Department News
2011
| Professor Dufwenberg gave a plenary talk on "ABC on Deals" at the 2011 CESifo Area Conference on Behavioural Economics in Munich, Germany. |
| On the Radio! Professor Price Fishback discussed current economic problems in light of history on Financial Review with Sinclair Noe, Money Radio 1510. |
| Professor Gautam Gowrisankaran gave a keynote speech on "Entry, Pricing and Search in Online Markets" at the ZEW workshop in Mannheim, Germany. |
| Price Fishback named Outstanding Faculty Member in Eller's Executive MBA program. |
| Natalia Lazzati received her Ph.D. from the Dept. of Economics in May and joined the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor this past September. Professors Rabah Amir and Kei Hirano received the Eller College's annual Joseph Kalt Prize for mentoring Lazzati. |
| The Department welcomes three new faculty: Derek Lemoine, Mauricio Varela, and Tiemen Woutersen. |
| Price Fishback awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant in the sum of $300,000 to study the Institutional Performance and Change of the Residential Mortgage Market, 1920-1940. The goal of the study is to provide a comprehensive view of the boom, bust, and slow recovery in the housing and mortgage lending markets during the 1920s and 1930s. Many people have been trying to draw parallels between the experience then and the boom and bust in housing that has occurred in the past decade. |
2010
Gautam Gowrisankaran Awarded AHRQ Grant to Study Rural Hospital Program. Professor Gowrisankaran and three co-investigators have been awarded a $500,000 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant that aims to shed light on the impact of the Rural Hospital Flexibility Program (Flex) on hospital care for rural residents. Read More.
2009
Mark Walker elected Fellow of the Econometric Society. Mark Walker has been elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the most prestigious learned society in the field of economics. Walker was honored for his mathematically rigorous research into methods for allocating resources in the presence of public goods and externalities, and his research on strategic behavior when unpredictability is important. Four of Walker's scientific papers have appeared in the Society's journal Econometrica. There are about 600 Fellows world-wide, and about 15 new Fellows are elected each year.
Joseph Cullen received his PhD from the Economics Department in May and joined Harvard University as a post-doctoral fellow. At Harvard he’ll continue his research on how producers and consumers of electricity respond to such incentives as subsidies, carbon taxes, and emission quotas. Cullen has found that short-run responses can be less than expected, tending to focus attention on long-run responses such as equipment replacement. His dissertation developed a sophisticated dynamic model to analyze the responses of wind farm companies in Texas. Cullen has also done important research on the market behavior of cable television providers and its implications for consumers. Economics Professor Gautam Gowrisankaran received the Eller College’s annual Joseph Kalt Prize for his mentoring of Cullen.
Economics faculty members were awarded three National Science Foundation grants during the summer totaling more than $1 million. Professor Gautam Gowrisankaran received a three-year grant to analyze markets for new durable goods, particularly electronic products such as DVD players, digital camcorders and digital cameras. He is pioneering new and computationally complex methods for solving dynamic models of consumers’ demand and firms’ supply decisions in these markets. His results will be important for antitrust and regulatory policy, and for issues in marketing and management.
Professor Martin Dufwenberg received a three-year grant to build on the advances he’s already made in psychological game theory, and to apply the theory to problems at the interface of economics and psychology. Examples are informal agreements and incomplete contracting, vengeance and the economic hold-up problem, and status and conformity. This research is at the forefront of the new field of behavioral economics, combining the rigorous approach of economics and game theory with psychology’s understanding of the roles that emotions like guilt and reciprocity play in human behavior.
Professor Martin Dufwenberg received a three-year grant to build on the advances he’s already made in psychological game theory, and to apply the theory to problems at the interface of economics and psychology. Examples are informal agreements and incomplete contracting, vengeance and the economic hold-up problem, and status and conformity. This research is at the forefront of the new field of behavioral economics, combining the rigorous approach of economics and game theory with psychology’s understanding of the roles that emotions like guilt and reciprocity play in human behavior.
Professors Price Fishback and Paul Rhode (who was just hired away from the UA by the University of Michigan) received a three-year grant to study the factors that led to the tremendous increase in U.S. farm productivity over the last century.
Fishback and Rhode are compiling data for more than 3,000 American counties since 1870 on farm inputs and output, weather and climate patterns, and the use of new technologies. They will analyze the influences on food production of climate change and weather disasters, the introduction of new machinery and biotechnologies, and federal farm programs. Professor James Cox of Georgia State University was the Jack Wilson Visiting Scholar for 2008-09. Every year the Wilson Scholar program brings a leading professor from another institution to the U of A for a week to interact with students and faculty.
Cox visited the department in March, and spent a great deal of time with both students and faculty. He gave two lectures, one on “Trust, Reciprocity and Altruism” and the other on “Decisions under Risk.” Cox also served as a guest lecturer in Professor Martin Dufwenberg’s undergraduate Games & Decisions course, Econ 431. Martin said afterward “Jim put together an exciting package! He let my students take part in an experiment that highlighted the empirical reality behind the theory. He led my students in an engaging discussion of what could be learned from the experiment, for game theory and for life."
Cox visited the department in March, and spent a great deal of time with both students and faculty. He gave two lectures, one on “Trust, Reciprocity and Altruism” and the other on “Decisions under Risk.” Cox also served as a guest lecturer in Professor Martin Dufwenberg’s undergraduate Games & Decisions course, Econ 431. Martin said afterward “Jim put together an exciting package! He let my students take part in an experiment that highlighted the empirical reality behind the theory. He led my students in an engaging discussion of what could be learned from the experiment, for game theory and for life."
The Economics Department has combined several anonymous gifts into an endowment that will fund several $250 textbook scholarships to be awarded each semester to undergraduate students. Textbooks have become extremely expensive. The Department began awarding these textbook scholarships in 2008-09, and the recipients have been excited and grateful for the financial help the scholarships provide.
2008
This fall, the department named its first Thomas R. Brown Teaching Fellows. These awards are made possible through a generous gift from the Thomas R. Brown Family Foundation. This program is designed to produce the next generation of great teachers of economic principles. The Arizona Economics Department strives to develop young professors who will follow in the giant footsteps of Gerry Swanson and Don Wells after apprenticing to Gerry and Don here as grad students. Ten or twenty years from now, we expect many of the nation’s outstanding principles-of-economics professors to be alums of Arizona’s Brown Teaching Fellows program!
This summer we lost a beloved member of our Arizona Economics family. Steve Manos, a 26-year-old Economics doctoral student at the UA, passed away in July after a valiant battle against cancer. To honor Steve, the Economics Department created the Steven Manos Scholarships, which will enable some of our best doctoral students every year to attend research conclaves where they will present their research.
Catherine Eckel of the University of Texas @ Dallas visited the Department of Economics as part of the Wilson Scholar Program. Prof. Eckel spent a week in the Department interacting with students and faculty. A highlight of her visit was her participation in Professor Martin Dufwenberg's undergraduate course on experimental economics. Here's what Professor Dufwenberg said about the visit:
"Fresh out of grad school, I first met Catherine in 1996 at a conference in Amsterdam. Her presentation there was exciting and she generously interacted with me and with other young researchers. She's been one of my heroes among experimentalists ever since. It was a marvelous experience now to have her visit my experimental economics class and see her inspire and interact with my students much like she once did with me. The students were fascinated by the research topics she introduced them to, and the discussions were lively."
Some of the comments by the students: "inspiring," "interactive and engaging," "a great speaker," and "awesome!"
"Fresh out of grad school, I first met Catherine in 1996 at a conference in Amsterdam. Her presentation there was exciting and she generously interacted with me and with other young researchers. She's been one of my heroes among experimentalists ever since. It was a marvelous experience now to have her visit my experimental economics class and see her inspire and interact with my students much like she once did with me. The students were fascinated by the research topics she introduced them to, and the discussions were lively."
Some of the comments by the students: "inspiring," "interactive and engaging," "a great speaker," and "awesome!"
2007
The University's teaching and course evaluations for the Fall 2007 semester have been tabulated, and our faculty who teach ECON 200 (Principles of Economics) really outdid themselves this time! The average evaluation of our instructors' teaching effectiveness — by 1200 students, in five separate lecture classes — was a truly remarkable 4.77 out of a possible 5!
Our terrific ECON 200 faculty continues to do a fabulous job, as they teach more and more students in an effort to meet ever-increasing student demand. We're all as proud of them as we can be, and grateful that they're doing so much for UA students.
Pictured below are (left to right) Don Wells, Steven Reff, Amy Cramer, Kate Johnson, and Gerry Swanson. Not pictured: Mark Stegeman
Our terrific ECON 200 faculty continues to do a fabulous job, as they teach more and more students in an effort to meet ever-increasing student demand. We're all as proud of them as we can be, and grateful that they're doing so much for UA students.
Pictured below are (left to right) Don Wells, Steven Reff, Amy Cramer, Kate Johnson, and Gerry Swanson. Not pictured: Mark Stegeman
Thanks to a generous gift from Jackson L. Wilson, Jr., an Economics alum and a founding partner of Accenture, the Department has launched a new program that will bring prominent professors at other universities to the UA as Wilson Scholars, to interact with students and faculty. Our first Wilson Scholar, Charlie Holt of the University of Virginia, visited for a few days in February. Charlie presented a research paper, met with faculty and doctoral students to discuss research ideas, and had some great interaction with some of our undergraduate students.
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