August 2001 Page 1BCEC

THE BOSTON COLLEGE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTNEWSLETTER June, 1992

BCEC August 2001

BC’s Own Big Dig!Shall wonders never cease? This spring andsummer, the hillside behind O’Neill Libraryhas been transformed into a five-story, 155,000-square-foot Faculty and Administration build-ing, into which the Department will move inlate 2002.

As readers of BC•EC may recall, the MiddleCampus Project was supposed to have replacedMcElroy Commons with a new student center,built Mo–nan Hallalong Col-lege Road,and thor-oughly ren–ovated Car–ney Hall bythis time.That projecthas been

István Kónya joins facultySerena Ng heads to Hopkins

The Department was successful in the job mar-ket search this year, hoping to fill one positionat the junior level. Our evaluation of a numberof excellent candidates led to the appointmentof István Kónya, who has just received hisPh.D. from Northwestern University, advisedby Prof. Joseph Altonji. Kónya specializes ininternational trade, labor, and developmenteconomics. His dissertation, ”Essays on Inter-national Trade, Migration and Culture,” in-volves an interesting investigation of the ef-

McNelis is first alumnusto hold Gasson Chair

from the BC ChronicleGeorgetown Universityeconomist Rev. Paul D.McNelis, SJ, '70, has be-come the first Boston Col-lege alumnus to be ap-pointed as the Thomas I.Gasson, SJ, Professor. Ascholar of econometrics,international macroeco-nomics and finance whohas taught at George–

town since 1977, Fr. McNelis will serve asGasson Professor for the 2001-02 academic year.“We are delighted that Fr. McNelis has chosento join us as our next Gasson Professor,” saidAcademic Vice President and Dean of Faculties

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Cont. p.9View from new Higgins Stairstoward Flynn RecPlex

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Grads Meet ConsiderableSuccess in the Job MarketWho needs monster.com? Our job market can-didates were highly successful in their searchfor out-of-Carney experiences. Vasso Ioannidouaccepted a position at CentER, Tilburg Univer-sity, The Netherlands; Charles Ian Mead will beheading down to Washington, DC, to work atthe Bureau of Economic Analysis; and UmitOzlale will be returning to his beloved Turkeyto join the faculty at Bilkent University in An-kara.Cesare Robotti will be in the heat of things at theFederal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, whileAndreas Waldkirch will be crossing the countryto the Great Northwest, where he accepted aposition at Oregon State University at Corvallis.An Yan will be going to the Big Apple, where hewill be an assistant professor at Fordham Uni-versity.Going quite a bit farther into the outer worldwill be Yuichiro Yoshida. Yuichiro has accepteda position in his native country of Japan; he willbe joining Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, a Ger-man investment firm. Yuichiro has been spend-ing several months as a visiting scholar at theCenter for Transport Studies, University of Brit-ish Columbia, before beginning his new posi-tion. Maurizio Zanardi will be heading north tothe University of Glasgow, Scotland, to beginhis life as an assistant professor. It is with a bitof boasting that we reveal that two of ourcandidates were among the top three vying fora position at Syracuse University.

COMMENCEMENT 2001

Depending on how you want to look at it, thefirst Commencement of the new milleniumwas held on May 21 at Alumni Stadium, or wasit the second? Time to ponder. Whatever yourdecision may be, the graduates were happy toreceive their long-anticipated diplomas. Thelist of 2001 Ph.D. graduates was perhaps longerthan ever before: eleven Ph.D.’s in all. Begin-ning at the very beginning and continuing inorder of thesis defenses was Nikolay Gospodinov,“Essays in Time Series Econometrics: Methodsfor Improved Finite-sample Inference inNonstationary, Noninvertible and NonlinearModels”; Kevin E. Cahill, “Heterogeneity in theRetirement Process: Patterns and Determinantsof Labor Force Withdrawal among Individualswith Low-wage and Short-duration Jobs”;Niloufer Sohrabji, “An Empirical and Theoreti-cal Analysis of Real Exchange Rate Targeting inDeveloping Countries”; Antonio Menezes, “TwoEssays on Productivity, Aggregate Shocks, andJob Flows”; Metin Celebi, “Regulation of LineCapacity and Reliability in Electric Networks”;Mark A. Sarro, “Financial and Nonfinancial De-terminants of Unmarried Birth and WelfareParticipation: A Theoretical Model and Em-pirical Results”; Soner Tunay, “Ratcheting inEnvironmental Regulations: An Empirical andTheoretical Analysis”; Maria Laura Parisi, “Es-says on Innovation, R&D Investment and Pro-ductivity”; Yuichiro Yoshida, “Essays in UrbanTransportation”; Charles Ian Mead, “The Effectsof State and Local Taxation on State-specificBusiness Investment”; and An Yan, “Three Es-says in Corporate Finance.” Master’s degreeswere awarded to Juan Casas, Boryana Dimitrova,Jingzhi Meng, Pavel Nazartsev, Petronilla Nicoletti,Kameliia Petrova, Zhulei Tang, Bedri Tas, Anh Vu,Francesco Zanetti, and Paola Zerilli, all of whomwill be continuing in the Ph.D. program. JeffreyHugo, Ryan Kling, Thomas Simisky, CatherineTaylor, and Guillermina Vidal also received M.A.degrees and have moved on to pursue otherobjectives.

BC Econ on the WebBC Econ on the WebBC Econ on the WebBC Econ on the WebBC Econ on the WebHave you visited our department’s Web home page recently?The “Spotlight” button contains links to events of interest inthe department, and pictures of social happenings. Ourgraduate program links provide applicants with all theymight want to know about the Ph.D. program, and theFaculty and Working Papers links will bring you up to date onthe research activities of our department’s prolific scholars.So stop by and check it out!

http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC/

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Faculty News NotesBCEC

Jim Anderson presented “Gravity with Gravitas:A Solution to the Border Puzzle” (BCEC WP485) at the NBER fall meeting in Cambridge,Dec. 2000; at Princeton and Wisconsin Univer-sities in March; and at the University of Colo-rado in April. He presented his paper “Tradeand Contract Enforcement” at Michigan StateUniversity in May 2001. Jim’s paper “The Uru-guay Round and Welfare in Some DistortedAgricultural Economies,” published in the Jour-nal of Development Economics in 1998, was re-cently listed on SSRN's Top Ten download listfor the field of International Trade. Jim trav-elled to Ireland this summer, spending a weekin Dublin working with Peter Neary on a jointbook, followed by a week's cycling tour in thewest of Ireland.

A word of advice from Richard Arnott. Chooseyour seminar locations wisely. Highlights ofthis year’s seminar circuit included a walk alongthe beach on Singer Island, a hike in the Malibuhills, a stroll along the Boul’Mich., and waterbusrides in Venice. Richard presented “Monopo-listic Competition Foundations of ResidentialReal Estate Cycles” (with Anh Vu) at the HomerHoyt Advanced Studies Institute, “Urban Eco-nomic Aggregates in Monocentric and Non-monocentric Cities” at a USC Lusk ResearchCenter Symposium, “Pollution and Space”(with Oded Hochman and Gordon Rausser) atthe Thema Workshop, Université de Paris-Nanterre, and “The Economic Theory of UrbanTraffic Congestion: A Microscopic ResearchAgenda” (BCEC WP 502) at the CESifo Sum-mer Institute in Venice. He is currently eco-nomics editor of the new Journal of EconomicGeography, published by Oxford UniversityPress, and is on the scientific committee of aEuropean Union commission for the imple-mentation of marginal cost pricing in transpor-tation.

Kit Baum ‘s recent work includes “ExchangeRate Uncertainty and Firm Profitability,” withBC PhDs John Barkoulas and Mustafa Caglayan,forthcoming later this year in the Journal ofMacroeconomics. He presented his joint workwith Mustafa and BC PhD Neslihan Ozkan,“Exchange Rate Effects on the Volume of TradeFlows: An Empirical Analysis employing High-Frequency Data,” (BCEC WP 488) at the 2ndCeNDEF Workshop on Economic Dynamics,Faculty of Economics and Econometrics, Uni-versity of Amsterdam, and to the Departmentof Economics and Accounting, University ofLiverpool, UK, both in January, and to theSeventh Meetings of the Society for Computa-tional Economics at Yale this June. Baum was amember of the program committee for the Yalemeeting, organizing and chairing four sessions.Kit’s development of a number of econometricsoftware components for use with the Stataprogramming language led to his being invitedto co-organize the first North American Meet-ing of the Stata Users’ Group, held in Bostonlast March, where he presented "Efficient Man-agement of Multi-Frequency Panel Data withStata.” He also presented this paper at the 7thUnited Kingdom Stata Users’ Group meetingin May at the Royal Statistical Society in Lon-don. Baum was named an Associate Editor ofthe Stata Technical Bulletin, a bimonthly publi-cation, and participated in the transformationof that publication into The Stata Journal, a ref-ereed quarterly journal that will appear thisfall. He has also been named Coordinator of theSoftware Archive for the journal ComputationalEconomics, of which he is an Associate Editor.His recent technical publications include “Mul-tivariate portmanteau (Q) test for white noise,”with Richard Sperling, and “A test for long-range dependence in a time series,” with BCPhD candidate Tairi Room, in issue 60 of theStata Technical Bulletin, and “Tests forstationarity of a time series: Update,” with Ri-chard Sperling; “Tests for long memory in atime series,” with Vince Wiggins; “Utility for

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time series data,” and “Compacting time seriesdata,” all in issue 57 of the Stata Technical Bulle-tin.Baum has developed and supervised theUniversity’s Graduate Statistical Assistant pro-gram, in which three graduate assistants pro-vide assistance with statistical software, datasetaccess, and the development of metadata fordatasets. The GSA program maintains a website,http://fmwww.bc.edu/GStat/, which con-tains a widely used FAQ on these topics, as wellas access to databases of research methodscourses and an index of statistical datasets. Anumber of cross-country datasets heretoforeunavailable at BC are now accessible, withinthe BC network, via web browser.Kit’s activities with the RePEc (Research Pa-pers in Economics) team have also blossomed,with RePEc receiving approval from the Ameri-can Economic Association to index the AER,JEL and JEP’s contents. RePEc now containsbibliographic information on more than 120journals (including all of the ‘top 5’) and over90,000 working papers from many leading re-search institutes, central banks, and universi-ties worldwide. The HoPEc service, in which adozen BC economists now participate, pro-vides individualized home pages, with links toauthors’ working papers, journal articles andsoftware. You may freely access all of theseservices at http://repec.org.

Fabio Ghironi presented “Monetary Rules forEmerging Market Economies” (BCEC WP 476,co-authored with Alessandro Rebucci, IMF) atthe ASSA meetings in New Orleans in Januaryand at the meeting of the Society for EconomicDynamics in Stockholm, June 27-29. Fabio pre-sented a paper on “The Future of EMU” (BCECWP 481, co-authored with Barry Eichengreen,Berkeley) in a conference on EMU issues at theEuropean Commission (Brussels), March 20-22, and in a conference on EMU in Avila (Spain),May 21-22. He gave a seminar on “Macroeco-nomic Interdependence under Incomplete

Markets” (BCEC WP 471) at the University ofQuébec at Montréal on March 30, and dis-cussed a paper by Stephanie Schmitt-Groheand Martin Uribe at a CEPR conference onmonetary policy in Fontainebleau (France) onApril 27, and presented “MacroeconomicTradeoffs in the United States and Europe:Fiscal Distortions and the International Mon-etary Regime” (BCEC WP 467, co-authoredwith Barry Eichengreen) in a workshop ontransatlantic policy issues at Stanford on June4. It may be summer, but Fabio didn’t slowdown: he was a Visiting Scholar at the FederalReserve Bank of Cleveland in the week of Au-gust 6 and gave a seminar on “Net ForeignAssets and the Exchange Rate: Redux Revived”(co-authored with Michele Cavallo, NYU).Whew!

Peter Gottschalk has kept himself busy, with anumber of recent publications: “On the Evalu-ation of Economic Mobility” (BCEC WP 459,with former BC faculty member EnricoSpolaore), forthcoming in Review of EconomicStudies; “Is the Proportion of College Workersin ‘Non-College’ Jobs Increasing?” (BCEC WP429, with BC alum Michael Hansen), to appearin Journal of Labor Economics; “Income Mobility& Exits from Poverty of American Children,1970-1992” (BCEC WP 430, with SheldonDanziger), in The Dynamics of Child Poverty inIndustrialized Countries, edited by Bradbury,Jenkins, and Michelwright, to be published byCambridge University Press; “Job Instabilityand Insecurity for Males and Females in the1980s and1990s” (with Robert A. Moffitt), in Onthe Job: Is Long-Term Employment A Thing of thePast? edited by David Neumark, Russell SageFoundation, 2000; and “Ethnic and Racial Dif-ferences in Welfare Receipt in the United States”(with Robert A. Moffitt), in America Becoming:Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Vol. II,edited by Smelser, Wilson, and Mitchell, Na-tional Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 2001.Peter’s recent presentations include a paper(joint with Ph.D. candidate Helen Connolly) at

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the Labor Workshop, University of Virginia,October 2000 and the Labor Seminar, BrownUniversity, also last October; presentation at aconference on “Low-Wage Employment, Earn-ings Mobility and the European-AmericanEmployment Gap,” in Aberdeen, Scotland,November 2000; and a presentation at a confer-ence on The Demand for Older Workers, spon-sored by the Retirement Research Consortium,in Washington last March. Peter also served asa discussant at a conference on Entrepreneur-ship and Public Policy, Maxwell School of Pub-lic Policy, Syracuse University, April 2001; atthe NBER University Research Conference onLabor in the Global Economy, Cambridge, MA,in May; discussant at a conference on MakingHard Choices about Retirement, sponsored bythe Retirement Research Consortium, in Wash-ington in May. He and Robert Moffitt alsoorganized the Summer Research Workshop ofthe Institute for Research on Poverty, Madison,Wisconsin, June 2001. After all that, Peter tookoff for some r&r in the French Alps.

Peter Ireland has found time to be very produc-tive while carrying the burden of the Chair(probably having taken lessons from now-Deanand former Chair Joe Quinn). We noted hisforthcoming publications in last year’s edition,many of which have now appeared in print.This summer, he presented “Money's Role inthe Monetary Business Cycle” (BCEC WP 458)at conferences at the European Central Bankand at the University of Washington. During2001, Peter was named to the Editorial Board ofthe American Economic Review and appointedan Associate Editor of the Journal of Money,Credit, and Banking. Peter continues to contrib-ute to the Forbes/Bridge Consensus Economic Fore-cast, which is complied jointly by Forbes maga-zine and Bridge Information Systems and whichis published biweekly in Forbes magazine.

Hideo Konishi ‘s recent publications include “Ex-panding Demand through Price Advertise-ment,” (BCEC WP 453) with Michael T.

Sandfort, forthcoming this year in InternationalJournal of Industrial Organization; “Migration-Proof Tiebout Equilibrium: Existence and As-ymptotic Efficiency,” (BCEC WP 452) forth-coming in Journal of Public Economics, coau-thored by John P. Conley; “Existence of Station-ary Equilibrium in the Markets for New andUsed Durable Goods,” (BCEC WP 450) alsowith Michael T. Sandfort, in the Journal of Eco-nomic Dynamics and Control; “On Efficient Juris-diction Structures in a Simple Local PublicGoods Economy with InterjurisdictionalTrade,” published 2001 in the Economics Bulle-tin (http://www.economicsbulletin.com/2001/volume8/EB-01H40001A.pdf); and “Onthe Shapley-Scarf Economy: The Case of Mul-tiple Types of Indivisible Goods,” with ThomasQuint and Jun Wako, the lead article in a recentissue of the Journal of Mathematical Economics(BCEC WP 484).Hideo’s recent conference presentations include“Uniqueness of User Equilibrium in Transpor-tation Networks with Heterogeneous Commut-ers,” presented at the Regional Science Asso-ciation International Meeting in Chicago, No-vember 2000, and at the Warwick SummerConference in Coventry, UK, July 2001; “An-chor Stores” (with Michael T. Sandfort), pre-sented at the Regional Science Association In-ternational Meeting in Chicago, November2000; “Coalition Formation as a Dynamic Pro-cess” (with Debraj Ray), presented at the South-east Economic Theory Meeting in Houston,October 2000, and at the Far Eastern Meeting ofthe Econometric Society in Kobe, Japan, July2001. He has also given several seminars: “Coa-lition Bargaining without Permanently Bind-ing Agreements” (with Debraj Ray and RajivVohra) at the Warwick Summer Workshop,Coventry, UK, July 2001; “Uniqueness of UserEquilibrium in Transportation Networks withHeterogeneous Commuters” at WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis, February, 2001, Au-tonomous University of Barcelona in Barcelona,Spain, March 2001, University of Aarhus,Aarhus, Denmark, March 2001, Kyoto Univer-

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sity, Kyoto, Japan, May, 2001, and KagawaUniversity, Takamatsu, Japan, June 2001; “Coa-lition Formation as a Dynamic Process” (withDebraj Ray) at Boston University, November2000, Columbia University, April 2001, ShigaUniversity, Hikone, Japan, May 2001, andKansai University, Osaka, Japan, July 2001.And last but not least, “Concentration of Com-peting Retail Stores,” at Ritsumeikan Univer-sity, Kusatsu, Japan, May 2001. Keep thosefrequent flyer miles coming!

Marvin Kraus‘ paper “The Commuter's Time-of-Use Decision and Optimal Pricing and Ser-vice in Urban Mass Transit,” coauthored byYuichiro Yoshida (BC Ph.D., 2001), has beenaccepted for publication in the Journal of UrbanEconomics.

Frank McLaughlin was one of 15 participants ina three day conference on May 24-27 held at theRitz-Carlton in Arlington, Virginia. The confer-ence was sponsored by the Liberty Foundationof Indianapolis, and Frank was the only econo-mist invited, on the basis of his letter to theeditor of the Wall Street Journal published inJanuary. The other conference participants were,for the most part, political philosophers, law-yers specializing in Constitutional Law, and aprofessor of history: Richard Pipes of Harvard.The topic of discussion was Liberty and Prop-erty, the title of Pipes’ most recent book. Frankalso reports that he has two new grandchil-dren, the 21st and the 22nd: Clare VirginiaMurphy born in June, and Aidan FrancisConnell, born in early August.

Fabio Schiantarelli’s recent paper with PaulBeaudry and Mustafa Caglayan, “MonetaryInstability, the Predictability of Prices and theAllocation of Investment; An Empirical Inves-tigation using UK Panel Data,” has just ap-peared in the American Economic Review, June2001, 91:3, pp. 648-662. Mustafa, a Senior Lec-turer at the University of Liverpool, is a ‘98 BC

Faculty News... from p.5 Department Shines inWorldwide Survey

Six Boston College economics professors have beenranked among the world's top 1000 economists,including two-Peter Ireland and Arthur Lewbel-in

the Top 20, according to a soon-to-be-released study con-ducted by the European Eco-nomic Association.The study, written for the pres-tigious European Economic Re-view, ranks the economistsbased on a quantitative surveyof economics journals pub-lished between 1994 and 1998.

Taking advantage of bibliographic material avail-able on the Internet, the study considered all 650economics journals published worldwide. Writtenby researcher Tom Coupe, it is considered to be themost comprehensive economics qualitative studyever conducted. Economics De-partment Chairman Peter Ire-land was ranked 15th in theworld, followed by ArthurLewbel (20), Jushan Bai (184),Peter Gottschalk (264), UziSegal (403) and James Ander-son (533).Overall, the 25-member Bos-ton College Economics Depart-ment was ranked 63rd in theworld. When department size was taken into ac-count, the ranking improved to 31st worldwide. “I am delighted by the results of this ranking," saysDepartment Chairman Peter Ireland. "It shows justhow good our department has always been, but isalso indicative of our path moving forward.”Above courtesy of BC Publications and Print MarketingIn a report recently produced for the Dean, Irelandnoted that BC faculty published 135 refereed articlesin the 1996-2000 period, versus 76 in the 1991-1995period: an increase of more than 75 percent. Profes-sional activity is also on the upswing, with econom-ics faculty members holding 21 editorial board posi-tions in the later period, versus 11 in the former.

Peter Ireland

Arthur Lewbel

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OMICRON DELTA EPSILON

The BC chapter of ODE inducted 39 newmembers at its annual dinner in April. Dr.Atreya Chakraborty (Ph.D. ‘92-betterknown as Chucky to all of us old-timers atBC) of Charles River Associates was thefeatured speaker. ODE Members contin-ued the tradition of tutoring in the Aca-demic Development Center and the Officeof Learning Resources for Student Ath-letes. They also organized two peer-advis-ing sessions for majors during the registra-tion periods.

Cheney Fund AssistsOutstanding Students

The Cheney Fund made awards last fall toCarla Ciano, Christine Histed, Ernest Jones,Patrick Morrissey, and Matthew Rutledge.All were senior economics majors in theCollege of Arts and Sciences.It’s hard to know where to begin to reportthe accomplishments and contributions ofthis group! All qualified for membershipin Omicron Delta Epsilon, the economicshonor society, and Matt was the chair of theBC chapter. Their names appear on theGolden Key, Alpha Sigma Nu (Jesuit HonorSociety), and Phi Beta Kappa rolls as well.Ernest and Matt also participated in theDepartment of Economics honors program.For all four, success in economics revealedonly one facet of their capabilities. Chris-tine was a general education minor andErnest was a computer science minor. Thegroup’s activities ranged from service tothe community (Carla and Christine in theAppalachian Volunteers) to University ser-vice (Christine and Matt in the StudentAdmissions Program) to student organiza-tions (Patrick at The Heights and Matt in theLiturgy Arts Group as well as with BCfootball (videographer)). Their post-gradu-ate plans lean toward financial and infor-mation technology firms, with graduatework in economics down the road. Theyrepresent the best of BC students, and we’rehappy to have been able to help them fi-nancially.

SENIOR HONORSTHESES FLOURISH

Once again Bob Murphy was the leader ofthe pack as he directed the Honors Thesisprogram. We are proud to present thedistinguished members who excelled, theirthesis titles, and their faculty supervisors:Amy Abate: “Applying Fiscal Federalism ofthe United States to the European Mon-etary Union,” Bob Murphy; Ernie Jones,“Pay and Performance of Major LeaguePitchers,” Don Cox; Phil Kerr, “RainforestPreservation Through Market Mechanisms:An Analysis of Sustainable Development,”Richard Arnott; Matt Koch, “Investing Pub-lic Funds in Private Sector Securities,” Ali-cia Munnell; Tom McGuinness, “The Opti-mal Size of Boston College’s Student Body,”Dick Tresch; Matt Rutledge, “The EconomicImpact of Minor League Baseball Teams onCommunities,” Jim Anderson; BrianMcPeake, “The Fast Track Trade Initiative,”Kenji Hayao, joint with Political Science;Conor Politz, “Grays Ferry: Life and Section8 in Philadelphia’s Most Divided Neigh-borhood,” Richard Arnott; Arun Prasad,“What’s Behind the U.S. Productivity

Boom? An Analysis of Productivity Growthwithin the Manufacturing Sector,” BobMurphy; Ryan Valente, “Justifying the U.S.Stock Market Level in the 1990s: Funda-mentals or Speculative Market?” HaroldPetersen.

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Grad Students Garner AwardsKelly Haverstick, Teaching Fellow, and PavelNazartsev, Teaching Assistant, were the De-partment of Economics committee’s choices forThe Graduate School of Arts & Sciences 2000-2001 Donald J. White Teaching ExcellenceAwards. A strong field of graduate studentssubmitted applications with hopes of winning.Being chosen as winners from such a distin-guished group is a high honor. Congratula-tions to both for their extraordinary efforts andsuccess. Frank Gollop and Peter Ireland ac-companied Kelly and Pavel to the annual awardceremony hosted by John Neuhauser, AcademicVice President, on May 2.Helen Connelly, Anna Krivelyova, Rachida Ouysse,and Ozlem Sayinta were this year’s recipients ofthe Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Disser-tation Fellowships. While acknowledging theprogress each has already made on her thesis,the fellowships allow the winners to continueon the road to completion, free from otherdepartment assignments. Petia Petrova andTairi Room received the H. Michael Mann Sum-mer Dissertation Fellowships. Pavel Nazartsev,Rasim Ozcan, and Mirco Soffritti were the win-ners of the Department of Economics SummerDissertation Fellowships. Petia Petrova alsoreceived a 2001-2002 dissertation researchaward from the Center for Retirement Researchat Boston College. Congratulations to all. Theyrepresent the best in a very strong field ofpromising Ph.D. candidates.

Seminar Sit-Ins

No, there weren’t any protests, but there wasan interesting list of guests who appeared oncampus to present seminars this past year, al-lowing the faculty to sit and enjoy, instead ofpresenting. Accompanied by a chorus of leavesin the Fall were: Guofu Tan, University of Brit-ish Columbia; Simon Anderson, University ofVirginia; Jean Imbs, London Business School;David Bowman, Federal Reserve Board; PaulCheshire, London School of Economics; SandraBlack, Federal Reserve Bank of New York;George Baker, Harvard Business School; LarryEpstein, University of Rochester; Martin Lettau,New York Federal Reserve Bank; Esther Duflo,MIT; and Hsueh-Ling Huynh, Boston Univer-sity. Arriving with the buds of Spring were:István Kónya, Northwestern University; DavidGreen, University of British Columbia; JamesFeyrer, Brown University; Claudia Olivetti,University of Pennsylvania; Stefania Albanesi,Northwestern University; Antoine Faure-Grimaud, London School of Economics andHarvard University; Rajiv Vohra, Brown Uni-versity; Susanna Sallstrom, Cambridge Uni-versity; Enrico Spolaore, Brown University;Marc Melitz, Harvard University; JohnFitzgerald, Bowdoin College; and AlessandroRebucci, International Monetary Fund.

The B-Line continues to run to Boston Univer-sity and Boston College and the Macroeconom-ics Seminar of the same name enjoyed yet an-other run under the auspices of Russell Cooper,Boston University, and Fabio Schiantarelli,Boston College. Last year’s fall guests were:Peter Ireland, BC; Dean Corbae, University ofPittsburg; John Driscoll, Brown University;Christophe Chamley, BU; Nobuhiro Kiyotaki,London School of Economics; Marco Bassetto,University of Minnesota; NarayanaKocherlakota, University of Minnesota; JulioRotemberg, Harvard Business School; andChristopher L. House and Yong Weng of BU.

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Stork Market rebounds!Professor Ingela Alger and her husband Guillermobecame first-time parents to their lovely daughter,Nina, on April 26. Nina was extremely considerate,allowing her Mom to complete her academic dutiesbefore arriving and behaving beautifully afterwards.Nina made her first visit to Carney Hall at age 6 days(no graduate application yet, though).Technical Word Processor John Moore and JaneWatson welcomed daughter Sasha Moore on July 20.We haven’t seen her yet, but the pictures are verycute!

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Alumni News NotesBCEC stymied by legal obstacles. Although Boston

College won its case against the City of Newtonin Land Court last year, the Newton aldermenhave appealed, and the conclusion of this legalsaga is thus indefinitely postponed. Facingcrushing space needs for both faculty officespace and administrative units, BC has goneforward with the construction of this new edi-fice on Lower Campus, under the jurisdiction

of the City ofBoston’s zoning.The new buildingwill “temporarily”house three aca-demic units: thecommunication, his-tory and economicsdepartments (untilthe renovation ofCarney, or the ar-rival of a glacier inthe nether regions,whichever comes

first). The removal of history and econ officesfrom Carney will ease up the perennial over-crowding in that building, while the communi-cation department-facing overwhelming de-mand for its undergraduate major-will relocatefrom Lyons Hall. College of Arts and SciencesDean Joseph Quinn told the BC Chronicle thatLyons andC a r n e yhalls “...areamong ourmost crow–ded aca-demic buil–dings, so[the build-ing] will bea benefit forall the departments in those areas.”Administrative units, such as the BC PoliceDepartment and the Office of Residential Life,Information Technology offices, a bookstore

John Barkoulas (Ph.D. ’94) has joinedthe University of Tennessee at Knoxville, thecommercial hub of East Tennessee, a far cryfrom the quiet, country life of Ruston, LA.Gene Coyle (Ph.D. ’69) continues his busyprofessional life as an invited speaker at aconference on “Energy and the Environmentin Brazil” at the Woodrow Wilson Center inWashington, DC; at the 25th annual Interna-tional Conference of the International Asso-ciation of Energy Economists in Houston;and at a conference on “California’s EnergyFuture” at the Claremont Colleges. He spokeat Cal State/Fresno and Cal State/Chico on“California’s Energy Crisis.” He has recentlyjoined the board of a new NGO, “Eco-Eq-uity,” which is focusing on the issue of globalclimate justice. He has contributed an essayfor a festschrift in honor of Professor HarryTrebing of Michigan State University whichwill be published later this year. Gene wasinvited by the Brazilian Congress to speak inlate May about Brazil’s energy crisis, whichis similar to California’s. While in Brazil, hegave a seminar at the Federal University ofRio de Janeiro on May 25. Joanne Doyle (Ph.D.‘93) and former BC faculty member ToniWhited (U. Iowa) have a paper, “Fixed Costsof Adjustment, Coordination, and IndustryInvestment,” forthcoming in the Review ofEconomics and Statistics. Christis Hassapis’(Ph.D. ’88) article, “Non-Expected Utility,Saving and Portfolios,” written with MichaelHaliassos, was published in The EconomicJournal, Vol. 111, Issue 468. Mary Joyce (Ph.D.’92) and P.J. Nigro (Ph.D. ’92) continue tobestow some lightheartedness to our lives bysharing the ever-challenging quotes of theiroffspring. It would appear that Mary and P.J.are outwitted with every utterance. SamantaPadalino (M.A. ’97) joined the Office of Gasand Electricity Markets (Ofgem) in 2000 as asenior economic advisor. Ofgem is the en-

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Seminars... from p.8

Comings and Goings.. from p.1 Alumni News... from p. 9

fects of differing cultures on trade patterns andhuman capital flows. István also received hisM.A. from Northwestern, with a degree in eco-nomics from the Budapest Institute of Eco-nomic Sciences, where he gained teaching ex-perience as an instructor in mathematics foreconomists. He will be teaching microeconomictheory and international trade in the currentacademic year.We also must report that Prof. Serena Ng hasdecided to leave the Department and take aposition in the Economics Department of JohnsHopkins University in Baltimore. Serena joinedthe department as an associate professor in1996 and has been a highly valued colleague,meeting considerable success in these few yearswith publications in the Journal of Econometrics,Econometric Theory, Journal of the American Sta-tistical Association, Review of Economics and Sta-tistics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking andJournal of Applied Econometrics, and teaching thegraduate courses in time series econometrics(with Bruce Hansen and Jushan Bai) and amodule of the macroeconomics sequence, aswell as offering a popular undergraduate elec-tive in econometrics. She has served as an advi-sor to a number of Ph.D. dissertation students,several of whom have now met with success onthe market. We will miss her wry humor andwillingness to help with knotty applied econo-metric issues, and wish her the best in her newposition at Hopkins.

Spring B-Line presenters included Ricardo Ca-ballero, MIT; Jeff Campbell, Chicago; AndrewLevin, Federal Reserve Board; and FernandoAlvarez, University of Chicago.

Brown bags were the order of the day onWednesdays in the fall, as the faculty contin-ued the Brown Bag Seminar series. Presentersthis year were: Ingela Alger, Richard Arnott,Hideo Konishi, Jim Anderson (two appear-ances), Uzi Segal, and Tommaso Monacelli.

ergy regulator for the United Kingdom.Claudio Piron (M.A. ’95), global markets econo-mist at Standard Chartered Bank, was quotedin The Financial Times, January 4, 2001, Na-tional News section: “Shell and Esso fuelfurther petrol price cuts.” Claudio remarkedthat the oil companies were hedging theirbets in a volatile market before they made adecision on cutting pump prices. “They areprobably looking at the mid-January meet-ing of OPEC (the Organisation of PetroleumExporting Countries) to see what restrictionsit imposes. OPEC is expected to cut produc-tion by 2.5m or 1.5m barrels a day, taking offvirtually all the increases in supply from lastyear.” Steven Pizer (Ph.D. ’98) wrote “Doesinternational competition undermine wagedifferentials and increase inequality?” whichwas published in the Journal of InternationalEconomics Vol. 52(2) pp. 259-282, December2000. Shane Stokes reported the followingnews about Greg Swinand (Ph.D. ’99), locatedon IrishCycling.Com pages, on December 17,2000. ‘’’SWINAND WINS CHRISTMASHAMPER RACE: American rider GregSwinand was the surprise winner of today’sChristmas Hamper cycling race in CarrickOn Suir. The former international competi-tor was one of the driving forces in astrongelite group which overcame a 9 minutehandicap to dispute the final result. Al-though former world no. 1 Sean Kelly was atthe head of affairs towards the end of the 30mile race, hopes that he would add to his rackof victories in the event were dashed whenthe Carrick man eased back on a slipperyfinishing circuit, where Tom Hughes ofStamullen forged ahead in search of thehonours. Hughes was himself overhauled bySwinand, who proved fastest in the final halfmile to cross the line two seconds clear andtake his biggest win since moving to Irelandthis summer. ‘It was a hard race’, saidSwinand afterwards. ‘The cold and wet tooka lot out of everybody but luckily everyoneContinued, p.12

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John J. Neuhauser. “It's nice to have a formerstudent return to Boston College to take anendowed chair. From the University's point ofview, you might say it's a mission accom-plished.” Fr. McNelis' current research inter-ests include the problems of Latin Americaneconomies and Asian financial reform, and fore-casting and risk analysis of emerging markets.He recently spent time in Indonesia providingassistance to that nation's banks in developingmonetary policy. As Gasson Professor, Fr.McNelis will teach primarily in the EconomicsDepartment but, according to University ad-ministrators, he has the academic credentials tocontribute to other departments at BC as well.“It will be great to have a scholar of Paul'scaliber in the Gasson Chair,” said College ofArts and Sciences Dean Joseph F. Quinn. “Hewill be able to contribute a lot to Boston Collegeand it will be an honor to welcome him here.”Fr. McNelis, who served as an adjunct econom-ics professor at BC in the mid-1970s while study-ing at the Weston School of Theology, said, “Itis really very exciting for me to be returning toBoston College and I am grateful for the oppor-tunity.” “Given his vast experience and hiswide range of scholarship he may also contrib-ute to our International Studies Program, LatinAmerican Studies, Finance and our ScientificComputation program,” said Economics De-partment Chairman Prof. Peter Ireland. “Thosewho know Paul know he's a scholar and agentleman,” said Ireland. “Outside of the class-room I expect that he will spend a lot of timewith both undergraduate and graduate stu-dents and that will be a real benefit to every-one.” Fr. McNelis said he plans to offer a courseat BC this fall titled Frontiers of Economic Sci-ence and Global Financial Markets, in whichstudents must make and defend arguments -not a simple task in a course that involvesconsiderable mathematical and computationalwork, he said. “I think that when studentsknow they will have to defend their positionsthey learn the material much better,” he said.“It forces them to approach problems from all

Gasson Chair... from p.1 angles.” A native of Hazleton, Pa., and a mem-ber of the Maryland Province of the Society ofJesus, Fr. McNelis holds degrees in economicsand philosophy from Boston College. He alsoearned a doctorate in economics in 1974 fromJohns Hopkins University and a master of di-vinity degree from the Weston School of Theol-ogy in 1977.The above courtesy of the Boston College Chronicle, authored by StaffWriter Stephen Gawlick.Also of note with regard to the Gasson Chair,Boston College’s first endowed chair: the firstbeneficiary of the Chair was Fr. William B.Neenan, SJ, also an economist. Fr. Neenan hasremained at Boston College, serving as Dean ofthe College of Arts and Sciences and AcademicVice President and Dean of Faculties. He is nowVice President and Assistant to the President ofBoston College.

New Building... from p.9

annex, and a dining service facility will move tothe new building, freeing up dormitory spacefor expansion of on-campus housing in exist-ing buildings. A number of construction projectsare underway to add more dormitory spaceand relieve the pressure on the neighboringcommunity’s housing stock.Additional photos chronicling the rapid paceof construction of the new Faculty and Admin-istration building are available from the “Spot-light” link on the Department’s home page,which will be periodically updated as con-struction progresses.

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Ken’ichi Odawara (M.A. ’59) was featured inBarrons’ Who’s Who, The Asia 500 Leaders for theNew Century, the Millennium Edition, 2000. Afterleaving Boston College, he continued his post-graduate studies at Columbia University for oneyear before returning to Japan to begin his aca-demic career at Jochi-Sophia University, where herose to rank of professor. Retiring from thatposition at the mandatory age of 65, Ken’ichi wenton to became a professor at Nihon University’sDepartment of International Development Stud-ies, also teaching in the Graduate Schools of Eco-nomics and of Social and Cultural Studies. He hastaught and been a lecturer at many other univer-sities in Tokyo, and he has traveled abroad as avisiting professor or scholar at universitiesthroughout the world; e.g., Chulalongkorn Uni-versity, Yale University, the University of Pitts-burgh, MIT, the University of Hawaii, ColumbiaUniversity, the University of Puebla, Mexico, Tech-nical University of Berlin, Harvard University,Boston College, the Wharton School at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, National Taiwan Uni-versity, and Inner Mongolian University. Duringthe 1960s and 1970s, he served as a consultant onregional trade and monetary cooperation in Asiafor the United Nations. Professor Odawara hasan extensive publication history. He has authoredmore than 500 articles and books since 1956, in-cluding the Foundation Paper on Regional PaymentsArrangements for ECAFE Countries, The Great Ameri-can Disease, The Economic Friction between U.S.,Europe and Japan, and An Overview on InternationalEconomics, to name a few. His work has beenpublished in many journals: Japan Quarterly, MITIJournal, Japan Economic Journal, Tokyo Business To-day, Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo Shimbun, Sophia Eco-nomic Review, International Economy,Bungeishunjyu, and Pacific Affairs. His willingnessto help society is evident in the many servicepositions he has held in government: Chief In-structor of the Institute of Money and Banking forIndonesian Government Trainees, Consultant ofthe Japan Management Association, Expert Advi-

set a good tempo to bring back the guys whohad been given a handicap at the start. Wewere closing them down all the way, thenmyself and Paul Griffen jumped across onthe last big lap.’ ‘It is great to win the race’, hesaid with a smile. ‘Since I moved to IrelandI have taken a couple of league races but thisis the first proper win. I have a wife andfamily at home in Wicklow and am a full timeeconomic consultant, so I don’t know if I willhave time to do races such as the FBD MilkRas. But it is still great to win races like this.’Results: 1, Greg Swinand (Usher IRC) 30miles in 1 hour 22 mins.” Greg received hisPh.D. in May 1999. Sr. Beth Anne Tercek(Ph.D. ’93) attended the NATRI conference(National Institute for Treasurers of Reli-gious Institutes) in Memphis, Tennessee, inNovember 2000. Sister continues to face thechallenges and intricacies of her position asfinance manager for her religious order, TheNotre Dame Sisters of Ohio. While this isdefinitely a full-time job, she misses teachingand hopes to return to it, if only part time.Clifford Thies (Ph.D. ’82) examined “Fixedand Floating Exchange Rates: The Experi-ence of the American Colonies with PaperMoney” in his paper which was published inthe International Quarterly Journal of Finance,Vol.1, No. 1, pp. 47-60, January 2001. Cliff’spiece on “The Hirohito Gold Fiasco” ap-peared on the Ludwig von Mises Institutewebsite (www.vonmises.org) on 24 July. MaryBozza Wise (M.A. ’95) has accepted a positionat Magellan Behavioral Health; she will beworking with the Outcomes and EvaluationResearch group.

Alumni News. from p. 10

M.A. Makes It sor on the Energy Tax Ministry of Finance, ExpertCommittee Member of the Science Council of theMinistry of Education, member of the Interna-tional Economics Research Coordination Com-mittee, Chairman of the Islamic Economic Re-search Council, and consultant to the US-JapanNuclear Power Agreement.Thanks to Barrons for this information.

August 2001 Page 13BCEC

UNDERGRADUATEACHIEVEMENTS

After graduating from Boston College with aB.A. in economics in 1979, Stacie Beck continuedher academic pursuits and obtained a Ph.D. ineconomics from the University of Pennsylva-nia in 1987. Stacie’s career began at the Depart-ment of Environmental Quality Engineeringfor the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, whereshe worked as an economist from 1979-1981.At the University of Pennsylvania, Stacieworked as a Project Link research fellow, ateaching fellow, and an instructor in the De-partment of Economics. From 1989-1996, Staciewas an assistant professor, and has been anassociate professor from 1996 to the present.While a student at the University of Delaware,she received the Financial Institutions Researchand Education Center Grant. Her publicationsinclude “Autoregressive Conditional Hetero–skedasticity in Commodity Spot Prices,” Jour-nal of Applied Econometrics 16:2, 115-132, 2001;“Cointegration and Market Efficiency in Com-modities Futures Markets, Applied Economics26:2, 49-258, 1994; “The Effect of Budget Defi-cits on Exchange Rates: Evidence from FiveCountries,” Journal of Economics and Business 46,497-508, 1994; “Tests of the Intertemporal Hedg-ing Theory of the Risk Premium in Commodi-ties Futures Markets,” Journal of Futures Mar-kets, May 1993; “Ricardian Equivalence Propo-sition: Evidence from the Foreign ExchangeMarkets,” Journal of International Money andFinance, April 1993; “A Rational ExpectationsModel of Time Varying Risk Premiums in theCommodities Futures Markets: Theory andEvidence,” International Economic Review, Feb-ruary 1993. Stacie has submitted “The OptionValue of Liquidity” to the Economic Journal and“Capital Market Integration and Convergencein International Lending Rates” to the Journal ofMoney and Finance. Her research in progressincludes: option value in a cash-in-advanceeconomy; empirical evidence on demand forliquidity; theoretical and empirical issues in

financial and monetary economics with specialinterest in commodities, foreign exchange, andliquidity demand; and theoretical and empiri-cal issues in international finance.

The Boston College Magazine’s summer issuechronicles the achievements of one of BC’s 1985graduates, Cathy Beyer DeFilippo, who was re-cently promoted to the chief of the appliedeconomics division of the US InternationalTrade Commission. The ITC provides tradeexpertise and determines the impact of importson US industries; Cathy supervises a group ofeconomists who perform analysis on unfairtrade practices.We are pleased to note that two May 2000undergraduate economics majors have goneon to Ph.D. programs at the University of NorthCarolina: Erika Dreyer and Suzette Applegate(Math/Economics). The BCM also reports thatMario Fernandez ‘02 has become the first BCstudent to receive a grant from the AmericanEconomic Association to attend their intensiveeight-week summer program in math and econat University of Colorado-Denver. Mario plansto pursue graduate studies in economics ongraduation from BC.

Ph.D. Another joint work with BC alumna SilviaArdagna (Wellesley), “Fiscal Policy, Profitabil-ity and Investment”, has appeared as NationalBureau of Economic Research Working Paper7207, and is also forthcoming in the AmericanEconomic Review. This paper is coauthored byAlberto Alesina, Roberto Perotti, Ardagna andSchiantarelli.Fabio is currently busy with details of co-orga-nizing an international conference “Firms’Adjustment with Non-Convexities andIrreversibilities,” sponsored by the Universityof Bergamo, Italy, and by the Business Invest-ment Research Center at the University ofMaastricht, The Netherlands. The conference,co-organized by Marzio Galeotti and GerardPfann, will take place November 9-10, 2001, in

Faculty News... from p.6

Continued, p.15

August 2001 Page 14BCEC

PEYTON PLACE REVISITED

Would you believe that our own HaroldPetersen has a past? And that he’s willing tolet us in on it? It seems that John Gardner,a freshman roommate of Harold’s atDePauw University way back when, wrotean appropriately named journal, “Lies! Lies!Lies!” Harold claims that this is true. Atany rate, John’s motto was “if it’s worthtelling, it’s worth stretching.” Therein liesthe rub, as Harold’s involvement stretchesto short-sheeting beds and other unscru-pulous deeds in that infamous hall, LocustManor, performed by others, of course.(Did we say that Harold was no dummy?).John names Harold, a house councellor(sic) (in reality, a dorm proctor) as theinstigator of pranks, who contaminatesJohn’s innocent roommate Roger Getty withideas he couldn’t conceive on his own. Sothe story goes, Harold declared that thedorm was too quiet, and good old Rogerbecame a willing accomplice to Harold’splan to “short-sheet some beds, or takescrews out of doorknobs, or something.”So, while innocent Harold went off to study,Roger and Robert Berry (Goose) went aboutcarrying out the evil deeds. “Mr. Getty andthe Goose occupied themselves with short-sheeting beds in the attic where we sleep,piling unused mattresses on the bed of oneWheel Barrow, polishing door handles withgobs of toothpaste (Colgate), owned by theGoose, and taking screws out of numerousdoor-knobs, including that which is at-tached to the public phone on the secondfloor of this noble building. For the infor-mation of this journal, a door-knob withthe screw taken out will turn round andround in the hand of him who wants in, orout, making no impression upon the latchof the door.” To make sure their deedswouldn’t go unnoticed, the perpetratorswent downstairs to push buzzers whichcalled their housemates to the phone. Drip-

ping toothpasteand profane ex-clamations asthey exited theirrooms, the boysexpressed theirdismay, joined bythe evildoersthemselves whointermingled asone with the cho-rus of innocentvictims. Where

was Harold? Asleep, of course, only to beawakened with cries for a council meeting.Couldn’t it wait ‘til morning? No way! AsHarold searched unsuccessfully for his pil-low, the meeting began, whereupon Haroldproclaimed, ”It has been brought to myattention that somebody has pulled a nasty.Now I happen to know the names of theinstigators of this nonsense, and if thatperson, or those persons, will step forwardat this time, no great harm will be donethem.” “(Peter didn’t rise himself, so Gettyand the Goose sat in their places.)” Want-ing to go back to sleep, Mr. Petersen (socalled in the account) decided that thematter would be considered closed, butothers didn’t agree; that is, until they heardthe possible punishments and suffering,uttered by Harold, to be endured by all inLocust Manor. The chief proponent forpunishment backed off from his “initialhasty indignation” and forgave the “harm-less pranksters.” Thus began HaroldPetersen’s journey toward a career as astalwart of the economics department righthere in Carney Hall, a far cry from LocustManor (although locusts might feel right athome here). (Due to space limitations,these lies have been condensed. For moreof the lurid details, please contact Harold.Thank you to John Gardner, now unfortu-nately deceased, for exposing the realHarold Petersen.)

August 2001 Page 15BCEC

Scenes from the Department Mixer, April 2001

Faculty News... from p.13Bergamo, Italy, and it will have the participation of the top American and European researchersin the field. Fabio is a co-director (with A. Galindo (Inter-American Development Bank)) of theproject “Determinants and Consequences of Financial Constraints Facing Firms in Latin Americaand the Caribbean.” The project provides financing for six research teams in Latin America andthe Caribbean to investigate the effect of capital market structure on the access to credit by firmand on their investment decisions. The consequences of financial reform and of financial crashes,and the role of business groups in affecting firm behavior is analyzed. A seminar has already takenplace in Washington, DC, at the IADB, June 14-15, 2001. A session of the LACEA meetings inOctober 2001, in Montevideo, Uruguay, will also be devoted to the project.

August 2001 Page 16BCEC

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