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Eleven Ph.D.'s awarded in University commencementThe 137th commencement exercises of Boston College were held on 20 May 2013. Eleven economics students received the Ph.D. since the last commencement. They are listed with their thesis topics and advisors. Kwok Ho Chan, "Essays on family economics" (Donald Cox); Xiaoping Chen, "A team-production approach to wages, employment and trade" (James E. Anderson); Tuan Dao, "Two essays on international asset market and macroeconomic dynamics" (Fabio Ghironi); Massimo Giovannini, "Essays on credit frictions and incomplete markets" (Peter Ireland); Markéta Hálová, "Essays on international asset portfolios and commodities trade" (Christopher F Baum and Fabio Ghironi); Isaiah Hull, "Essays in computational macroeconomics and finance" (Peter Ireland); Taesu Kang, "Essays in macroeconomics with frictions and uncertainty shocks" (Fabio Ghironi); Farooq Pasha, "Essays on business cycles in developing countries" (Peter Ireland); Radoslav Raykov, "Essays in applied microeconomic theory" (Utku Unver); Hongtao Zhou, "Three essays in financial economics" (Zhijie Xiao); and Chuanqi Zhu, "Essays on macroeconometrics" (Zhijie Xiao). Thirteen students were awarded the M.A. degree at the commencement exercises: Laura Bonacorsi, Rossella Calvi, Giacomo Candian, Matthew Davis, Alexander Eiermann, William Hickman, Jinyong Jeong, Choon Sung Lim, Miguel Matamoros, Yong-Hyun Park, Ivan Petkov, David Schenck and Yubang Tian. Our congratulations to all! 20 May 2013Four additions to the company of scholarsThe latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Chuanqui Zhu, a native of China, Lucrezio Figurelli, a native of Italy, John O'Trakoun, a native of USA, and Chuanliang Jiang, a native of China, who defended on 3, 8 13 and 15 May, respectively. Zhu wrote "Essays on Macroeconometrics," advised by Prof. Zhijie Xiao. He has accepted a position at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. Figurelli wrote "Essays on Pricing and Consumer Demand in the Retail Sector," advised by Prof. Julie Mortimer. He has accepted a position with The Brattle Group. O'Trakoun wrote "Essays on Conflict, Corruption, and International Trade Politics," advised by Prof. Fabio Ghironi. He has accepted a position with US Government Accountability Office, International Affairs and Trade Group. Jiang wrote "Three Essays in Finance Economics," advised by Prof. Zhijie Xiao. He has accepted a position with Citizens Financial Group in Boston. Our congratulations to Dr. Zhu, Dr. Figurelli, Dr. O'Trakoun and Dr. Jiang. 15 May 2013Chahrour, Cichello, Erbil join the BC economics faculty
Last year's faculty recruitment season was exceedingly successful, with the department filling three out of four authorized positions in an attempt to reduce the pressure on undergraduate enrollments and strengthen the graduate program.
Assistant Prof. Ryan Chahrour joins us from Columbia University, where he received the Ph.D. this year after earning the BA at Swarthmore. His interests are in macroeconomics and monetary economics. His article "A Model-Based Evaluation of the Debate on the Size of the Tax Multiplier", coauthored with Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe and Martin Uribe, appeared in the May issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. He has also published in Economics Letters. Chahrour looks forward to teaching a new graduate course in advanced macroeconomics this fall and will also offer a section of undergraduate macroeconomics. Adjunct Associate Prof. Paul Cichello is one of two additions to our adjunct faculty as we strive to meet the unprecedented demand for our undergraduate offerings. Cichello, a 2002 Ph.D. from Cornell University, specializes in development economics and applied econometrics. Like our chairman, Don Cox, Paul has the distinction of being a Boston College graduate, earning Honors in Economics as well as the degree Magna cum Laude in 1992. He then spent two years as a math teacher in the Peace Corps in Gambia, Africa, and held several academic positions as well as a long-term consulting relationship with the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management division of the World Bank. Paul is taking the lead in redeveloping our undergraduate Statistics course to drag it into the 21st century with a 4th-hour lab section, and will also offer an elective on Impact Evaluation in Developing Countries this fall. He will join the undergraduate econometrics staff next spring as that course is also redesigned with a 4th-hour lab. Our second addition to the adjunct ranks is also no stranger to the Heights: Adjunct Associate Professor Can Erbil received his Ph.D. from BC in 2002. His dissertation, "Trade Taxes Are Expensive", was supervised by Neenan Prof. James Anderson. Erbil, a native of Turkey, received the BA in Economics from Bogazici University in Istanbul in 1992. His research has been in the field of economic development. Most recently, Erbil has served as a senior lecturer and senior scientist at Brandeis University's International Business School and Heller School of Social Policy and Management. He has been heavily involved with EcoMod, a Global Economic Modeling Network based in Brussels, and has been Director of the EcoMod Modeling School since 2010. He will be teaching a large section of Principles this fall, and three sections of Macro Theory over the year, as we move more of those core majors' courses to full-time instructors. 25 Sep 2012 |
BC Economists study school choice, child poverty in latest AER
The February 2013 issue of
the profession's flagship journal, American Economic Review, highlights the work of two members of the BC Economics faculty. "School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by their Vulnerability to Manipulation," by Parag Parthak of MIT and BC's Tayfun Sönmez, discusses an important issue first raised by earlier research on the "Boston mechanism", used to assign students to schools.
Their work formally addresses the analysis of weaknesses in mechanisms of this sort in terms of their vulnerability to being manipulated by participants. This line of research is closely related to that cited in the award of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics to Alvin Roth, a frequent coauthor of Sönmez, and Lloyd Shapley.
The same issue of the AER contains Roche Professor Arthur Lewbel's work with Geoffrey Dunbar and Krishna Pendakur, both of Simon Fraser University: "Children's Resources in Collective Households: Identification, Estimation, and an Application to Child Poverty in Malawi." They consider the difficulty in identifying resources available to children in a family unit when consumption is only measured at the level of the household. They develop ways of identifying how household resources are shared within the family from available information on 'private' goods purchased by individual family members. Their empirical work, applied to a household survey of the African nation of Malawi, concludes that standard poverty indices, based on family resources, may understate the incidence of child poverty.
BC EC 2012 and all prior issues availableThe October, 2012 edition of BC EC, the department's annual newsletter, is now available in PDF format, as are all prior issues of BC EC back to Vol. 1, Issue 1 of 1978. 18 November 2012Berlin seminar on Economic Policy offered again this summer
Undergraduate Program FAQ availableA set of Frequently Asked Questions regarding the Department's undergraduate offerings is now available. If you are a major, minor, CSOM concentrator or interested in becoming one, please consult the FAQ! 5 Sep 2010Recent publications highlightedAn up-to-date list of the recent published articles of department faculty that appear in RePEc services such as IDEAS and EconPapers is now available, courtesy of the IDEAS RePEc service. To appear on this list, faculty must be registered with RePEc, the journal must be included in RePEc listings (as almost all journals of note are) and the author must 'claim' their article in the RePEc Author Service. 08 Mar 2010Recent news from the Department of Economics...Website statistics |
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Once again, the economics department's course offerings will include an economics elective next summer in Berlin, Germany. The course,