Department creates Alumni Working Paper series

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Working papers are, at least in Economics, the best way to let others know about your research. These pre-publications have been shown to be more read and to lead to more citations than works that only appear as articles, and this despite the lack of peer-review in most working paper series. The UConn Economics Department is now giving its alumni the opportunity to pre-publish their recent works in the “UConn Economics Alumni Working Paper” series. These working papers get a special cover and are indexed in RePEc and thus disseminated through the various RePEc services and then further picked up by other services like Google Scholar.

For interested alumni, the procedure is the following. Send to your adviser or to Christian Zimmermann a single PDF file of your paper. The message should contain title, abstract, JEL codes and keywords. The actual text (the introduction) should start on a fresh page. All tables, figures and appendices, if any, should be contained within the same PDF file. If approved, your adviser will then forward your message to the working paper coordinator who will post your paper.

Prof. Segerson nominated to National Research Council Board

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Professor Kathleen Segerson (IDEAS) has been invited to serve a 3-year term on the National Research Council’s (NRC) Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources. The National Research Council is the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Its mission is to improve government decision making and public policy, increase public education and understanding, and promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in matters involving science, engineering, technology, and health. The NRC commissions and publishes major reports on topics of broad interest, which are written by panels of experts in related fields. The BANR is the major program unit of the NRC responsible for organizing and overseeing studies on issues of agricultural production and related matters of natural resource development, including forestry, fisheries, wildlife, and land and water use. The Board is responsible for planning new studies, conducting oversight on projects carried out by its subsidiary committees, and making an annual appraisal of accomplishment and potential new initiatives.

Prof. Segerson was also recently inducted as the Philip E. Austin Chair of Economics. For pictures of the ceremony, see here

Graduation ceremonies at Storrs

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The currently very high popularity of the Economics BA was at full display during the graduation ceremonies last weekend in Storrs. No less than 213 majors from our department obtained their sheepskin. In addition, 6 MA and 3 PhD students graduated. This class may be one of the largest ever. But even if this is a record, it will not last, as there will not be December commencements anymore. With currently about 800 declared majors in Economics, the program ranks third at UConn and is bound to produce even larger graduating classes.

Prof. Dharmapala publishes chapter on the impact of taxes on dividends and corporate financial policy

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Dhammika Dharmapala (IDEAS) recently published a chapter in a book on tax policy lessons from the 2000s, edited by Alan Viard at the American Enterprise Institute.

In his chapter, Dharmapala finds that the 2003 dividend tax cut triggered a large and immediate increase in dividend payments by firms. The biggest increases occurred in firms whose stockholders were most affected by the tax cut. Dharmapala documents an investment shift following the cut, in which Americans moved their investments out of foreign firms whose dividends did not qualify for the cut and into foreign firms whose dividends did qualify. He concludes that the shareholder-level approach taken by the reform “may be less effective in a financially integrated world economy than measures directed specifically at U.S. firms.”

Additional information about this book is available at the American Enterprise Institute.

UConn hosted RePEc Author Service has now 20,000 registered authors

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The RePEc Author Service, managed by Prof. Christian Zimmermann (IDEAS) and, since 2005, hosted by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn, has reached a major milestone with its 20,000th registered author. This service allows economists to create an online profile of their works to be used by other services such as IDEAS (also hosted by CLAS). It also allows authors to obtain monthly updates on the online popularity and newly discovered citations of their works.

To put things in perspective, the largest association in economics is the American Economic Association, which has 18,000 members, including many outside the United States. The RePEc Author Service has authors in all US states and 119 countries.

Prof. Matschke granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor

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Prof. Xenia Matschke (IDEAS), assistant professor of economics, has been promoted to associate professor with tenure at the recent April 21 meeting of the UConn Board of Trustees. Her promotion and tenure come into effect August 23, 2009.

Professor Matschke, a native of Germany, joined the UConn Department of Economics in the fall of 2004. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches microeconomics and international trade both at the undergraduate and graduate level at UConn. She and her husband Gautam Tripathi (IDEAS), who is an associate professor at the Department of Economics, live in Mansfield together with their two sons, ages 2 and 7.

In her research, Professor Matschke mainly focuses on questions of trade policy determination, although she has also worked in other areas of economics. Her research has been published in leading economics journals, such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of International Economics. In her 2006 piece in the American Economic Review, she and a coauthor find evidence that labor market considerations, and in particular labor lobby interests, play a significant role in shaping U.S. trade policy. While probably not surprising to the economic layman, these findings contradict previous work that claimed that trade policy is primarily shaped by capital owner interests and that the inclusion of labor market variables does not help us better understand trade protection at the industry level.

Prof. Zimmermann edits special journal issue on the Economics of Open Access publishing

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Christian Zimmermann (IDEAS) has recently guest-edited a special issue of Economic Analysis and Policy dedicated to the Economics of Open Access publishing. More and more journals are disseminating their content for free through the web, and the articles in this issue discuss why and how this trend is happening. In particular it highlights that publication costs are much lower once the print medium is abandoned and that financing models different from the traditional subscriptions are perfectly viable. Some articles cover the experience of some open access journal editors, others discuss the publishing industry or the consequences of open access.

The journal can be viewed here, and the special issue can be directly accessed from this RePEc blog post.

Spring awards banquet honors students and faculty

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On April 17, 2009, the Economics Department convened for its annual awards banquet to honor undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty. This year’s award recipients were:

Undergraduate students
Omicron Delta Epsilon inductees
Lucia Caldari
Anthony Craparo, Jr.
Michael Gurdjian
Eric Roy

Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
John Doyle
Mark Guastaferri
Daniel Marcoux
Michelle Prairie
Eric Roy
Liza Zenkin

Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Lucia Caldari
Poojitha Kondabolu

Rockwwod Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Vishal Kewalramani
Matthew Sangphet
Michael Shell

Economics Department Scholarship
Vishal Kewalramani
Matthew Sangphet
Michael Shell

Audrey Beck Scholarship
Joseph Antelmi

Graduate students
Audrey Beck Scholarship
Gulgun Bayaz

W. Harrison Carter Award
Matthiew Burnside
Leshui He
Troy Helming

Abraham Ribicoff Award
Patrick Flaherty

Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Lei Chen

Faculty
Grillo Research Award
Kenneth Couch (IDEAS)
Stephen Ross (IDEAS)

Grillo Teaching and Service Award
Thomas Miceli

In addition, the following undergraduate students have been inducted in Phi Beta Kappa, the undergraduate national honor society:
Yi-Jun Chen
Ryan Esplin
Matthew Fitzpatrick
Philip Gorecki
Poojitha Kondabolu
Benjamin Linhard
Daniel Marcoux
Bryan Murphy
Shannon Patrick
Michelle Prairie
William Watson

Congratulations to all recipients!

MA, PhD alumna featured in UConn Alumni magazine

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Excerpts from a feature in the latest UConn Magazine:

In the more than a dozen years since she returned to Taiwan from Storrs, Lih-Chyi Wen ’93 M.A., ’96 Ph.D. has established a career as an environmental economist who continues to break new ground in one of the world’s emerging regions.

Wen, deputy director and research fellow in the International Division of the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the Taiwan World Trade Organization, is playing a crucial role in proposing new economic and environmental policies to aid her country.

Lih-Chyi has combined her economics training and her passion for environmental issues and used them to understand and improve environmental management in her home country of Taiwan, which faces numerous environmental challenges as its economy grows,” says Kathleen Segerson, Philip E. Austin Professor of Economics, who served as Wen’s advisor at UConn.

The respect is mutual. Wen says the key to her success at Storrs was the support she received from the faculty, particularly Segerson.

“She not only has a brilliant, analytical mind and great originality, which is evidenced throughout her teaching and research work, but she also takes care of graduate students as if they were her own kids,” Wen says.

The author of two books and dozens of commissioned articles on environmental policy as well as economic policy, Wen was named one of 2008’s Rising Stars in Taipei by the Central News Agency, selected by a 10-member panel of university presidents.

Read more here.

Karl Case to speak on housing markets

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This year, AGES has invited Karl Case, Katherine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, and co-developer of the widely used Case-Shiller Housing Price Index, to give a public talk on “Housing Prices and the Real Economy.” The event will be held at the UConn Dodd Center on Tuesday, April 14th, 11 AM.

This event is this year’s instalment of the AGES Distinguished Speaker Series. Previous editions features Nobel Prize winner Finn Kydland, Ariel Rubinstein and Gregory Mankiw.

Update: For a write-up about Karl Case’s presentation on the CLAS website, click here.