Economics and political science double major Michael Mitchell is reporting during the 2008-09 academic year about his life on campus on the UConn Admissions blog. Lately, he has been blogging about his internship in Washington DC working for Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut’s 4th congressional district.
Prof. Ray presents series of workshops in India
During the recent winter break, UConn Economics professor, Subhash Ray (IDEAS), conducted a series of workshops in different parts of India. Professor Ray’s special area of expertise is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a nonparametric mathematical technique designed to evaluate the productivity and efficiency of both private and public enterprises. DEA addresses fundamental questions about how well decision-making units transform scarce inputs into valuable outputs, and even provides useful guidance on how to improve performance.
Professor Ray is one of the world’s leading experts on DEA, and his book (Data Envelopment Analysis: Theory and Techniques for Economics and Operations Research), published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press, has been heralded by other researchers in the field.
His tour included a 3-day workshop on Performance Measurement held at Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The January 2-4 workshop included three extended lectures on DEA, supplemented by hands-on, computer-based tutorials. Professor Ray was joined by Professor Subal Kumbhakar of Binghamton University (SUNY), who lectured on an alternative method of efficiency measurement known as Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Workshop attendees included corporate users of DEA as well as academic researchers.
Immediately after the Mumbai workshop, Professor Ray delivered a keynote address and two lectures on DEA at an international conference on efficiency evaluation (January 5-7), hosted by the Delhi School of Economics. Professor Ray also was asked to serve as an international member of the conference organizing committee.
On January 11-13, Professor Ray again was joined by Professor Kumbhakar to conduct a teaching workshop on efficiency analysis at the Madras School of Economics in Chennai (formerly Madras).
Through these workshops, and similar events over the years, Professor Ray has trained a cadre of young scholars who have contributed to productivity research and the further development of DEA.
Prof. Minkler publishes book
Lanse Minkler‘s (IDEAS) recent book, Integrity and Agreement: Economics When Principles Also Matter, argues that moral principles— not mere self-interest—drives rational decision making. Starting with the elementary principle “lying is wrong,” Minkler examines the ways in which a sense of morality guides real-life decision making. Whether one feels committed to specific or general moral principles, Minkler explains, integrity demands consistently acting on that commitment. Because truthfulness is the most basic moral principle, integrity means honesty. And honesty extends beyond truth-telling. It requires good faith when entering an agreement and then standing by one’s word. From this premise, Minkler explores the implications of integrity for contracts between buyers and sellers and understandings between employers and employees. He also finds a role for integrity in an individual’s religious vows, an elected official’s accountability to constituents, and a community’s obligation to human rights.
Commenting on the book, Geoffrey Hodgson, Research Professor in Business Studies, University of Hertfordshire, and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics writes: “Facing massive evidence that people do not act generally as self-regarding payoff maximizers, economists have become increasingly interested in issues of cooperation, altruism, identity, and morality. Lanse Minkler’s contribution is particularly important because of his powerful argument that the evidence of cooperation cannot be explained adequately by a more complicated preference function. A disposition for honesty is not simply a matter of preference—it is an issue of personal integrity, identity, and commitment. This has major implications. In particular we have to reconstruct the theory of the firm from first principles. No economist committed to the pursuit of truth should ignore this volume.”
You can find out more about Integrity and Agreement at University of Michigan Press.
That book follows on the heels of Minkler’s co-edited volume, Economic Rights: Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues. This edited volume offers new scholarship on economic rights by leading scholars in the fields of economics, law, and political science. It analyzes the central features of economic rights: their conceptual, measurement, and policy dimensions. In its introduction, the book provides a new conceptualization of economic rights based on a three-pronged definition: the right to a decent standard of living, the right to work, and the right to basic income support for people who cannot work. Subsequent chapters correct existing conceptual mistakes in the literature, provide new measurement techniques with country rankings, and analyze policy implementation at the international, regional, national, and local levels. While it forms a cohesive whole, the book is nevertheless rich in contending perspectives.
You can find out more about Economic Rights at Cambridge University Press.
Prof. Ross publishes in Journal of Political Economy
Professor Ross‘s (IDEAS) study “Place of Work/Place of Residence” with Patrick Bayer at Duke and Giorgio Topa and the NY Federal Reserve was published in the Journal of Political Economy in December (UConn working paper version). The Journal of Political Economy is considered to be one of the top three journals in Economics. This paper provides strong evidence that individual’s success in the labor market is influenced by their immediate neighbors, and that this influence is larger when the neighbors share key traits, such as both having children, being similar in age, or having similar levels of education, possibly because they are more likely to share information about jobs with each other. Individuals whose neighbors have such similar traits are more successful in the labor market having higher employment rates and earnings.
A key feature of the study is its design that is intended to approximate what someone might obtain from a randomized experiment. We use the detailed geography available in confidential census data so that we can control for neighborhoods and then examine whether the attributes of someone’s immediate neighbors within the broader neighborhood have a disproportionate impact on their outcomes. We assert and then demonstrate for key attributes that once households have chosen a neighborhood they appear to be almost randomly distributed across blocks within that neighborhood, which is the source of our quasi-experimental variation.
PhD student to publish paper in Journal of Sports Economics
Economics PhD student Brian Volz, advised by Thomas Miceli, has been a fan of baseball his entire life and spent much of his free time as an undergraduate playing baseball. As a graduate student at UConn he has been lucky enough to incorporate his favorite leisure activity into his study of labor economics.
His paper “Minority Status and Managerial Survival in Major League Baseball” was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Sports Economics. The paper began as a project for one of his PhD field courses and was expanded and revised over the past two years into an economics department working paper and eventually a journal submission. The paper was motivated by the relatively small number of minority managers in a league with a relatively large percentage of minority players. The paper examines the impact of minority status on the survival of Major League Baseball managers in order to determine if discrimination in managerial retention is to blame for the lack of minority managers. In order to answer this question data envelopment analysis, which he was introduced to in Professor Ray‘s (IDEAS) Productivity Analysis course, and survival time analysis are applied to performance and survival data from the 1985 to 2006 baseball seasons. It is shown that when controlling for performance and personal characteristics minorities are on average 9.6% points more likely to return the following season. Additionally, it is shown that winning percentage has no impact on managerial survival when the efficiency of the manager is controlled for.
BA Alumna named advisor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that she has named Karen Wayland as her new Policy Advisor for energy; Anne Cannon MacMillan as her new Policy Advisor for agriculture, veterans, small business and rural outreach; and Bridget Fallon as her new Director of Protocol and Special Events. All three begin their duties this month.
Congress cannot function without the dedication and hard work of Americans who put public service ahead of private gain. The hard work completed by staff is an integral part of making the Congress work for the American people, Pelosi said. I welcome our talented new additions to the Speakers Office and look forward to working together as we continue to move America in a New Direction.
Karen Wayland currently serves as Legislative Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
Wayland holds a dual Ph.D. in Geology and Resource Development from Michigan State University, a masters degree in Natural Resources Management and Engineering and a bachelors in Economics from the University of Connecticut.
Economist Named to Austin Chair
Another story about Segerson’s Austin Chair, this time from the UConn Foundation:
When Philip E. Austin announced his retirement from the University presidency in 2007, longtime donors quickly came together to create a lasting tribute and preserve his legacy of service. In keeping with Austin’s dedication to education and research, a $1.5-million endowed chair was created in his name to memorialize his tenure and support the work of a nationally renowned scholar. The University of Connecticut’s Board of Trustees recently awarded the chair to Kathleen Segerson (IDEAS), a highly regarded professor of economics with 22 years at UConn.
Specializing in law and the environment, Segerson is at the cutting edge of scholarly inquiry and research into some of the most pressing questions of the twenty-first century. She is an expert in three areas critical to the future: natural resource and environmental economics; law and economics; and applied microeconomics. Support through the Philip E. Austin Endowed Chair will enable her to delve deeper into these focus areas.
“This position will allow me to enhance my own research on the links between economics and the environment and the design of public policies to address environmental problems. It will increase my ability to participate in interdisciplinary collaborations and exchanges, which are essential in my research,” says Segerson.
She also notes that the endowment will have effects beyond her own research.
“The position brings recognition not only to the University but to the economics department as well,” she explains. “I hope the chair can be used to advance the contributions of the department, through, for example, fostering exchanges related to a variety of public policy issues, such as education, health care and housing.”
Segerson joined UConn as a visiting assistant professor in 1986. She holds a joint appointment in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, where she headed the Department of Economics from 2001 to 2005, and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
In 2007, she was appointed to the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. Last year, she was selected to be a fellow of both the American Agricultural Economics Association and the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
As a nationally recognized expert, Segerson’s counsel has been requested on a number of government and professional committees, including an expert panel on climate change economics for the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.
Her teaching and accomplishments have earned her recognition from students and colleagues alike. Segerson has received the Most Appreciated Faculty Award from the Association of Graduate Economics Students three times. She also has received the Research Excellence Award from the UConn chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching from the UConn Alumni Association.
Segerson earned a B.A. in mathematics from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in environmental natural resource economics from Cornell University.
As UConn’s thirteenth president, Austin led the University through a period of remarkable transition from 1996 to 2007. He oversaw UConn’s dramatic physical transformation and steep rise in national prominence for academic excellence. Austin’s tenure also was marked by a fivefold growth of the endowment.
“It is a real honor to be appointed to a chair that was endowed in recognition of President Austin’s many contributions to the University of Connecticut. Under his leadership, the University made great strides forward, and I am very pleased to be a part of honoring his legacy,” says Segerson.
Maintain a ‘can-do’ attitude, speaker (MA Econ) tells winter graduates
Approach life with a positive attitude, protect your health, and be personally accountable. That’s the advice businessman and philanthropist Denis McCarthy gave to students at UConn’s winter commencement exercises in Gampel Pavilion on Dec. 14.
About 800 students – including more than half who earned their degrees from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences – were joined by friends and family members for the ceremony.
Having a positive attitude in life helps build self-confidence, McCarthy told the crowd. “Certainly you have to be realistic depending on the subject or circumstance, but having that ‘can do’ attitude will help you be enthusiastic and passionate about what you do professionally,” he said. “Those are two excellent leadership skills.”
McCarthy is the retired chairman, CEO, and president of Fidelity Management Trust Co., a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s leading providers of financial services. During the ceremony, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
McCarthy earned a bachelor’s degree in finance at UConn in 1964, and a master’s degree in economics in 1965. He is co-chair of UConn’s capital campaign and a member of the UConn Foundation board of directors, which he chaired from 2000-2004.
Read more at UConn Advance
Prof. Zimmermann on lecture tour in Europe
As part of his sabbatical semester last Fall, Professor Christian Zimmermann (IDEAS) has given a series of talks through Europe, talking about various aspects of his research. At the Swiss National Bank, Universität St. Gallen, Banque de France and Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), he talked about the impact of bank capital regulation on credit. At the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva and Université de Toulouse, he talked about the interaction of malaria with the economy. At Universität Konstanz, he discussed his work with RePEc. He also gave five lectures on macroeconomic theory with heterogeneous agents at the Paris School of Economics.
In addition to his travels in Europe, Prof. Zimmermann spent several weeks at the University of California Santa Barbara, giving three lectures on the topics above and gave another talk at York University of his work on the economics of malaria.
Studying in the MA program: the economics of a new perspective
Retirement in the traditional sense held little interest for Lawrence E. Posner, MD, ’05 MA, Economics.
In 2003 he retired from Bayer Pharmaceutical Corp., West Haven, Conn., where he was senior vice president for research and development and worldwide head of regulatory affairs, overseeing some 800 employees.
He then accepted an offer to become head of U.S. R & D for Yamanouchi Pharma Ltd. of Tokyo, but left when that company merged with another and moved to Chicago.
That freed him to do what most people with an MD and a successful career behind them might not: Go back to school.
It had been on his mind for a while. He felt comfortable in the world of ideas and research – he began his career with specialty training in medical oncology, then spent three years at the National Cancer Institute, studying RNA tumor viruses and working in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology under Dr. Robert Gallo, a pioneer in HIV research.
This time, he wanted to study economics – not business, he notes, but academic economics.
“Economists like to focus on utility – why people make decisions,” he says. “Economics give you that kind of perspective, on why people make certain choices.”
Returning to school at age 56 proved to be daunting. Most schools would not accept him as a degree student, and some did not even respond to his inquiries.
Metin M. Cosgel, professor of economics in CLAS at UConn, suggested that he enroll for a master’s degree rather than a PhD, to see how he liked it.
So Posner took an apartment on campus in Storrs, commuting home to Greenwich on weekends, and started his first semester with four courses.
“The teaching at UConn was great. The faculty was so well prepared and had such a command of the material,” he says.
And it was tough. In Prof. Kathleen Segerson’s micro-economics course, where he was the oldest student in the class and couldn’t read the blackboard because of a cataract, he earned a C.
He had been a good math student as an undergraduate at Brandeis University, but that was in the days when calculating meant whipping out a slide rule. As a grad student at UConn, he had to learn simple computer programming and revisit statistics, matrix algebra, and calculus.
Other grad students – some the same age as his son – helped him.
“I’m very grateful for my study group,” he says.
“Medical school was easy compared to going back,” adds Posner, who earned his MD with honors at Case Western Reserve University.
But Posner stuck with it, brought up his grade average, and earned his degree. He is now writing a paper with his thesis adviser, Prof. Dennis Heffley, on the effects of health care spending on life expectancy.
Health care policy, a hot button issue on the state and national political scenes, is one of his interests.
“The solution is not that hard,” he maintains. “There are ways out there to spend less with similar outcomes.”
After earning his master’s, he accepted a two-year contract assignment with Bayer, his former employer, before it merged with Schering AG.
Now he serves on corporate pharmaceutical boards – Labopharm, Inc., and Noxxon Pharma AG – and he is a general partner at Vedanta Capital in New York City, where he specializes in health care investments.
His wife, Amy Newburger, has a dermatology practice. Their daughter recently entered medical school at Columbia University Medical Center at 26, after majoring in theater arts in college, and their son is in graduate school in mathematics at New York University.
“To this day, they want to know why I didn’t walk at graduation,” he says.
But he is proud of his hard-earned degree. As he told Heffley, when Beethoven was asked which of his works he was proudest of, he referred to his only opera, Fidelio, because it was the most difficult and therefore the most dear.
Shortly after earning his master’s, Posner was approached by a biotechnology company in California that was looking for a CEO, but he would have had to relocate from Connecticut for up to three years.
His question to himself was, “Is it really going to make my life that much better?” he says.
“You start making economic decisions,” he adds.