Summer 2008 News

In June Andreea Balan Cohen presented her paper "Sobering Up: The Impact of the 1985-1988 Russian Prohibition on Child Health" at the 2nd Biennial Conference of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHE) held at Duke University. In August she presented her paper "Healthy, Wealthy and Wise? The Impact of the Old Age Assistance Program on Elderly Mortality in the United States" at the 23rd congress of the European Economic Association.

David Dapice went to Vietnam for a few weeks and met a number of Vietnamese economic managers in both an executive training class and in face to face meetings where they reviewed the 30% inflation, 30% trade deficit/GDP, weak banks, energy blackouts and collapsing real estate and stock markets.

This summer Jack Green was re-elected as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Arrow Mutual Liability Insurance Company; and elected as a member of the Board of Commissioners of the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education, the worldwide accreditor of college business and management programs.

Yannis Ioannides co-organized the 7th Conference on Research in Economic Theory and Econometrics (CRETE) in Naxos, July 11-14th, where he also presented the paper "Searching for the Best Neighborhood." This conference brings together Greek-speaking economists from throughout the world who are active researchers, junior and senior, as well as doctoral students. Intense scientific interactions in the form of lectures and paper presentations are followed, at the very end of the day, by intense playing on Naxos' beautiful beaches.

Edward Kutsoati presented a policy paper titled: "Towards an economic transformation in Ghana: Lessons from high-growth nations”, at an African Growth Seminar in July. The 2-day conference was organized by the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), and chaired by Prof Joseph Stiglitz.

Linda Loury’s paper "Am I Still Too Black for You?: Schooling and Secular Change in Skin Tone Effects" was accepted at the Economics of Education Review.

This summer, Margaret McMillan received a grant from the National Bureau of Economic Research for research on demographic pressure and institutional change in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Zambia. She was also appointed as a member of an Advisory Panel to the Food for Peace Program of the United States Agency for International Development convened to assess the disincentive effects of food aid. McMillan continued her work as a Special Sworn Employee of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis where she is doing research on the distributional consequences of offshoring. This summer she worked with researchers at MIT’s Industrial Performance Center to redesign modules of the National Organization Survey to better capture the effects of offshoring on American workers. Her work on offshoring was presented at the NBER’s Summer Institute.

Gilbert Metcalf gave a presentation in June at the United Nations on development considerations in climate policy.  His presentation focused on how carbon tax revenues can be used to offset regressive impacts of the climate policy.  Metcalf's research was highlighted this summer in Tim Harford's Underground Economist column and in an Ottawa Globe and Mail business column.  Metcalf was also quoted in a CNN story on high gas prices and a CNBC story on climate policy differences between the presidential candidates. Metcalf was appointed to the National Academies Committee on Health, Environmental, and Other External Costs and Benefits of Energy Production and Consumption.  This committee is tasked to write a report for the Department of the Treasury defining and evaluating key external costs and benefits—health, environmental, security, and infrastructure—associated with the production, distribution, and consumption of energy that are not fully incorporated into the market price of such energy.

Enrico Spolaore gave a talk on "Federalism, Interregional Redistribution, and the Stability of Countries" at an international Symposium on "Fiscal federalism, regional fiscal flows and the stability of federations" in Barcelona. He gave a seminar on "Long-term Barriers and Economic Outcomes" at the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) in Rome, and gave three lectures on "The Political Economy of Geography, Institutions and Development" at IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca. In July he received an "Excellence in Refereeing Award, American Economic Review, 2007-2008." In August his paper “The Diffusion of Development,” with Romain Wacziarg, was accepted at the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Chih Ming Tan visited the Economics Department of the University of Cyprus in June, 2008, to continue his work on threshold regression models with members of the Cypriot faculty. He has also been appointed a Fellow of the Rimini Center for Economic Analysis (RCEA) in Italy. The RCEA is a private, non-profit organization with the goal to further advanced research in Economics, Econometrics and related studies and promote contact between economists, econometricians and scientists from other fields all over the world.

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