Fall 2009 Newsletter

EconomicsCollege of Arts and Sciences, American University

Report from the Chair

Contents

A Letter from the Chair.......................1

Newly Tenured Faculty........................2

Gender Analysis Program...................2

Department Notables......................3-6

Undergraduate Program Update..........6

Summer Econometrics Program.......6

2009 Economics PhD Recipients......7

Student Research Presentations.........7

Omicron Delta Epsilon Update........7

Undergrad Fed Challenge...................8

American University Department of Economics

105 Roper Hall4400 Massachusetts Ave, NWWashington, D.C. 20016-8029202-885-3770202-885-3970 (fax)econ@american.eduwww.american.edu/cas/economics

This is the first AU Economics Department newsletter in several years, and the first not to be named the Roper Hall Reporter. The change of name is deliberate, since in March 2010 we are scheduled to move to a new home, the newly-renovated Kreeger Hall (formerly the music and performing arts building). After 46 years in Roper Hall, the move will certainly be a momentous event for our department, and it will give us expanded facilities for our faculty and students. Although moving to a new building is important, even more important are the scholarly, programmatic, and professional achievements that are documented throughout this newsletter. While maintaining its pluralistic perspective and strong policy orientation, our department has also strengthened its faculty and offerings in econometrics and theory. We now offer a summer graduate program in econometrics that brings internationally-prominent econometricians to teach specialized courses at AU, as well as a new graduate program in gender analysis in economics that replaced the former field of women in the economy. These and other innovative programs are attracting students from around the world to come to study in our department. We have put a new emphasis on undergraduate research, resulting in many students presenting papers at conferences and increasing numbers going on to graduate studies in economics. A new BS in economics replaced the former BA in economic theory and has become a very popular option for many students. In addition, our department now participates in the “Fed Challenge,” a competition in which teams from different universities give monetary policy presentations to staff economists at a local regional Federal Reserve Bank. “Coach” Martha Starr has recently created a seminar to give academic credit for participation in this endeavor. As chair, I hope to strengthen our department’s ties with its graduate and undergraduate alumni. This newsletter features updates on several alumni who have been in communication with us, and we hope that you will join in sending us news on your life and career for the next issue to econ@american.edu, subject: Alumni News for Newsletter. We also invite you to keep up-to-date on what’s going on in our department by visiting our new Web site, http://www.american.edu/cas/economics. The face of our faculty has changed considerably in recent years. Howard Wachtel and Robin Hahnel have retired to emeritus status. Tom Hertz is now working at the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Game theorist James Bono from the University of California, Irvine, joined our tenure-track faculty in Fall 2008, and he will be joined by growth economist Jeremiah Dittmar from the University of California, Berkeley, in Fall 2009. Ivy Broder will return to full-time teaching in AY 2009–10 after many years of valuable administrative service as dean of academic affairs and interim provost. Meanwhile, three junior faculty members—Mary Hansen, Kara Reynolds, and Martha Starr—were recently granted tenure and promoted to associate professor. Also on the faculty front, Professor Mieke Meurs was awarded the university’s highest honor when she was named AU Scholar-Teacher of the Year for 2009. She joins fellow faculty members who have been given university awards in recent years, including Robert Feinberg and Amos Golan (Scholar of the Year, 2006 and 2008, respectively) and myself (Teacher of the Year in 2005). In the department office, Sharon Childs-Patrick retired in 2005 and was replaced by Glen Arnold as administrative coordinator. Sheila Budnyj now works part-time as an academic advisor. Our capable staff keeps our office humming and our students and faculty well served.

Robert A. BleckerChair, Department of Economics

The department thanks Jessica Tabak in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Dean’s Office for her help producing this newsletter.

American University Department of Economics Newsletter2

Department Launches Gender Analysis ProgramThe Department’s Program on Gender Analysis in Economics (PGAE) was officially launched in January 2009. It offers three options to meet different needs: a Graduate Certificate on Gender Analysis in Economics. a Gender Analysis in Economics track in the MA in Economics, and a Gender Analysis in Economics field in the PhD program.

The PGAE provides a gender-focused, economics-based curriculum. All students take a sequence of two core courses that apply gender analysis to different fields of economics, including microeconomics, macroeconomics, political economy, labor economics, public finance, development, and international trade and investment, and can select from among various electives in other disciplines.

The program is geared toward students who seek careers in government agencies in the US and other countries, bilateral and multilateral organizations, think tanks, consulting firms, and non-profit organizations. This program, which was developed mainly through the efforts of Professors Caren Grown and Maria (Sergy) Floro, builds on and updates the former Women

From left: Professors Mieke Meurs and Caren Grown with students at the International

Association For Feminist Economics conference in Torino, Italy.

The department has recently welcomed three professors to its tenured ranks.

Mary Eschelbach Hansen received tenure in 2008. Hansen’s fields are economic history, labor economics, and the economics of adoption. She is the department’s director of undergraduate studies. Kara Reynolds recieved tenure in 2009. Reynolds’ interests include the political economy of international trade policy and the impact of trade liberalization on workers and firms. Martha Starr received tenure in 2009. Starr’s research areas include monetary economics, the economics of consumption and saving, and institutional and social economics.

Department Welcomes Newly Tenured Faculty

The addition of these three women to the department’s tenured ranks brings the number of tenured women faculty up to six, representing one-third of the 18 tenured faculty currently teaching in the department (the other tenured women are Ivy Broder, Maria Floro, and Mieke Meurs).

This is a high proportion of tenured women in a profession in which only about 30% of new doctorates are received by women. The AU Department of Economics has long been a pioneer in promoting women in the profession, going back to the days of prominent professors such as Cynthia Taft Morris, Nancy S. Barrett, Distinguished Profesor Emerita Barbara Bergmann, and Julia I. Lane.

Kara Reynolds Martha Starr Mary Eschelbach Hansen

in the Economy field pioneered by Professor Emerita Barbara Bergmann in the 1990s. Please help us recruit for this new program by directing interested individuals to: www.american.edu/economics/programs/gender.cfm.

Department Notables

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Faculty News

Robert Blecker became department chair in June 2008. He recently published two journal articles empirically testing the hypothesis of a “fallacy of composition” in the export-led growth strategy of developing nations, both coauthored with former AU doctoral student Arslan Razmi (PhD, 2004), now an assistant professor at UMass-Amherst. Much of Blecker’s current research is focused on North American economic integration and the Mexican economy, resulting in a series of published articles along with frequent visits to Canada and Mexico. Since 2006, he has given presentations or lectures at universities or conferences in international locations including Berlin, London, Mexico City, Montreal, Naples, Nice, Rio de Janeiro, San Juan, and Tijuana.

James Bono joined the AU faculty in Fall 2008 after receiving his PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Bono is now working on the statistical integration of findings from behavioral economics to construct applicable predictive models. He and collaborator David Wolpert have uncovered serious deficiencies in the ability of conventional models to inform decision makers about risk and other decision-relevant quantities. They hope to publish their findings in a top academic journal later this year. Bono recently presented research at the Annual Meetings of the Midwest Economic Association. He is a member of the Scientific Committee for “From Game Theory to Game Engineering,” a groundbreaking workshop being held at Oxford University’s Man Institute this September.

Bob Feinberg continues to be active in the Industrial Organization Society, for which he served as president during 2004 and 2005. He is on its Board of Directors and the editorial board of its journal, the Review of Industrial Organization and has recently become a coeditor of the Southern Economic Journal. He is planning a short trip in the fall to Slovenia during his Sabbatical in Fall 2009, where he will attend a European Industrial Organization conference.

Maria (Sergy) Floro was a Guest Scholar in Residence in May-June 2009 at the Dag Hammarksjold Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden. The Foundation pays tribute to the memory of the second UN Secretary General by searching for and examining workable alternatives for a socially and economically just, peaceful and secure world in which human rights are genuinely respected. Maria plans to continue her work on gender, vulnerability and economic security.

Caren Grown joined the AU faculty as Economist-in-Residence in Fall 2007. Taxation and Gender Equity, which she is coediting with Imraan Valodia, will be published by Routledge in 2010. This volume presents original research on the gender equity dimensions of taxation in eight countries from around the world and provides recommendations for tax policies and reforms. Grown is also beginning a project with collaborators in India, Ghana, and Ecuador, involving a large-scale household survey that will document patterns of asset accumulation and disposal by sex. In September 2008, she gave a lecture on gender equity and human rights for new diplomats and budget officers and participated in a workshop on taxation and gender equity in Mexico City.

Mary Eschelbach Hansen has been working on a manuscript for a book on tackling the challenges of public child welfare since receiving tenure in 2008. She also works closely with policy staff at the Children’s Law Center, where she assists in preparation and analysis of D.C. child welfare legislation. Currently, she is working on an analysis of the fiscal impact of a proposed expansion of subsidies for legal guardianships. At AU, Hansen is leading a group of faculty and staff that is working to build computing infrastructure and to develop common procedures for faculty and graduate students to facilitate research involving secure data. She oversaw the department’s assessment effort in AY 2008-9 and coordinates the university’s effort to develop an effective and transparent assessment process for the General Education Program.

Robert Lerman’s research focuses on the interactions between family structure, skills, earnings, and family incomes. His 2007 article in Demography examined how marital status affects labor market outcomes and vice versa. Demography, Education, and the Workforce (Greenwood Press, 2009), his new book coauthored with Stephanie Cellini, describes four major demographic trends and examines how they will influence the job market and educational institutions. He is coordinating a working group linked to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship aimed at expanding apprenticeship. In 2007, Lerman was elected to the Policy Council of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). He continues to conduct policy-oriented research as Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute.

Daniel Lin is about to enter his second year on the faculty. He received his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles and his PhD from George Mason University. His dissertation, “Asset Specificity and Network Control of Television Programs,”

American University Department of Economics Newsletter4

used transaction cost economics to explain the changes in the organization of the television industry in the 1950s. His primary research interests lie in industrial organization and public choice. During his first year at AU in 2008-9, he taught microeconomics, macroeconomics, and political economy.

Mieke Meurs traveled to Bulgaria in the summer of 2009 on a Title VIII research grant. She was accompanied by PhD students George Panterov and Eugenia Todorova, as well as Agata Kaczanowska, a student in the BA/MA program, funded separately through a CAS Undergraduate Research Award. The group examined the puzzle of why the restitution of private property rights in land has not resulted in more commercial production by small holders. Kara Reynolds, who was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009, was a featured speaker at the Institute for International Economic Policy’s 2009 conference “Antidumping Use across the World: Implications for Developing Countries and U.S. Businesses.” While she continues to do extensive research on the impact of antidumping protection on the global economy, her current research agenda also includes estimating of the efficacy of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program and the relationship between trade protection and firm investment in research and development.

Larry Sawers’s current research centers on health and development, with a focus on explaining the economic drivers behind the HIV epidemics in developing countries. He presented a paper at the AIDS Impact Conference in Marseilles, France, in July 2007, and at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City in July 2008, and will present again at the AIDS Impact Conference in Gaborone, Botswana in September 2009. He has coauthored two articles—one with Tom Hertz and both with Eileen Stillwaggon—that analyze a cross-national dataset of low- and middle-income countries. They show that socio-economic variables together with measures of cofactor infections that are diseases of poverty are associated with most of the variance in HIV prevalence across developing and transition countries. The policy implication is that a cost-effective strategy to slow or reverse the HIV epidemics in poor countries is to treat certain diseases of poverty that make people more vulnerable to HIV.

Martha Starr was delighted to receive tenure in May 2009. She continues to supervise a bright group of PhD students writing dissertations about monetary and financial topics in Turkey, Vietnam, the CFA franc zones of Sub-Saharan Africa, Oman, and very small open economies of the Caribbean. Her current research emphasizes pro-social dimensions of economic activity, as well as distributional aspects of economic downturn and financial crisis. Economic Pluralism, which she coedited with Rob Garnett and Erik Olsen, is due out this year. It features contributions from

Alumni Updates

Avinash Singh Bhati (PhD, 2001) is a senior research associate at the Justice Policy Center of the Urban Institute, where he conducts research using information-theoretic methods. He continues to collaborate on research projects with professor Amos Golan at AU. Over the last several years, he has studied such topics as models of criminal recidivism, judicial discretion, and spatial patterns in crime, and he has designed offender risk classification systems. He has published in journals from a variety of fields and attends conferences for both researchers and practitioners.

David Colander, Tony Lawson, Diana Strassmann, and Fred Lee. She is a coeditor of the Review of Social Economy and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Issues.

Jim Weaver is still teaching at AU in retirement. He teaches economics as literature at the AU Osher Living Learning Center, which attracts very motivated retirees. Jim is very relieved to have no papers or tests to grade.

John Willoughby has thrown himself into two research projects on the economies of the Arabian Peninsula since completing a term as chair from 2005-8. He has been investigating the institutions that structure the movement of millions of people from South Asia to the Gulf under temporary labor contracts and helped prepare documents for the Ministry of Labor of the United Arab Emirates that helped lead to new diplomatic agreements that might create a more humane, stable and predictable environment for these workers. In addition, John has written a paper on the creation of new universities and colleges in the Gulf which he presented at the most recent Middle East Studies Association. This became a Chronicle of Higher Education front page story.

Jon D. Wisman still bikes to AU and teaches economic thought, economic history, labor economics, and introductory macroeconomics. He has continued his research in economic methodology and history of economic thought, much of which addresses how economic science has functioned as ideology. In recent years he has begun exploring more current issues having to do with labor, inequality, and the consequences of ever-more robust creative destruction. Some of this research has been conducted and co-authored with PhD students. In 2003, Wisman served as President of the Association for Social Economics (ASE). The ASE awarded him the Ludwig Mai Service Award in 2007 and the Thomas F. Divine Award for important life-long contributions to social economics in 2009. In spring 2009, he contributed an essay to CAS Connections about the importance of liberal arts education to the global economy: http://www.american.edu/cas/news/wisman-critical-balance-0905.cfm

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Ron Cronovich (BA, 1988) is now associate professor of economics at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After he graduated from AU in 1988, Ron pursued his doctorate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He became an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1994, and was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2000. Ron was married in the summer of 2007 and began his job at Carthage in August 2008. Ron finds that a small liberal arts college like Carthage is a much better fit for him as he truly enjoys teaching. In May 2009, he conducted a workshop at a Harvard University conference on teaching economics hosted by Greg Mankiw.

Susan Fleck (PhD, 1997) chose to work in public service when she joined the staff of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), where she has worked for 11 years. Fleck is now division chief of the Major Sector Productivity program at BLS. Her division prepares the national quarterly labor productivity measures as well as annual multifactor productivity measures. Susan also has had the opportunity to spend two years as a diplomat with the State Department, serving as Labor Attaché in her husband’s home country of Honduras. She can be contacted at fleck.susan@bls.gov.

Lisa Giddings (PhD, 2000) is an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. She received tenure in 2006 and recently negotiated a part-time schedule with UW-La Crosse in which she teaches there for one semester per year and at Macalester College the other. During the spring of 2009, she taught a course on the economics of sexual orientation, which may be the only such course taught in the United States, at least as a semester-long course at the undergraduate level. See: http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/giddings.

Mitchell Ginsburg (PhD, 2003) is a senior international economist at the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington, where he works on U.S. international trade agreements. This position allows him to work on teams with many non-economists and requires him to explain the economics and how it relates to the policy or dispute the team is working on.

Dileni Gunewardena (PhD, 1996) is a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics and Statistics at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. Her research focuses on development microeconomics issues of poverty, inequality, gender, and child malnutrition. She is an associate at the Centre for Poverty Analysis in Colombo and an occasional consultant for World Bank and UN organizations in Colombo. She recently served a term as editor of the Sri Lanka Economic Journal.

Bernhard G. Gunter (PhD, 1998) is president of the Bangladesh Development Research Center (BDRC), a Virginia-based think tank dedicated to undertaking and disseminating research on development issues relevant for Bangladesh in order to foster the peaceful development of nations. See: http://www.bangladeshstudies.org/. Before founding BDRC in January 2007, Gunter worked or consulted for the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). He has been doing adjunct teaching in our department since Spring 2009.

Kendall (Schaefer) Helm (PhD, 2001) is a senior economist in the International Affairs and Trade Team of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent performance management agency that serves Congress. There, she works on issues such as climate change, food aid, trade negotiations, and Pacific island development. Previously, she worked as a consultant to the World Bank’s Southern Africa Division. Helm recently moved to New York City with her husband Matthew and their dog Kia.

Wasiq Khan (PhD, 2002) is an assistant professor of economics at Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland. He completed his third year at Franklin in 2008-9, and is due for promotion to associate professor. Wasiq’s students hail from more than 50 countries and pursue diverse careers in banking, government, international development, and academia. The college has recently awarded him a course release to continue work on a book-level study derived from his dissertation research.

Claire Lunieski (BS, 2009) won a long list of accolades for her honors capstone thesis, which used data on Fed Funds futures con-tracts and time-series econometrics to investigate how uncertainty about monetary policy affects commodity prices. She presented her work at the Eastern Economics Association’s annual meeting in February, where it was selected to be published in Issues in Po-litical Economy. She won an honorable mention at AU’s Honors Capstone Conference in April. Lunieski received the department’s 2009 Meade Prize for outstanding undergraduate research.

Monique Morrissey (PhD, 2003) works as an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). In a recent EPI Briefing Paper, Working the Graveyard Shift (2009), Morrisey and coauthor Emily Garr refute the argument that because some Americans are living longer everyone should have to work longer. Their paper notes that most of the increases in American life expectancy in recent decades have been among higher-wage workers, but raising the retirement age beyond 67 would effectively cut the benefits of all workers, including lower-income workers.

American University Department of Economics Newsletter6

Jesmin Rahman (PhD, 1998) is a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Her work has taken her all over the world, including to the Kyrgyz Republic, Nepal, Syria, Francophone Africa, Bolivia, Bulgaria, and most recently Turkey. For the past year, Rahman has been concentrating her research on the vulnerabilities and large current account deficits in fast-growing Eastern Europe countries that have been blessed by the European Union halo-effect.

Jeff Strohl (PhD, 2003) is the director of research at the newly-formed Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (cew.georgetown.edu). His work there focuses on managing a varied research program that includes forecasting education demand, evaluating education and training needs of jobs projected to be created by the stimulus package, and the relationship between socio-economic status and access to selective post-secondary institutions. Prior to that, Strohl worked at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and Westat.

Quentin Wodon (PhD, 1996) is an adviser and program manager for the Development Dialogue on Values and Ethics at the World Bank. This unit deals with the role of values and ethics in development. Prior to taking this position, Wodon specialized in Latin American and African programs at World Bank. Wodon presented a bag lunch seminar in our department in September 2008 on the “Impact on Poverty of the Food and Oil Price Crisis in Africa.” He has gathered a set of longer bios of some of our PhD alumni, which can be found on the department website at http://www.american.edu/CAS/Economics/.

Department Notablescontinued from page 7

Economics is, naturally, very popular right now. Since the crisis began unfolding, we’ve seen a doubling of declared economics majors and a quadrupling in interest among incoming first-year and transfer students.

We currently have three undergraduate programs: a general BA program, a BA program with an international focus, and a BS program. The BS program is more quantitative and attracts more mathematically-minded students. We encourage high-performing BS students to take advantage of our MA courses, and this year a record number did. Next year we will be establishing a fourth undergraduate program: a combined math-economics major that will provide the opportunity to prepare for graduate study in economics without double-majoring.

We’ve been attracting some terrific students and working hard to provide outlets for their talents. In 2008-2009: two students won summer fellowships from the College of Arts and Sciences for summer research; four students presented their independent research projects at the undergraduate sessions of the Eastern Economics Association meetings; one of our students represented the university at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research; one undergraduate will be published in Issues in Political Economy (a journal of undergrad research); and one undergraduate has coauthored an article with a faculty member that has been submitted for peer review. About a dozen students completed Honors Capstones with faculty advisors in economics.

Student research topics have included: measuring the effectiveness of trade assistance programs, using volatility of commodity prices to predict changes in Fed policy, evaluating the effectiveness of merit pay schemes for teachers, testing for price discrimination in D.C. public transit, determining whether the poor experienced benefits from deregulation in the credit card industry, and measuring the impact of microcredit lending in Cambodia.

Of the three students who applied to graduate programs in economics this year, all were accepted to desirable schools and offered fellowships or assistantships. About a dozen students applied to Masters’ programs in development studies, public policy, and public health, and to law schools. We have recent alums working at Bloomberg, Mathematica Policy Research, the Federal Reserve, and in several branches of the federal government.

2009 BS Graduates Headed for Graduate Study:

Erin Frankrone, Vanderbilt UniversityWilliam Nicholson, University of Wisconsin, MadisonColin Shelby, University of New Hampshire

—contributed by Mary Hansen, Associate Professor

Undergraduate Program Update

Established in 2005 by professor Amos Golan, the Summer Program in Applied Econometrics provides students, researchers, policy makers, and faculty with state-of-the-art econometric methods for analyzing data in economics and other social sciences. The program is driven by both the remarkable developments in econometric and statistical methods and the massive increase in available data in recent years.

The program is offered in two sessions every year in late May and early June. These week-long sessions meet Monday–Friday from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. These hands-on classes provide a combination of theory-based lectures, tutorials, and computer lab time. The lecturers frequently feature distinguished econometrics professors from other universities.

Past lecturers have included John Geweke, Bill Greene, John Rust, Eric Zivot, and Alastair Hall, in addition to professor Golan. For more details, see www.american.edu/cas/economics/programs/econometrics.cfm.

Summer Program inApplied Econometrics

American University Department of Economics Newsletter 7

Last March, undergraduate students made their annual trek to the Issues in Political Economy sessions at the Eastern Economics Association Meetings. This is the third time in the past four years that AU has sent a team to the meetings. At this year’s meetings in Manhattan, students presented original research completed in the Capstone course or in independent study. Students also had the opportunity to serve as discussants for another student’s paper and to attend sessions of presentations by professors and other professional economists.

Over 25 schools from as far as Morehead, Minnesota, and Austin, Texas, sent teams of students and faculty advisors. AU’s team was composed of Tyler Case (“The Bowie Effect: Investigating the Influence of Technology on Concert Ticket Prices”), Marylynn Diallo (“College Graduates and Economic Downturns”), Claire Lunieski (“Commodity Price Volatility and Monetary Policy Uncertainty: A GARCH Estimation“), and Will Nicholson (“The Impact of Performance Based Pay incentives on the Attrition of American Public School Teachers”). Mary Eschelbach Hansen, Director of Undergraduate Studies, accompanied the team.

Hansen also accompanied the team of students representing AU at the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research, which was held in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in April 2009. On the AU team was economics major Jay Palatucci, who presented “Does Trade Adjustment Assistance Make a Difference?” as well as

Undergrads Present Research Nationally, Regionally

The AU Chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, the International Economics Honors Society, hosted events on October 24 and 31, 2008, to help the AU community understand the origins and implications of the financial crisis.

The first event was titled “The Financial Crisis: What You Need to Know” and was led by professor Martha Starr and the AU Fed Challenge Team. (See article, page 7.) The presentations placed the development of the crisis in context. The second event, titled “The Financial Crisis: Global Dimensions,” featured guest lectures and an extended Q&A with Simon Johnson, former IMF chief economist currently at the MIT and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Robert Kahn of World Bank, formerly at Citigroup.

students from AU’s biochemistry program and its School of Communications. This was the first time AU was represented at the national conferences, which are attended by 2,500 students from over 200 schools.

Financial support from the CAS Dean’s Discretionary Fund, the AU Undergraduate Research Fund, and the Department of Economics made these rewarding experiences for students possible.

Omicron Delta Epsilon Hosts Events on Crisis

AY 2008-09 Economics PhD RecipientsKebede T. FedaThree Essays on Education in Oromia

Paul D. JacobsThe Affordability of Private Health Insurance: Econometric Evidence from Household and Firm Surveys

Tamara Kumari JayasunderaEvaluating Short- and Long-Term Impact of Education Policy: Evidence from Indonesia

Joyce M. NorthwoodThree Empirical Studies on the Impact of the Minimum Wage on Immigrants

Nicole SmithIntergenerational Educational Mobility: Three Essays on Measurement Error, Cross-Country Differences in Mobility, and Long-Run Growth

Nagwa S. RiadExchange Rate Misalignment in Egypt

Stanislav Emil VornovitskyInternet-Driven Productivity Growth: The Case of Hospital Radiology Services

Ghazi A. JoharjiExamining Government Expenditure and Economic Growth in a Natural Resource–Based Economy: Case Study of Saudi Arabia

Pooja KackerEssays on Plant-Level Productivity, Market Structure, and Enterprise Growth

Hazel Jean Lim MalapitThree Essays on Intrahousehold Finance and Development

Juna MilukaEducation, Migration, and Labor Markets in Albania: A Gender Perspective

Borislava Krasimirova MirchevaInfrastructure: The Building Block for Exports in Sub-Saharan Africa?

The department is also pleased to announce that the Frank Tamagna Dissertation Award for AY 2009-10 was

given to Yun Kim for his thesis,“Macroeconomic Implications of Household Debt.”

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Since Fall 2008, economics undergrads have a new way to fulfill their senior research requirement, via participation in the Fed Challenge—a competition sponsored by the Federal Reserve System in which teams of college students make mock monetary policy presentations to a panel of Fed judges and winners of regional rounds advance to a national-level competition. AU students have been competing in the Fed Challenge on an extracurricular basis since 2006, but now they are able to receive credit for the extraordinary amount of skill-building, learning, and hard work they do in preparing for the competition by enrolling in my section of the senior research seminar, ECON-480.

Last fall’s challenge was a special one, what with the financial crisis raging full force and all the economic indicators falling off a cliff. The AU team’s presentation emphasized the difficult intersections between stabilizing the financial system and trying to stave off the contraction in aggregate demand via reductions in interest rates, unconventional interventions in credit markets, and efforts

The 2006 Fed Challenge team, AU’s first. (L-R) Maricar Mabutas, Jonathan McPike, Kelsey Ayres, Professor Martha Starr, Steve Orme ,

Chris Carter, Katie Crockett, and Monica Andrews.

to bolster confidence in the long-run strength of U.S. economic fundamentals. The team’s presentation at the Federal Reserve Branch of Baltimore went very well, and although we didn’t win, members of the 2008 team agreed that the experience was a wonderful chance to build their knowledge of economic data and skills in economic analysis—and also for making some great friendships.

—contributed by Martha Starr, Associate Professor

Undergrads Take on Fed Challenge

I want to support the AU Department of Economics with a gift of $_______ to the:

Frank Tamanga Fund for scholarship in international monetary economics Simon Naidel Fund for scholarship in economic theory Economics Department’s General Fund CAS Dean’s Discretionary Fund

My check is enclosed (please make payable to American University).

Please charge my gift (circle one): Visa MasterCard American Express DiscoverCard # ___________________________ Exp. ________Signature______________________________________Name ________________________________Home Address ___________________________________City _______________________ State/Province _______ Zip/Postal Code _______ Country _________Home Phone _________________ E-mail __________________________________

Mail to: Liz Raymond, Assistant Director of Development American University, College of Arts and Sciences 4400 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20016-8012

Questions? Call 202-885-2435 or e-mail Liz Raymond at raymond@american.edu.

Help Us Stimulate Economics Education at AU