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The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Madhavi Pundit, a native of India, and Alessandro Barattieri, a native of Italy. Both defenses were held on 10 June.
Pundit wrote "Essays on Business Cycle Models," advised by Profs. Susanto Basu and Fabio Ghironi. She has accepted a position at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi.
Barattieri wrote "Essays in International Economics and Macroeconomics," advised by Profs. James Anderson, Susanto Basu and Fabio Ghironi. He has accepted a position at the University of Quebec.
Our congratulations to Drs. Pundit and Barattieri.
The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Caglar Yurtseven, a native of Turkey, who defended on 16 May, and Isabella Blengini, a native of Italy,
who defended on 19 May.
Yurtseven wrote "Theoretical and Empirical Essays on Strategic Behavior," advised by Prof. Utku Ünver. He will take a position at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.
Blengini wrote "Essays in International Economics," advised by Prof. Fabio Ghironi. She has received a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Lausanne.
Our congratulations to Drs. Yurtseven and Blengini.
The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Aaron Fix, a native of USA, who defended on 29 April. He wrote "Essays in Industrial Organization," advised by Prof. Frank Gollop. Fix has accepted a position at The Analysis Group. Our congratulations to Dr. Fix.
30 April 2011The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Shannon Phillips, a native of USA, who defended on 19 April. She wrote "Essays on HIV, Marriage and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa," advised by Prof. Peter Gottschalk. Phillips has accepted a position at CNA in suburban Washington, DC. Our congratulations to Dr. Phillips.
20 April 2011The December, 2010 issue of the profession's leading scholarly journal, the American Economic Review, contains a BC contribution. Neenan Chair James E. Anderson's article, "The Changing Incidence of Geography", coauthored with Yoto Yotov (BC PhD '07) of Drexel University, appears on pages 2157-2186. The paper is available in preprint form as BCEC WP698.
22 Dec 2010The economics department's course offerings will include an economics elective next summer in Berlin, Germany. The course, EC368: Economic Policy Analysis from a European Perspective is offered through the university's Office of International Programs (OIP), in conjunction with the German economic research institute DIW Berlin. It is cross-listed as IN 368 for students in the International Studies program. The three-credit-hour course will be held over a three week period, starting Memorial Day, and will feature presentations by economic researchers from DIW Berlin intermingled with lectures on economic policy analysis. Students will also attend a two-day international conference on "The Future Role of Finance", hosted by DIW Berlin and cosponsored by Boston College. Assoc. Prof. Christopher F Baum, who is also a DIW Research Professor, is leading the course. Interested students should contact the OIP before the early February deadline for enrollment.
24 November 2010An article in the November 24, 2010 issue of the Boston College Chronicle highlighted the performance of two members of the economics faculty who between them have more than 100 years of experience in the classroom. Profs. Harold Petersen and Frank McLaughlin were profiled in the article by Reid Oslin, "They've Seen It All, and Like What They See", available from the Chronicle web site.
24 November 2010The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Nadia Karamcheva and Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, who defended their dissertations on September 24. Karamcheva wrote "Essays on Private Pensions and Workers' Savings Behavior" advised by Prof. Peter Gottschalk and Prof. Shannon Seitz. She has joined the Urban Institute as a Research Associate. Sanzenbacher wrote "Essays in Labor Economics" advised by Prof. Shannon Seitz. He has joined The Analysis Group.
Our congratulations to Dr. Karamcheva and Dr. Sanzenbacher.
3 October 2010The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Murat Mungan, a native of Turkey, who defended his dissertation on September 13. He wrote "Optimal Procedures in Criminal Law: Five Essays" advised by Prof. Hideo Konishi.
Our congratulations to Dr. Mungan.
22 September 2010
Last year's faculty recruitment season was exceedingly successful, with the department filling two positions. Associate Prof. Stefan Hoderlein joins us from Brown University, where he has been Associate Professor since 2008. He has also held visiting positions at Toulouse and Cal Tech, and an assistant professor's position at University of Mannheim. Hoderlein, who is German, received his PhD in 2002 from University of Bonn and London School of Economics, with undergraduate work at the Universities of Hohenheim and Bonn in Germany. He is a specialist in microeconometrics, with publications in Econometrica, Journal of Econometrics, Econometric Theory and the Econometrics Journal.
He will be adding to the department's strengths in undergraduate econometrics this fall, and offering the graduate course in cross section and panel econometrics.
Assistant Prof. Mathis Wagner is our new hire in the field of labor economics. He recently completed the Ph.D. at the University of Chicago after receiving the undergraduate degree from University of Cambridge. Last year, he served as an assistant professor at Collegio Carlo Alberto in Italy. Wagner will be teaching undergraduate micro theory this fall and offering a course in the graduate labor sequence next spring.
We are delighted to welcome Profs. Hoderlein and Wagner to the Boston College economics faculty.
Prof. Sanjay Chugh of the University of Maryland presented a four-lecture short course on "The Macroeconomic and Policy Consequences of Search and Matching Frictions in Labor Markets" to BC graduate students and faculty in April 2010. The broad aim of the mini-course was to provide an introduction to modern labor-search theory, based on framework developed by Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University, and Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics in the 1990s. Given the central role of labor markets in macroeconomic analysis, familiarity with what has recently become the dominant framework for thinking about many labor issues is of prime importance for macroeconomists of all types. As it is a field in which we have interested students but no specialist faculty, Chugh's presentation was a very valuable exposure to this important field.
25 July 2010
The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Matteo Cacciatore, who successfully defended his dissertation on July 20.
Cacciatore, a native of Italy, wrote "The Macroeconomics of International Trade, Regulation, and Labor Markets," advised by Prof. Fabio Ghironi. He
will take a position later this summer at HEC Montréal.
Our congratulations to Dr. Cacciatore.
The 134th commencement exercises of Boston College were held on 24 May 2010. Twelve economics students received the Ph.D. since the last commencement. They are listed with their thesis topics and advisors. Giuseppe Fiori, "Essays on Investment, Regulation and Labor Market Frictions" (Matteo Iacoviello); Elizaveta Shevyakhova, "Two Essays in Economics" (Arthur Lewbel); Nicholas Sim, "Modeling Quantile Dependence" (Zhijie Xiao); Olga Sorokina, "Essays in Credit Constraints and Education" (Donald Cox); Vitaliy Strohush, "Aggregate Shocks, Idiosyncratic Shocks and Global Imbalances" (Matteo Iacoviello); Wei Sun, "Three Essays on the Economic Decisions Faced by Elderly Households" (Alicia Munnell); Hi-Lin Tan, "Essays in Network Economics and Game Theory" (Richard Arnott); Pinar Uysal, "Essays in Macroeconomics" (Fabio Ghironi); Chi Wan, "Essays in Financial Economics" (Zhijie Xiao); Megan McDonald Way, "Essays in Intergenerational Transfers" (Donald Cox); Sisi Zhang, "Essays on Income Volatility and Household Behavior" (Peter Gottschalk); and Andrei Zlate, "Essays on Offshore Production, Labor Migration and the Macroeconomy (Fabio Ghironi).
Fifteen students were awarded the M.A. at the commencement exercises: Mario Arend Serrano, Orhan Aygun, Inacio Bó, Stacey Chan, Xiaoping Chen, Mikhail Dmitriev, Xinhao Dong, Lucrezio Figurelli, Sinan Karadayi, Md Shahed Khan, John O'Trakoun, Chen-Yu Pan, Melissa Pumphrey, Kimiaki Shinozaki, and Ekin Üstün.
Our congratulations to all!
24 May 2010The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Wataru Hirata, a native of Japan, who defended on 7 May. He wrote "Financial Market Imperfections and Aggregate Fluctuations," advised by Prof. Susanto Basu. Our congratulations to Dr. Hirata.
10 May 2010A noted authority on the econometrics of panel data, Prof. Steve Bond of Nuffield College, Oxford University, presented a short course on panel data econometrics to a full house of graduate students and faculty in the last week of March. Bond gave three lectures on static and dynamic panel data models and led participants in a hands-on computer exercise.
Bond and his coauthors developed the widely used dynamic panel data (DPD) models, which have been employed in hundreds of studies in the context of 'large N, small T' datasets: for instance, data on many firms each observed for only a few time periods. The 'Arellano-Bond' estimator (REStud, 1991) and 'Blundell-Bond' estimator (J.Econometrics, 1998) are standard components of many statistical packages, including Stata.
Bond's visit was hosted by Prof. Fabio Schiantarelli, with whom Bond has collaborated on a number of published papers. During his week-long visit to the department, Steve consulted with many graduate students and faculty on aspects of their research, and presented a seminar on "Uncertainty and Capital Accumulation: The Role of Convex Adjustment Costs" in the macroeconomics and financial economics seminar series.
3 April 2010A service of RePEc's IDEAS website provides a listing of the top 1% of the 800,000+ research items in RePEc by number of citations, weighted by simple impact factors and discounted by the age of each citation in years. In 2007, this list was first unveiled, containing the top 200 items. At that time, papers by Neenan Prof. James Anderson and Prof. Susanto Basu were on the list.
The list, now containing 862 items, currently features seven published papers by four BC faculty authors. Paper #109 is "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle," by Neenan Prof. James Anderson and Eric van Wincoop (American Economic Review, 2003), while their JEL survey of "Trade Costs" is #150. Anderson's "A Theoretical Foundation for the Gravity Equation" (AER, 1979) appears as #563, despite its age.
Prof. Susanto Basu's paper with John Fernald, "Returns to Scale in U.S. Production: Estimates and Implications" (Journal of Political Economy, 1997) appears as #189, while Basu's 2006 AER paper with Fernald and Miles Kimball, "Are Technology Improvements Contractionary?", appears as #341.
Assoc. Prof. Christopher F Baum's 2003 Stata Journal paper with Mark Schaffer and Steven Stillman, "Instrumental variables and GMM: Estimation and testing", appears at #546 on the list, while Prof. Peter Gottschalk's 1994 BPEA paper with Robert Moffitt, "The Growth of Earnings Instability in the U.S. Labor Market," is at #667.
The list at IDEAS is headed up by Christiano-Eichenbaum-Evans' 2005 JPE paper on monetary policy rules. IDEAS is managed by Christian Zimmermann of the University of Connecticut economics department.
5 Mar 2010One of the discipline's very prestigious scholarly journals, the American Statistical Association's Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, features an alumnus of the BC EC PhD program in the first two issues of 2010. Nikolai Gospodinov, PhD '2000, is an Associate Professor of Economics in Concordia University, Montréal, where he started his academic career in 2000. He is also a Research Associate at CIREQ (Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en economie quantitative) in Montréal, and has been a visiting professor at McGill University.
The lead article in the January, 2010 issue of JBES is Gospodinov's "Inference in Nearly Nonstationary SVAR Models With Long-Run Identifying Restrictions", while the April 2010 issue contains his article "Modeling Financial Return Dynamics via Decomposition", coauthored with Stanislav Anatolyev of the New Economic School, Moscow. Gospodinov has also published in Econometric Theory, Journal of Financial Econometrics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Forecasting, Canadian Journal of Economics, Econometrics Journal and Econometric Reviews. One of his papers was chosen as the Best Paper in Econometric Reviews in 2004-2005. We congratulate Nikolai on his very productive research agenda!
Full details on the publications of over 50 alumni/ae of the Boston College Economics Department, including Dr Gospodinov, is available at http://ideas.repec.org/g/bcecons.html.
5 Mar 2010The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Wei Sun, who defended on March 1. Sun, a native of China, wrote "Three Essays on the Economic Decisions Faced by Elderly Households", advised by Drucker Prof. Alicia Munnell. Our congratulations to Dr. Sun.
5 Mar 2010The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Elizaveta Shevyakhova, who defended on November 13. Shevyakhova, a native of Russia, wrote "Two Essays in Economics", advised by Roche Prof. Arthur Lewbel. Our congratulations to Dr. Shevyakhova.
17 Nov 2009Economics is well-known as a countercylical discipline (when the Dow tanks, who are you going to call?), and undergraduates' interest in economics waxes and wanes. This fall's enrollment statistics from the Office of Student Services, reported in the BC Chronicle of 8 October, show a dramatic increase in majors where 'math is in demand', including economics. Enrollments in physics, mathematics, chemistry, computer science, accounting, finance and economics are all up. Communication remains the largest major (944 declared), with economics at 804 counting both Arts & Sciences majors and Carroll School of Management concentrators. Finance (another CSOM concentration) comes in at 772. Economics also provides a significant number of courses to International Studies majors, and has a departmental minor attracting over 90 A&S students.
15 Oct 2009The June, 2009 issue of the profession's leading scholarly journal, the American Economic Review, contains two contributions from the BC EC faculty. Roche Chair Arthur Lewbel's article, "Tricks with Hicks: The EASI Demand System", coauthored with Krishna Pendakur of Simon Fraser University, appears on pages 827-863. Murray and Monti Professor Peter Ireland's paper, "On the Welfare Cost of Inflation and the Recent Behavior of Money Demand," appears on pages 1040-1052. Both papers are available in preprint form on the authors' web pages, linked above.
09 Sep 2009The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Hi-Lin Tan, a native of Singapore, who defended his dissertation on September 3. He wrote "Essays in Network Economics and Game Theory" advised by former Prof. Richard Arnott. He has returned to his position as senior assistant director, economic analysis unit of the Competition Commission of Singapore, which enforces antitrust laws and oversees the business sector.
Our congratulations to Dr. Tan.
6 September 2009
The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Pinar Uysal, Vitaliy Strohush and Giuseppe Fiori, who successfully defended their dissertations in the last week of July.
Pinar Uysal, a native of Turkey, wrote "Essays in Macroeconomics," advised by Prof. Fabio Ghironi. She
will take a post-doc position at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
Vitaliy Strohush, a native of Ukraine, wrote "Aggregate Shocks, Idiosyncratic Shocks and Global Imbalances,"
advised by Prof. Matteo Iacoviello. He will take
an academic position at Elon University in North Carolina.
Guiseppe Fiori, a native of Italy, wrote "Essays on Investment, Regulation and Labor Market Frictions,"
advised by Prof. Matteo Iacoviello. He will take
a position in the Research Department of the Bank of Italy.
Our congratulations to all!
The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Olga Sorokina,
Nicholas Sim, Chi Wan and Megan McDonald Way, who successfully defended their dissertations in the first week of June.
Olga Sorokina, a native of Russia, wrote "Essays in Credit Constraints and Education," advised by Prof. Don Cox. She
will take a position at ERS Group, a consultancy specializing in litigation support, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Nicholas Sim, a native of Singapore, wrote "Modeling Quantile Dependence," advised by Prof. Zhijie Xiao. He will take
an academic position at University of Adelaide, Australia.
Chi Wan, a native of China, wrote "Essays in Financial Economics," advised by Prof. Zhijie Xiao. He will take
an academic position at Carleton Universty, Ottawa, Canada.
Megan McDonald Way, a native of USA, wrote "Essays in Intergenerational Transfers," advised by Prof. Don Cox.
Our congratulations to all!
Last year's faculty recruitment season was exceedingly successful, with the department filling one economics position and one position joint with BC's popular International Studies program. Andrew Beauchamp joins us from Duke University, where he completed the Ph.D. under the supervision of Peter Arcidiacono after his undergraduate work at Michigan State University. His research interests lie in applied microeconomics, labor economics and industrial organization. Beauchamp's dissertation is "Family Formation and Equilibrium Influences"; his working papers include studies on abortion supplier dynamics, high school dating and the relationship between family formation and the demand for abortion. He will be teaching graduate labor economics this fall and undergraduate industrial economics next spring.
Scott Fulford is our joint hire in economics and international studies. He recently completed the Ph.D. at Princeton University, focusing on development economics, macroeconomics and applied microeconomics. He earned a BA in economics and a BS in mathematics from Stanford University. Fulford presented "Financial access in buffer-stock economies: Evidence from India" at a Boston College seminar; some of his other work also focuses on cohort returns to education, banking, and fertility in India. He will be teaching an upper-level elective in development economics this fall and a lower-level elective for economics and international studies students next spring.
We are delighted to welcome Profs. Beauchamp and Fulford to the Boston College economics faculty.
Following six very successful years of leading the department of economics, Prof. Marvin Kraus has stepped down as chairperson, and Prof. Jim Anderson is the department's new leader. Kraus presided over the department's successful recruitment efforts and a review of the department's undergraduate program that led to significant strengthening of the curriculum during a time of very heavy demand for the undergraduate major. During his tenure, the department realised a long-standing goal and gained its first endowed chairs in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. The department's graduate program, as noted below, rose in the rankings over the years of Kraus's chairmanship.
James E. Anderson, the department's first chairholder, is the William B. Neenan, SJ Millennium Chair in Economics, honoring the noted economist and University administrator. Anderson, an Oberlin College graduate and recipient of the Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1969, has spent his entire professional career on the Boston College faculty, being promoted to Professor in 1977. He is one of the department's most noted scholars, having published numerous articles in leading journals on the theory of international trade and trade policy. In the last decade he has focused on index numbers of trade policy. His recent work on the evaluation of trade policy, Measuring the Restrictiveness of International Trade Policy, coauthored with J. Peter Neary, was published by MIT Press in 2006. Anderson is perhaps best known for the economic theory of gravity (AER, 1979). Multilateral resistance indexes capture the effect on bilateral trade of the partners' trade costs with all other parties. Applications resolve the border puzzle (why the US-Canada border appears so costly; AER, 2003) and the mystery of the missing globalization (why gravity coefficients are constant yet trade/GDP rises; NBER, 2008). A related line of research focuses on insecurity and its implicit effect on trade.
Anderson is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been a Visiting Scholar an the Institute for International Economic Studies (Stockholm), Harvard University, University of Konstanz, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Brookings Institution and London School of Economics.
26 July 2009
The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Olga Sorokina,
Nicholas Sim, Chi Wan and Megan McDonald Way, who successfully defended their dissertations in the first week of June.
Olga Sorokina, a native of Russia, wrote "Essays in Credit Constraints and Education," advised by Prof. Don Cox. She
will take a position at ERS Group, a consultancy specializing in litigation support, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Nicholas Sim, a native of Singapore, wrote "Modeling Quantile Dependence," advised by Prof. Zhijie Xiao. He will take
an academic position at University of Adelaide, Australia.
Chi Wan, a native of China, wrote "Essays in Financial Economics," advised by Prof. Zhijie Xiao. He will take
an academic position at Carleton Universty, Ottawa, Canada.
Megan McDonald Way, a native of USA, wrote "Essays in Intergenerational Transfers," advised by Prof. Don Cox.
Our congratulations to all!
The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Andrei Zlate, a native of Romania, who defended on 21 May. He wrote "Essays on Offshore Production, Labor Migration and the Macroeconomy," advised by Prof. Fabio Ghironi. Zlate has accepted a position in the Division of International Finance at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington. Our congratulations to Dr. Zlate.
21 May 2009The 133nd commencement exercises of Boston College were held on 18 May 2009. Five economics students received the Ph.D. since the last commencement. They are listed with their thesis topics and advisors. Yingying Dong, "Microeconomic Models with Endogeneity--Theoretical and Empirical Studies" (Arthur Lewbel); Nicola Lostumbo, "Essays in Applied Macroeconomics" (Peter Ireland); Margarita Rubio, "Housing Markets, Business Cycles, and Monetary Policy" (Fabio Ghironi and Matteo Iacoviello); Baris Yörük, "Three Essays on the Economics of Charitable Giving: Implications for Fundraising and Public Policy Towards the Non-Profit Sector" (Donald Cox); and Natalia Zhivan, "The Employment of Older Workers" (Alicia Munnell).
Twelve students were awarded the M.A. at the commencement exercises: Tamás Briglevics, Kyle Buika, Tuan Dao, Marketa Halova, Devlin Hanson, Zeynep Kabukcuoglu, Chiu Yu Ko, Gohar Minasyan, Brian Oles, Meghan Skira, Wei Zhang and Chuanqi Zhu.
Our congratulations to all!
19 May 2009The BC Economics PhD program is rated 31st in the nation in the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings of graduate programs, tied with Michigan State University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. BC EC's score of 3.2 has risen from 2.8 in 2001 (ranked 40th) and 3.0 in 2005 (ranked 36th). The steady improvement in the program's peer assessment ranking reflects the quality of new faculty hires, graduate student recruitment and the placement of completed PhDs.
The Economics PhD program is among the highest ranked in the graduate school, with sociology (ranked 41st) and psychology (ranked 66th) also showing gains in the 2009 peer assessment by faculty, deans and other academic administrators.
19 May 2009
The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Sisi Zhang, a native of China, who defended on 28 April. She wrote "Essays on Income Volatility and Household Behavior," advised by Profs. Peter Gottschalk and Shannon Seitz. Zhang has accepted a position at IPMAQ International, a firm specializing in labor and health economics research. Our congratulations to Dr. Zhang.
30 April 2009
Director of Undergraduate Studies Catherine Schneider was honored on the occasion of her forthcoming retirement at a gala dinner in Burns Library on April 16th.
Schneider, an adjunct associate professor, joined the BC economics faculty in 1982 after receiving her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1980. Her old gold academic gown graced many BC commencement exercises through the years. She has taught principles of economics in the large section format, public finance, micro theory, transportation economics, mathematical economics and an innovative course on economics and Catholic social teaching. For the past several years, she has served the department as assistant chair and director of the undergraduate program, working tirelessly to bring reforms to that program in the face of ever-growing enrollments and major declarations. She has also served as advisor to Omicron Delta Epsilon, the national honor society, and as the founding sponsor of the BC Equestrian Club.
Several faculty spoke warmly of Cathy's contributions to her students and colleagues over the years, and expressed how deeply she will be missed. She promises that if BC's Brighton Campus expansion plans include a stable for her beloved horses, she will return and take the reins!
We are very grateful for Cathy Schneider's dedicated service and efforts to improve our department and its offerings.
19 May 2009The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Nicola Lostumbo, a native of USA, who defended his dissertation on 9 December, and Natalia Zhivan, a native of Russia, who defended her dissertation on 15 December. Lostumbo wrote "Essays in Applied Macroeconomics" advised by Profs. Peter Ireland and Matteo Iacoviello. Zhivan wrote "The Employment of Older Workers" advised by Prof. Alicia Munnell.
Our congratulations to Dr. Lostumbo and Dr. Zhivan.
15 December 2008The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Yingying Dong, a native of China, who defended her dissertation on September 19. She wrote "Microeconometric Models with Endogeneity: Theoretical and Empirical Studies" advised by Prof. Arthur Lewbel.
Our congratulations to Dr. Dong.
24 September 2008The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Margarita Rubio, a native of Spain, who defended her dissertation on August 14. She wrote "Housing Markets, Business Cycles and Monetary Policy" advised by Profs. Fabio Ghironi and Matteo Iacoviello.
Our congratulations to Dr. Rubio.
18 August 2008Last year's faculty recruitment season was exceedingly successful, with the department filling each of the three authorized positions with an excellent candidate. Two of the new faculty, Eyal Dvir and Georg Strasser, work in the field of International Economics. Eyal, who is completing his Ph.D. at Harvard, will be teaching the graduate trade course and the undergraduate course in international finance in the fall. Georg, who is completing his Ph.D. at Penn, will be teaching a new graduate course in international finance next year. Georg's course will be offered in the spring, as will Fabio Ghironi's graduate international finance course, leading to a new graduate field in international finance. Strasser will be teaching macro theory at the undergraduate level. Joining the faculty as an associate professor will be M. Utku Ünver, who is coming to BC from the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been an Assistant Professor since 2005. Utku is a microtheorist who specializes in market design. He is particularly well known for his joint research on kidney exchange with Tayfun Sönmez and Alvin Roth. Ünver will teach undergraduate micro theory and in graduate micro theory next year.
With these three hires, the department returns to full authorized strength: an essential element of meeting the very strong demand for economics courses. We are delighted to welcome Profs. Dvir, Strasser and Ünver to the Boston College economics faculty.
7 July 2008The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Baris Yoruk, a native of Turkey, who defended on 27 June. He wrote "Three Essays on the Economics of Charitable Giving: Implications for Fundraising and Public Policy Towards the Non-Profit Sector," advised by Prof. Donald Cox. Our congratulations to Dr. Yoruk.
3 July 2008
Macroeconomist Matteo Iacoviello was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in this year's round of promotions. Iacoviello joined the BC faculty in 2002 after completing the Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. His work has won considerable acclaim, with publications in the JMCB, Journal of Macroeconomics, Journal of Monetary Economics, American Economic Review among others. He has served as a visiting professor in Milan and Hong Kong, a visiting scholar at Boston University and a consultant to the European Central Bank, Bank of Canada and International Monetary Fund.
Our congratulations to Prof. Iacoviello!
3 July 2008The 132nd commencement exercises of Boston College were held on 19 May 2008. Eleven economics students received the Ph.D. since the last commencement. They are listed with their thesis topics and advisors. Darrel Barbato, "Essays in applied microeconometrics" (Frank Gollop); Lewis Gaul, "Essays in macroeconomics and finance" (Fabio Schiantarelli); Marissa Ginn, "Three essays in applied macroeconomics" (Peter Ireland); Eren Inci, "Public policy towards entrepreneurship and innovation" (Richard Arnott); Gökçe Kurucu, "Essays on markets with network externalities" (Hideo Konishi); Jingzhi Ginger Meng, "Two essays in applied econometrics and finance" (Arthur Lewbel); Tatiana Mihailovschi-Muntean, "Monetary and fiscal policy mix as insurance in a model with heterogeneous agents" (Peter Ireland); Maria Punzi, "Essays on housing market and current account imbalances" (Fabio Ghironi and Matteo Iacoviello); Pallavi Seth, "Monopsony power and asymmetric information: Microeconometrics applied to health care" (Frank Gollop); Mauricio Soto, "The effects of pension funding rules on the behavior of firms" (Donald Cox); and Viktors Stebunovs, "Finance as a barrier to entry in dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium models" (Fabio Ghironi and Peter Ireland).
Sixteen students were awarded the M.A. at the commencement exercises: Samson Alva, Alessandro Barattieri, Rucha Bhate, Anna Blank, Isabella Blengini, Daniel Bliss, Aaron Fix, Francis Georges, Wataru Hirata, Shoghik Hovhannisyan, Chuanliang Jiang, Sailu Li, Murat Mungan, Shannon Phillips, Radoslav Raykov and Caglar Yurtseven.
Our congratulations to all!
3 July 2008
After eight years as Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, Professor Joseph F. Quinn has returned to the Department of Economics as the department's fourth endowed chair: the James P. McIntyre Chair, formerly held by his predecessor, the late dean Robert Barth, S.J.
Joe Quinn joined the Boston College faculty in 1974 and earned the Ph.D. from MIT in 1975. He was promoted to Professor in 1985 and served as chair of the department from 1988 to 1994, leading the department during a period of recruitment of many of today's notable colleagues. His research has been in labor economics, the economics of aging and Social Security reform. Joe has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance since 2002 and is currently Vice President of the Academy. He is affiliated with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and the Boston College Center on Aging and Work.
We are delighted to have Joe among us again as a colleague. After a sabbatical this fall, he will return to the classroom next spring teaching Micro Theory and the always-popular Micro Public Policy Seminar.
A Boston College Chronicle story on October 4 noted that the most popular majors chosen by College of Arts & Sciences (A&S) students are communications (826 students), English, political science, biology and history, while 855 students in the Carroll School of Management (CSOM) are concentrating in finance: an all-time high. The most recent figures for the Department of Economics show a marked increase in interest in the major, with a total of 689 students in A&S and CSOM declaring the major. CSOM students have the option of choosing economics as a concentration (in which 127 students are presently enrolled) or doing the full 10-course economics major. The 689 declared majors exceeds the number of declared biology majors (662). In addition, 45 students have declared the six-course departmental minor in economics.
13 October 2007
Last year's faculty recruitment season led to the hire of Assistant Prof. Karim Chalak, who has joined the department faculty this summer. Karim, an econometrician, received his PhD from the University of California-San Diego this spring, working with Halbert White, Clive Granger, Mark Machina, Julian Betts, Graham Elliott, Dimitris Politis and Ruth Williams. Chalak's ongoing research considers the definition, modeling, identification, and estimation of causal effects.
Chalak will be teaching undergraduate econometrics and one of the graduate econometric theory courses this academic year. We are delighted to welcome him to Boston College.
1 July 2007Prof. Richard Arnott has resigned to take a position at University of California-Riverside. Arnott joined the economics faculty in 1988 and chaired many doctoral students' dissertation committees. Assistant Prof. Ingela Alger has resigned to take an Associate Professor position at Carleton University, Ottawa. Alger, a member of the department since 1999, has played an important part in the dissertation seminar.
Assistant Prof. Marina Pavan, on leave this year at University College Dublin, has accepted a position at UCD and will not be returning to BC. Rev. Douglas Marcouiller, SJ, on leave the last three academic years in St. Louis, has accepted a position at St. Louis University and will continue to serve as the Rector of the Jesuit Community in St. Louis.
We offer our departing colleagues our best wishes for their continued success.
18 July 2007
A new service of RePEc's IDEAS website provides a listing of published articles and working papers for almost 50 alumni of the Department's Ph.D., M.A. and B.A. programs. The list at
http://ideas.repec.org/g/bcecons.html provides links to each of these authors' "RePEc CVs", listing their affiliations and works. Only alumni who have self-registered with RePEc can be included.
The list includes an impressive number of works: 16 published articles to date in 2007, along with 49 working papers for that period. The BC EC Alumni list complements the list of current faculty and selected graduate student works at
http://ideas.repec.org/d/debocus.html. For 2007 to date, the latter list contains 22 published articles, 31 working papers and six software components. Both lists are updated monthly at IDEAS.
The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Mauricio Soto, a native of Colombia, who defended on 4 April. He wrote "The Effects of Pension Funding Rules on the Behavior of Firms," advised by Prof. Donald Cox. Soto is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Our congratulations to Dr. Soto.
12 April 2008The latest addition to the department's roster of Ph.D.s is Lewis Gaul, a native of USA, who defended on February 19. He wrote "Essays in Macroeconomics and Finance," advised by Prof. Fabio Schiantarelli. Gaul has accepted a position with the U. S. Treasury, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in Washington, DC. Our congratulations to Dr. Gaul.
20 February 2008|
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http://www.bc.edu/economics |