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