, it is not surprising that measuring the “return-on-investment” (ROI) of a US-DoD M&S project presents government officials with a formidable challenge.

In “Calculating Return on Investment for US Department of Defense Modeling and Simulation,” the authors provide a systematic methodology to approach address this particular challenge. By utilizing a decision analysis framework based on the economic principle of utility maximization, the authors create a framework in which the US-DoD can obtain ROI-like results for ranking and evaluating projects, which can then be used in resource allocation decisions and analysis.

Graduate student publishes in International Economic Journal

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Current PhD student Catalina Granda-Carvajal (advisor Prof. Zimmermann) has recently published an article in the International Economic Journal. The last issue of this journal features a selection of the papers presented at the conference ‘Shadow Economy, Tax Policy and the Labor Markets in an International Comparison: Options for Economic Policy.’ This conference was held in Germany at the University of Potsdam last April, where Granda-Carvajal participated with the paper entitled ‘The Unofficial Economy and the Business Cycle: A Test for Theories.’ In this paper, she attempts to establish how the features of the business cycle vary across countries with the size of the unofficial sector. Granda-Carvajal confirms that countries with a large shadow economy exhibit higher volatility in major macroeconomic variables such as output, consumption and investment. Also, she shows that unemployment tends to be more countercyclical, while employment and hours behave as more procyclical the smaller is the unofficial economy. She concludes that much more needs to be done in order to understand the implications of shadow activities on macroeconomic performance, as standard models of the shadow economy do not imply such behavior for aggregate variables.

Prof. Segerson edits book on pollution control

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Prof. Segerson is the invited editor of a forthcoming volume on the Economics of Pollution Control, which is scheduled for publication in February 2011 by Edward Elgar Publishers. The book collects 26 previously published articles that provide a contemporary overview of this field. Rather than highlighting classic papers in the field, the volume focuses on more recent key contributions, highlighting advances in theory, models, and empirical methods that have occurred over the past ten to fifteen years. The included papers illustrate the wide range of contexts and ways in which the insights from economics in general, and environmental economics in particular, can inform current policy debates over pressing environmental issues. The volume is part of Elgar’s The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics series.

Prof. Heffley speaks in Athens

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Prof. Dennis Heffley recently participated in a keynote session at the 6th Pan-Hellenic Congress on Health Management, Economics, and Policy (Athens, Greece, December 15-18, 2010). The session, chaired by John Kyriopoulos (Professor and Director, Department of Health Economics, National School of Public Health, Athens), focused on efficiency in health care. Professor Heffley’s paper on “Location Choices of Health Care Providers” presented a theoretical framework for understanding the factors that potentially affect providers’ location decisions, as well as an empirical analysis of the distribution of general care dentists and dental specialists across Connecticut’s 169 townships. Other session participants included Tryfon Beazoglou (Professor, School of Dental Medicine, University of Connecticut Health Center), Nurhan Davutyan (Professor, Department of Economics and Department of Industrial Engineering, Marmara University, Istanbul), and Gareth Goddier (Chief Executive, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, England).

Senior featured on UConn Today

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Margaret McCarthy, a double Honors major in Economics and Political Science (plus a minor in Human Rights) has recently been featured on the university-wide blog, UConn Today. While on a Summer internship at the US Department of State, she was quickly promoted to fill on an interim basis the country desk for Nicaragua.

She is also a stellar citizen while on campus. In 2009, she received an Oaklawn Foundation Scholarship for academic excellence, honors involvement, and leadership; she is also a member of several honors societies, including Phi Beta Kappa. This year, she was a finalist for a Marshall Scholarship. She is UConn’s administrative director for the Model United Nations. She is also a member of the Global Leadership Commission, a small group of honors students that invites global leaders on campus to speak.

More at UConn Today.