Professor Jonathan Gruber from MIT recently spoke to a standing-room only crowd in Konover Auditorium about health care reform in the U.S.  Speaking at the 2^nd annual Philip E. Austin Forum on the Economics of Public Policy on “Health-Care Reform in the U.S.: What Happened and Where Do We Go Now?”, Gruber described his experience with health care reform in Massachusetts.  Gruber was a key architect of the Massachusetts program.  He described Massachusetts’ “three-legged stool” approach to ensuring adequate health care coverage, which includes (1) insurance market reforms (to prohibit exclusions or pricing based on health status), (2) a mandate that individuals buy insurance (or pay a penalty for not doing so), and (3) subsidies to help low-income individuals comply with the mandate.

Gruber then compared the Massachusetts experience to the experience of federal health care reform embodied in the Obama-led Affordable Care Act.  He noted that, while the federal reform is based on the same three-legged stool approach used in Massachusetts, it is more ambitious (and hence challenging).  Unlike the Massachusetts reform, the federal program had to find new sources of money to fund the subsidies required to ensure access to insurance for low income individuals.  In addition, the federal reform sought to bring down rising health care costs, which was not a primary goal of the reforms in Massachusetts.  Gruber went on to discuss the challenges currently facing the implementation of the federal reform.  

Professor Gruber is a leading expert on the economics of health care.  He has published extensively on this topic and has served as an advisor on health care reform at both the state and federal level.  The Austin Forum is designed to bring experts such as Professor Gruber to UConn to discuss important, contemporary public policy issues from an economic perspective, and to honor the legacy of President Phil Austin, who served as President of the University from 1996-2007 and is currently serving as Interim President.

On April 14, the department convened for an awards banquet that recognized the best among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty. This year’s award recipients are:

Omicron Delta Epsilon inductees:
Samuel Arvidson
Geoffrey Battista
Gaetano D’Alessio
Daniel DiMauro
Asimina Diamandopoulos
Titus Ibrahim Kanu
Shawn James McDermott
Sean McManus
Brendan Molloy
Kyle Niejadlik
Dan Rabinove

Undergraduate Awards
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
Jocelyn Abraham
Sandie Gong
Connor Grant
William Kimball
Sean McManus
Loi Nham
Gang Yin

Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Kristina Sowin

Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Brooke Smith

Abraham Ribicoff Scholarship
Geoffrey Battista
Mark Connolly
Nicholas Leonetti

Ross Mayer Scholarship
Kevin Landry

Audrey Beck Scholarship
Mark Connolly

Graduate Awards
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Weiran Huang
Ranjini Neogi
Paul Tomolonis

W. Harrison Carter Award
Archita Banik
Elizabeth Kaletski

Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Arnab Deb
Weiran Huang
Shen Jin
Sanglim Lee

Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Marcello Graziano
Elizabeth Kaletski
Michael Lorenzo
Zheng Xu
Xinyi Zheng
Rong Zhou

Ross D. MacKinnon Graduate Fellowship
Archita Banik

CLAS Dean’s Fund Graduate Fellowship
Matthiew Burnside
Leshui He
Stephen Kuchta
Matthew Schurin

Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Olivier Morand

Grillo Family Teaching Award
Richard Langlois

Congratulations to everyone!

The current chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke will be on campus to speak about his career during the Association of Graduate Economics Students (AGES) “Life after UConn” event. This event invites graduates to speak about their experience after leaving the campus. While Bernanke is not a UConn graduate, he attended some Summer classes on the Stamford campus during his undergraduate studies.

“Life after UConn” will take place this Friday at noon, in room 339 of the Monteith Building.

John Siegfried, Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University and Secretary-Treasurer of the American Economic Association, will be on campus April 6 to talk about his latest book published with Harvard University Press, Better Living through Economics. It examines case studies that demonstrate how economic research has improved economic and social conditions over the past half century by influencing public policy decisions.

Economists were obviously instrumental in revising the consumer price index and in devising auctions for allocating spectrum rights to cell phone providers in the 1990s. But perhaps more surprisingly, economists built the foundation for eliminating the military draft in favor of an all-volunteer army in 1973, for passing the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1975, for deregulating airlines in 1978, for adopting the welfare-to-work reforms during the Clinton administration, and for implementing the Pension Reform Act of 2006 that allowed employers to automatically enroll employees in a 401(k). Other important policy changes resulting from economists’ research include a new approach to monetary policy that resulted in moderated economic fluctuations (at least until 2008!), the reduction of trade impediments that allows countries to better exploit their natural advantages, a revision of antitrust policy to focus on those market characteristics that affect competition, an improved method of placing new physicians in hospital residencies that is more likely to keep married couples in the same city, and the adoption of tradable emissions rights, which has improved our environment at minimum cost.

Prof Siegfried will be presenting on Wednesday April 6 at noon in the Konover Auditorium of the Dodd Research Center.