Fall 2011

Economics graduate student, Jiaxi Li, was recently awarded the Harry Gunnison Brown Graduate Student Fellowship for his outstanding work during the first year of graduate study. Economics graduate students, Shali Luo and Chenhang Zeng, were recently awarded the Harry Gunnison Brown Research Fellowship for their dissertation research in econometrics and industrial organization, respectively. Economics graduate student, Jewelwayne (Wayne) Cain, was recently awarded the Harry Gunnison Brown Graduate Student Teaching Award for his excellent teaching record in Economics 3229 (Money, Banking & Financial Markets)

 

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Ed Robb. Dr. Robb joined the department in 1971 and retired in 2002. During that time he ran the Economic Policy Analysis Research Center ( EPARC), for which he was the founding director. He also taught public finance to generations of MU economics students. After retirement Ed put his economic skills to work as a Missouri state legislator, representing the 24th Missouri district from 2004-2008. During that time he served as vice-chairman of the important House Budget Committee. In November, 2010 he was elected Boone County Presiding Commissioner, a position he held at the time of his death. Ed was loved by his colleagues and students for his great sense of humor and encyclopedic knowledge of state budget matters. He is survived by his wife Rosa, five children, and six grandchildren.

 

In a new study published by The American Enterprise Institute, “Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers: When Everyone Makes the Grade,” Cory Koedel, assistant professor of economics, reports that the grade point averages of education students at America’s universities are considerably higher than grades in every other academic discipline. What makes those findings especially striking is that education majors score significantly lower on standardized college entrance exams than students majoring in other areas like science, business, social sciences, and humanities.

Koedel’s study indicates that the higher grades are not the result of student quality across departments, nor are they explained by the fact that classes in education departments are typically smaller than other disciplines. Therefore, the remaining explanation is that the higher grades are the result of low grading standards.

“These low standards likely will negatively affect the accumulation of skills for prospective teachers during university training,” says Koedel. “More generally, they contribute to a larger culture of low standards for educators.”

Koedel traces the problem to an inefficient labor market for teachers. One notable difference between education departments and other disciplines is that most graduates move to a single sector of the labor market. Other disciplines have an incentive to maintain grading standards and produce better-qualified graduates — if standards fall, businesses will recruit fewer students, which will lower demand for the programs.

By contrast, he writes, “The education sector is notoriously ineffective at identifying high- and low-quality workers, making it difficult for the labor market to penalize students from education departments that produce low-quality teachers.”

Since there is not a competitive market to hold public schools and school districts accountable, and there is currently no system to penalize mediocre output from teachers, the school systems can get away with not distinguishing high-quality versus low-quality teachers.

Koedel suggests the need for university administrators to intervene by imposing more stringent grading standards on their education departments to get them in line with those in other departments.

“Administrators could externally dictate the grade distributions in education classes to bring them in line with those in other departments,” says Koedel.

He also says that states should adopt measures to rate teacher effectiveness which could facilitate incentives for teacher performance. Some states are in the process of creating these programs.  

“Low grading standards in university education departments are part of a larger culture of low standards for educators, and they precede the low evaluation standards by which teachers are judged in K–12 schools,” says Koedel. “The culture of low standards for educators is problematic because it creates a disconnect between teachers’ perceptions of acceptable performance and the perceptions of everyone else.”

 

Summer 2011

The 2011 Missouri Economics Conference will be held at Washington University in St. Louis on October 14 and 15, 2011. To be considered for presentation at the conference, research papers or abstracts should be sent via email to: gradconf@artsci.wustl.edu. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2011. For more information see the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's website:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/conferences/moconf/2011/callforpapers.html

Spring 2011

 

The Arts and Science Staff Network retreat was held on May 20, 2011, in Memorial Union. During the awards ceremony, three Department of Economics staff members were recognized for their achievements and their service to the university. 

Staff Appreciation Award — Sheila Akers, Administrative Associate I
For five and a half years, Akers’ main responsibilities in the department have been to serve as the fiscal and payroll officer and the office manager. Professor Jeff Milyo nominated Akers for this award, and he said it would be a fitting recognition for the sincere appreciation the department has for her work, her patience, good humor, and professionalism.

“Economists are not known for their social graces, so when we praise someone, not only do we mean it, they really earned it,” said Miyo in the letter nominating Akers for the award. 

David Mandy, chair of the department, said at the luncheon that he appreciates Akers’ competence in all fiscal matters, and he knows he can trust her to do the right thing.
“She has the most can-do attitude of anybody I’ve ever met,” says Mandy.
“The department has faith in her ability, knowledge, and dedication, and that is a great feeling,” says Milyo.

Akers actually started working at MU in economics in 1994 — the same year as Mandy — before moving to different positions around the university. A fateful encounter with Mandy at a grocery store opened the door for her return to the department.

Mandy told her at that meeting that when he became chair of the department, he wanted her to come back. As luck would have it, a fiscal opening did become available and Akers transferred back to the department she has always loved.

“Looking back, my job path has helped me to gain the specific skills I needed to be able to work well within my current position, and I am very thankful to have been able to do this,” says Akers. “Every job has a few bumps, but for the most part, I love my job, the students, my fellow staff members, and our faculty.”  

A call for nominations is sent to all members of the College of Arts and Science. Once nominations are received, a panel of judges reviews them to select one winner and two finalists. The winner receives $250 and a plaque and the finalists receive $100 each and a plaque. The judges for the 2011 Staff Appreciation Award were: Winfield Burggraaff, professor emeritus of history; Christopher (Kit) Salter, professor emeritus of geography; Tom Freeman, professor emeritus of geological sciences; and W. Raymond Wood, professor emeritus of anthropology.  

Service Awards
35 Years of Service — JoAnn Kunza, Administrative Assistant
When Kunza began working at University Hospital as a clerk typist on August 17, 1976, making $2.00 an hour, she thought it would be a temporary job until she figured out what she wanted to do from there. Thirty-five years later she is still working at MU. She worked at the hospital for 22 years before becoming the administrative assistant for the associate dean of the veterinary school.

In 2003, she was hired by the economics department as the assistant to the chair, and that is where she is working today.

“The Economics Department has been very good to me,” says Kunza.

The biggest change she has noticed on campus in the past 35 years is the total reliance on computers and the internet today.

“I didn’t even have access to a computer at my job until around the mid-to-late 1980s,” says Kunza.

 

20 Years of Service — Lynne Riddell, Administrative Assistant
Riddell has worked in The Economics Department for the entire 20 years for which she was recognized.

“Both JoAnn and Lynne handle sensitive materials and issues so completely and efficiently that I don’t need to worry about the details and can focus on the big picture of the department,” says Mandy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Haslag, professor of economics, has been added as a co-author on the 3rd edition of the textbook, Modeling Monetary Economies. Cambridge University Press published the book this month. Bruce Champ and Scott Freeman started this project in the 1990s. The textbook is aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduate students, seeking to teach monetary economics from a single framework based on first principles. Interested persons can go to cambridge.org to review the manuscript.

 

The Chancellor’s Distinguished Visitors Series and the Department of Economics hosted William Brock, Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on April 14. His lecture titled, “In Search of the  Elusive Early Warning Signal of Tipping Points, Critical Transitions, and Abrupt Regime Changes in Ecology and Economics: A Report From the Front,” was attended by students, faculty, and members of the community. 

Brock led the audience on a journey that discussed how humankind has searched for early-warning indicators that predict impending abrupt changes. Specifically, he discussed “bifurcation theory,” which has been stimulated by research groups around the world and is a branch of dynamical systems theory.

He explained in laymen’s terms the complexity of the subject in a comedic and entertaining way. His talk covered whole lake ecosystem experiments, financial and banking crashes, and collapses of ecosystems including fisheries, coral reefs, and rangelands. 

Brock earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969. He has served on the faculties of the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His dissertation and early work were on optimal growth theory. His proof of the existence of a growth program that is maximal with respect to the catching-up criterion was an especially notable contribution.

Brock’s other important contributions are his proofs of the turnpike theorem and of the existence of a stationary program for a single-sector stochastic growth model. This work was followed by significant papers on the stability of stochastic growth paths and of optimal control systems. In the late 1970s, Brock and collaborators modeled the determination of tariffs in a democratic country as the outcome of a dynamic game among politicians, interest group lobbyists, and the electorate.

In the 1980s, Brock developed an interest in chaotic deterministic systems and their application to economics and finance. He made major contributions to the development of statistical tests for the presence of a chaotic deterministic process for generating a time series. Since the late 1990s, he has applied optimal control theory to environmental management issues.

 

Eleven economics students were awarded departmental scholarships at the scholarship reception held on February 16 during Arts and Science week.

Four senior economics majors, Anthony Almond, Long Pei, Daniel Ramey, and Thomas Wuennenberg, were honored with the Clay J. Anderson Jr. Memorial Scholarship. In memory of their son who graduated from MU in 1950, Clay J. and Oma C. Anderson established this scholarship to benefit economics majors. Recipients must be ranked in the upper one-third of their classes and demonstrate financial need. 

The first member of his family to graduate from a four-year college, Pei plans to further his education in graduate school to become a statistical analyst or work in actuarial science.

“The financial assistance provided by the scholarship will be helpful to lighten my burden in paying for graduate school and will allow me more time to focus on my studies,” says Pei. 

The David J. Loschky Memorial Scholarship was awarded to seniors Katherine Harris and Ryan Vandermus. Friends and former students of Professor Loschky established this scholarship to honor his far-reaching contributions to the university, the Department of Economics, his undergraduate and graduate students, and to the economics profession.
Juniors Shaina Cavazos and Matthew Henske are the 2011 recipients of the Allan and Barbara Soshnick Memorial Scholarship.  Allan Soshnik graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors in economics in 1970 before proceeding to a career with Touche Ross.
“I am so thankful for this generous gift that makes my education possible,” says Cavazos. “I value nothing more than being educated, and I am grateful to anyone who makes that easier for me to accomplish.”
The John Charles Willett Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Jessica Percic, a junior economics major, and Mark Fowler, a senior who is an economics and political science major with a Spanish minor. This scholarship is named for John Charles Willett, a 1995 graduate of MU, who died in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. 
“We have a very strong and growing economics department at Mizzou, filled with a number of students who would have been deserving recipients,” says Fowler. “I feel honored to have been selected for this award from amongst them, and I am proud of my accomplishments.”  

Percic says the scholarship eases the burden of her out-of-state tuition and that receiving it motivates her to continue to strive for academic excellence.  

Clayton Borgmeyer, a junior economics student was honored with The Elmer Wood Scholarship in Economics. Recipients of the scholarship are juniors and seniors who have demonstrated excellence in their economics studies while maintaining a high-level of academic performance. This scholarship honors Elmer Wood, BA ’16, who served as a professor of economics at MU from 1930 until his retirement in 1964. Wood specialized in the field of monetary theory and became one of the nation’s leading authorities on the topic.   

 

Economics graduate student received Green Chalk Award

Economics doctoral student, Wayne Cain, received a 2011 Arts and Science Green Chalk Award for his excellent record as Teaching Assistant.

 

Announcement and Call for Papers SBIES, April 29-30, 2011

We invite submissions for the 2011 Seminar on Bayesian Inference in Econometrics and Statistics (SBIES), to be held April 29 - 30, 2011 at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

A major goal of the meeting is to honor and celebrate the career and contributions of Professor Arnold Zellner, the founder of SBIES and a distinguished and pioneering Bayesian statistician and econometrician who passed away in August of 2010. Further details will be provided closer to the date of the meeting.

Please register and submit your paper by March 1. We are expecting that the 70 spaces available for out of town participants will fill up fast. The program will be posted by March 25.

The meeting starts at 1:30 pm on Friday, April 29. This should allow many US participants to travel to St. Louis on Friday itself.

As accommodations for participants, a block of rooms is being held at the Knight Center. To ensure availability, we recommend that you make your room reservation soon after you have registered.

We can provide some limited support to cover expenses related to travel and accommodations. If this support is needed, please request it when you register. Reimbursements will be processed after the conference.

Any logistical questions regarding the conference should be directed to Leslie Stroker , Administrative Assistant, Faculty Support. Please contact Siddhartha Chib for other questions related to the meeting.

 

Fall 2010

Michael Podgursky, professor of economics at MU, along with Robert Costrell, professor at the University of Arkansas, co-edited and wrote an introduction for a newly published special issue Education Finance and Policy, which is the official journal of the Association of Education Finance and Policy. The issue includes papers presented at the “Rethinking Teacher Retirement Benefit Systems” conference held last year and organized by Podgursky and Costrell.
“The conference brought together scholars from a variety of disciplines from major research universities and institutions across the country to discuss the design and implications of teacher retirement systems used in the American K–12 public education system,” says Podgursky.   

The subject of teacher retirement benefits is a critical and understudied area of education reform Podgursky says. These systems have important effects on the teacher workforce, school staffing, and school finance. States and districts face rapidly rising costs for their current retirement benefit systems. Districts are also looking for new ways to recruit and retain high-quality teachers in their on-going efforts narrow achievement gaps.

In their contribution to the issue, Podgursky and Costrell show that teacher pension systems impose huge costs on mobile teachers.

“A teacher who splits his or her career 15/15 years in two systems will have less than half the pension wealth of a teacher who spends 30 years in the same system,” says Podgursky.  “Teachers who leave after 10 or 15 years will do so with very little pension wealth. The private sector and many higher educational institutions have moved away from the defined-benefit pension systems in favor of the defined-contribution plans or cash balance plans in part because of this.”

The journal, which is available online and in print, serves as the main source of research to date on the topic for state policymakers and researchers. The papers discuss whether existing retirement benefit systems are sustainable and whether there are better ways to spend the money to recruit, retain, and motivate a high-quality teaching work force.

Podgursky says the costs of these defined-benefit teacher pension systems are large and growing, and they are becoming an increasing burden on school districts.

“The focus of our research, and many of the papers in this journal, is whether these systems are the best way to recruit, retain, and motivate a high-quality teaching work force and whether compensation dollars can be spent more efficiently.”

The issue can be read online at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/edfp5/4.    

On September 15th and 16th, the Economics Department hosted its seventh annual Open House. This event was a huge success, bringing in over 300 students to the Department to learn about the field. The purpose of this event is to introduce those unfamiliar with economics to the subject, and for those already interested, it is a great place to ask questions, meet faculty, and collect information on a wide array of topics such as major and minor degree requirements, study abroad information, counseling help, scholarship applications, and job and internship ideas.

Throughout the two days, the Department offered students breakfast and lunch, and held several information sessions covering topics such as “How to prepare for graduate school” and “What can I do with an economics degree?” Economics professors were on hand both days to offer students advice, and we were very fortunate to have had several guest speakers attend and discuss how their economics degrees have benefited them in their current jobs. This was a fantastic opportunity for students to hear about different career paths open to them with an economics major and was an experience they won’t forget.

A special thanks also goes out to all of those who helped make this event a success. Your help is much appreciated.

 

Extra Reading Time Benefits Younger Students
Cory Koedel, assistant professor in the Department of Economics, resides in Missouri, but his latest research is a hot topic in California, and his findings could help school systems in other states boost student achievement.

Koedel, along with Julian R. Betts, professor of economics, and Andrew Zau, senior statistician, both from the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, published the report Lessons in Reading Reform: Finding What Works. The report studies the effects of a five-year literacy reform program, known as the Blueprint for Student Success, undertaken at the San Diego Unified School District.

The study summarizes a statistical evaluation of all of the Blueprint reforms, drawing conclusions on why some elements worked and how they could be implemented in other school districts. The reforms focused on providing extra time for student reading and on professional development for teachers through peer coaching in how to teach the subject. The researchers noted that extended-length English classes in middle schools and an extended school year for low-performing elementary schools were particularly successful. However, a similar strategy was not effective in high schools. Some opponents of the reforms thought the extra attention to reading would lower student performance in other subjects or would cause burnout, but the report gave no indications that this happened.

Specific changes in both state and federal government policy could foster these kinds of changes in other districts. At the federal level, the Department of Education could ease its Title I waiver requirements so that districts could use their money for reforms that target not only low-income students, but also low-performing students, regardless of their school or neighborhood.

"The San Diego reforms offer an example of a comprehensive approach to improving reading at a large, urban school district," say Koedel. "Lessons from the San Diego experience can be valuable for other schools and districts charged with improving student performance."

Koedel's report says the most important lesson learned is that many of the reforms took several years to show positive results, therefore school district leaders should show patience for new policies aimed at improving student literacy.
By Laura Lindsey

Department of Economics Open House is hosting its open house Sept. 15-16 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in 129 Professional Building. Plan on attending this event to learn about:

• Economics as a pre-law pre-med degree
• Undergraduate advising, teaching, and research opportunities
• Minor or major in economics
• Courses and speciality areas
• How to prepare for the job market or graduate school
• Internships and career opportunities
• Economics Undergraduate Student Association (EUSA)

Two special sessions will be held during the open house on Sept. 16. in room 104 in the Professional Building.

10:00-11:45: Learn about the Economics Undergraduate Student Association and how to prepare for your career.
1:00-2:45: Q & A with alumni from the department.

Summer 2010

Cory Koedel, assistant professor in the Department of Economics, has been invited to participate in the two-day discussion series called the Emerging Education Policy Scholars Program. Koedel’s application was reviewed by The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which focuses on advancing educational excellence in K-12 schools, and the American Enterprise Institute, which is dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare.  

“This program will be a nice opportunity for me to interact with other up-and-coming scholars in my field, and improve my national profile,” says Koedel.     

Koedel was chosen because of his keen analytic eye, fresh ideas, and enthusiasm for education policy as apparent from his experiences and work. His research focus is on labor economics, economics of education, public economics, and applied microeconomics. 

“This is recognition of Cory’s growing visibility in the education policy research field,” says Michael Podgursky, professor and colleague of Koedel.  

The conference will be held in Washington, D.C., on July 27–28.

“The program will help me better connect my work with current policy reform. Being an academic, and spending most of my time in my office, it is important for me to attend events like this from time to time so that I can keep my work connected to the larger policy agendas in education,” says Koedel.

Michael J. Podgursky, professor of economics, has been appointed to help improve the effectiveness of the nation’s schools as a fellow of the George W. Bush Institute. He was chosen for his well-known scholarship, leadership, and research in education reform and will serve a three-year renewable term.

Podgursky’s research focuses on educator compensation, specifically retirement benefits systems, which are currently facing fiscal challenges. Podgursky is also interested in reform of principal training, recruitment, and compensation.

“One interesting project will be to discuss ways to improve the training of school administrators in topics such as compensation design, human resource policy, and data-driven decision making,” says Podgursky.

While his research will continue to be centered at MU, Podgursky will attend meetings at the institute with the six other fellows to work on collaborative research across different universities. In addition, there will be major conferences on education-related topics held at the center each year that he will attend.

After he left office in January 2009, President Bush announced that a policy research institute would be an integral part of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. The four initial areas of focus for research are economic growth, education policy, global health, and human freedom.

This latest group of researchers to be named fellows will contribute to the institute’s capacity to improve the effectiveness of the nation’s schools. The institute’s goal of excellence in American education builds on the long-time vision of former President Bush and Laura Bush. The institute will pursue education reforms by initially concentrating on two areas: improving the leadership capacity of America’s school principals and strengthening middle schools to keep students on the path toward college/career readiness.

In a press release, President Bush said, “The appointment of these Institute fellows will further our efforts to identify the best principles in education reform and apply them to the vital work of educating America’s children.”      

Spring 2010

Emek Basker, associate professor in the Department of Economics, has been awarded an American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation fellowship to work at the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, D.C., next year.

“Most people think of the census as being just a count of the U.S. population, which happens every 10 years,” says Basker. “But that is just a small part of what the census does. The economic census, which takes place every five years, counts every single establishment (factory, office, store, etc.) in the United States and collects information about the type of business done there. I will be continuing my work on the changing retail sector using confidential historical data from the census of retail trade.”

The general objective of the fellowship program is to foster collaborative and interdisciplinary research efforts that will continue to stimulate the development and advancement of methodology and social science research relevant to issues on which federal statistical agencies seek to provide information. The program accomplishes this by bringing academic researchers to work with statisticians and social scientists in three federal agencies — the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis — for up to one year.

The research fellowship program is designed to bridge the gap between government and academic science. It allows senior research fellows to come to the U.S. Census Bureau, where they may use agency data and interact with agency staff.

Saku Aura, associate professor in the Department of Economics, has won the Provost’s Award for Leadership in International Education. The award recognizes faculty who provide outstanding leadership in strengthening the university’s international dimension and comes with a $1000 prize.

Aura participates in collaborative research in Europe, Asia, and North America, and in doing so has increased the visibility of MU outside of North America within the economics discipline.

“I not only have contacts with wonderful researchers, but also experience new perspectives on issues because of my research in three different continents,” says Aura.
Aura and his colleagues in the department run a widely recognized graduate program that has built name recognition in the former Soviet block countries and in countries of Asia.

“I have been fortunate to work with students from many of these countries having a very diverse background, and I am hoping to continue to do so in the future,” says Aura.
Aura, who has been teaching at MU since 2002, researches public economics, household decision making, and urban economics.

“Winning this award is humbling, knowing that many other colleagues in my department and throughout MU are engaged in productive international collaborations,” says Aura.

To prove his qualifications for this award, Aura was nominated and chosen by the economics department of the Helsinki School of Economics to complete a sabbatical appointment there for six months. While there, he will research the dynamics of tax evasion and the econometrics of value-added models for evaluating teacher effectiveness, and he will explore potential collaborative projects with the researchers there. In addition, Aura will teach a class on practical and theoretical aspects of tax system design.

Jeff Milyo, Middlebush Chair in Social Sciences in the Department of Economics, will spend part of the summer at the Hoover Institution completing a fellowship. The W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellows Program was established in 1971 to allow outstanding scholars to devote time to research away from their normal academic responsibilities to enhance their professional careers by completing an original, significant research project. Hoover Institution is a public policy research center at Stanford University devoted to the advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy — both domestic and foreign — as well as international affairs.

 Milyo will conduct research on the effectiveness of campaign finance regulation.
“My project exploits the variation in campaign finance laws across the states and over time as a natural experiment for identifying the effects of regulations on state policy outcomes, the competitiveness of state elections, voter turnout, and trust in government,” says Milyo.

David Brady, the deputy director of the Hoover Institution, nominated Milyo, who will be completing his fellowship July 19 through August 13.

Recognized as one of the preeminent fellowships in the United States, the program has awarded more than 450 fellowships during its 34 years. Typically, candidates hold a doctorate, have an established publication record, and embody empirical studies of significant public policy issues in fields such as economics, education, political science, and sociology.

“Stanford University is the leading center of research on the American political economy, so I expect to learn quite a lot during my visit,” says Milyo. “I am exceedingly grateful for the generosity of the Hoover Institute in supporting my research and providing me with the opportunity to focus on my work.”

 

Myoung Lee Recognized for her Excellence in Advising

Myoung Lee, assistant teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Economics, was recently recognized for her excellence in advising at the annual awards reception sponsored by the vice chancellor for student affairs and the provost’s office.

Lee, who says she is honored to have been recognized, was nominated by Emek Basker, associate professor of economics. In her nomination letter, she stated, “Myoung has changed many lives on campus, motivating students to work hard, to enjoy their studies, to major or minor in economics, and to apply to challenging jobs or graduate programs.”
For the past six years, Lee has served as the director of undergraduate studies and has taught five courses per year — most of which are large freshman lecture classes. During this time, the number of majors in economics and the number of business students with a concentration in economics has almost tripled.

“This increase is due to Myoung’s efforts to meet with students, explain the major to them, and help them decide whether it is right for them,” says Basker.
Lee pioneered an Economics Open House that has expanded to a two-day event and attracted 200 curious students this past year. She has also worked to expand the number and amount of awards the department’s majors receive and has encouraged students and faculty to participate in the A&S undergraduate research mentorship program. In addition, she resurrected the undergraduate student organization, Omicron Delta Epsilon. 

In the three nomination letters from current and former students, Lee’s optimism, the way she connects with her students, and her desire to push them to their potential was often cited.

“She motivated me to stick with the more rigorous bachelor of science degree and to take as many quantitative courses as possible,” wrote a former student. “The challenging coursework, honors thesis, and awards in economics that Dr. Lee encouraged me to pursue proved invaluable when applying for jobs and eventually working in economic research.”

Basker writes that the department’s undergraduate programs would be substantially less than they are without Lee’s efforts.  Lee says it is nice to be officially acknowledged for her efforts and the changes she has made.

“I encourage students to take at least a few economics courses in college, arguing that it will improve their decision- making abilities,” she says. “It gives me great pleasure to talk with them as they progress in their studies and they share with me the many ways they have applied their economics learning to their everyday lives.”

“I love students, my department, and the field of economics,” Lee adds. “I want to help students discover their strengths, explore their capabilities, and identify things they would like accomplish in their careers and in their lives.”

Three Economics graduate students received the Norman Bowers Scholarship

Economics graduate students, Shishan (Sybil) Shi, Teerachat Techapaisarnjaroenki, and Wei Zhou , were recently awarded the Norman Bowers Scholarships for their research on labor topics. The Norman Bowers Scholarship, established by a gift from the Norman Bowers family, aids graduate students writing dissertations (or theses) on labor topics with a strong policy focus. Special preference is given to students conducting research that focuses on the well-being of vulnerable groups in the labor market or exemplifies the careful use of empirical data – especially internationally comparative data.

Professor Ron Harstad to be Scholar-in-Residence at Northwestern University

J Rhoads Foster Professor in Economics Ron Harstad will be traveling a lot in the coming months. From May 6 through May 20, he will be a scholar-in-residence at Northwestern University’s Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Sciences (CMS-EMS.) This center was created in 1971 to bring together economists, mathematicians, and social scientists at Northwestern University who use mathematical methods and models in their work. A major focus of research at the center has been the use of game theory in the analysis and design of systems, organizations, and institutions for managing and regulating economic and political activities.

Harstad was recommended as a scholar-in-residence to explore possible co-authored research with Rakesh Vohra, director of the CMS-EMS. Vohra has published widely in game theory and operations research. His area of expertise is auction theory and pricing, in which Harstad’s research is widely cited. One goal of this visit is to see if their interest and expertise match enough to write a paper together.

In addition, Harstad will spend the months of June and September as the Languedoc-Roussillon Scholar-in-Residence at the Université de Montpellier I. He will be hosted by Laboratoire Montpelliérain d’Economie Théorique et Appliquée and the economics department. The state selects four faculty (world-wide) each year for the scholar-in-residence program, from all the nominations by all departments in universities in Languedoc-Roussillon. Harstad’s goal is to conduct joint research while there to better understand conclusions reached from conducting economics experiments. He seeks to demonstrate a way to measure whether field experiments in economics yield efficient outcomes.    

 

John Kuhlman Remembers: Looking Back at a Teaching Career

Former MU Economics Professor John Kuhlman

from the first page...

I spent three years in the army, but my contribution to the war effort was de minimus. On the other hand, it was the greatest educational experience of my life. It was the first time I had been more than 50 miles from home, so I experienced different people as well as different social environments. It was a very broadening experience — an invaluable part of becoming a classroom teacher. I began to see the value of education, and my mother’s hope that I would amount to something began to take shape.

I returned to college on the GI Bill and decided to major in economics. The subject appealed to me because it was about reasoning rather than memorizing, and it was going to be relevant in post-war America.

I found heroes among the faculty. I could see their minds at work. I could see how they lived. They were accessible to students and seemed to enjoy being with them in the classroom and on the campus. I wanted to be a college teacher, and I wanted to be a hero to my students.

Read the entire article here. Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available here

 

Nine Economics Students Recognized at Reception

(Dave Mandy, Chair), Daniel Ramey, Matthew Taylor, (Linda Dyer, Staff), Long Pei, Bradley Fowler (who accepted the award on behalf of his brother, Mark Fowler, who is studying abroad and could not be present), Eva Dou, Alex Schulte, Trenton Beckham, Thomas Wuennenberg, Anthony Dubis, (Myoung Lee, Director of Undergraduate Studies).

David Mandy, professor and chair of the economics department, and Myoung Lee, assistant teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies, recognized nine exemplary students at the 34th Annual Arts and Science Week Scholarship and Award Reception held on February 17.

As the chair of the department, Mandy said he has his share of responsibilities and challenges, but the reception is always one of his favorite events of the year because he gets to spend it with some truly outstanding students.

The Allan and Barbara Soshnik Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Thomas C. Wuennenberg, a junior economics major. Recipients of the scholarship are juniors and seniors who have demonstrated excellence in their studies of economics and who have maintained a high-level of academic performance. The scholarship was established by friends of Allan and Barbara Soshnik, who died in 1980. The Soshniks were both students at the University of Missouri.

Matthew Taylor, a double major in Economics and Physics , was honored with the Elmer Wood Scholarship. Recipients of the scholarship are juniors and seniors who have demonstrated excellence in their economics studies while maintaining a high-level of academic performance. This scholarship honors Elmer Wood (BA ’16) who served as a professor of economics at MU from 1930 until his retirement in 1964. Wood specialized in the field of monetary theory and became one of the nation’s leading authorities on the subject.   

The John Charles Willett Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Long Pei, a senior economics major, and Daniel M. Ramey, a dual major in Economics and Journalism. This scholarship is named for John Charles Willett, a 1995 graduate of the University of Missouri, who died in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. 

“I was quite honored to receive a scholarship, especially the John Charles Willett Memorial Scholarship,” says Ramey. “After researching Mr. Willet, I am deeply honored to have received this scholarship that memorializes someone who was able to achieve so much in such a short life.”

“This scholarship will inspire me to work harder in both academic fields and community service,” says Pei.

Eva Dou, senior, Anthony J. Dubis, junior, and Mark J. Fowler, senior, were honored with the Clay J. Anderson Jr. Memorial Scholarship. In memory of their son who graduated from MU in 1950, Clay J. and Oma C. Anderson established this scholarship to benefit economics majors. Recipients must be ranked in the upper one-third of their classes and should demonstrate financial need. 

“The economics department is very strong at Mizzou and it's great to be recognized for my work there,” says Fowler, who is currently studying in Spain this semester.  “A ton of my peers are equally deserving of this award, which again speaks volumes to the strength of the department. This scholarship will also go a long way in allowing me to focus on academics and the student organizations I am involved with rather than having to devote as much time to a job.”

The David J. Loschky Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Trenton D. Beckham and Alex Schulte, both seniors.  Friends and former students of Professor Loschky established this scholarship to honor his far-reaching contributions to the university, the Department of Economics, his undergraduate and graduate students, and to the economics profession.

Economics Department Alumnus Nominated by President Obama

On Dec. 19, President Obama nominated MU alumnus Kevin Wolf for the position of assistant secretary for export administration in the Department of Commerce. Wolf — who graduated in 1988 with bachelor’s degrees in economics and political science — is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Bryan Cave, LLP, where he has worked since 1993. The practice has covered most aspects of the law and policy of international trade. According to his firm profile, he works on issues related to the international traffic in arms regulations, the Export Administration regulations, and sanctions by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Wolf is also active in various export control and sanctions committees and a regular speaker at international trade and corporate compliance conferences. In the mid-1990s, he was an assistant special counsel to the House Ethics Committee, helping to investigate then-Speaker Newt Gingrich.

If confirmed, Wolf will be responsible for implementing the Bureau of Industry and Security's (BIS) controls on the export of dual-use items for national security, foreign policy, nonproliferation, and short supply reasons. In addition, he will oversee BIS's programs to ensure that industrial resources are available to meet national and economic security requirements, BIS's implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the U.S. Additional Protocol.

Fall 2009

Consortium Will Test Ways to Improve Education

Michael Podgursky, professor of economics, along with researchers from five universities in Kansas and Missouri, is working with school districts in the Kansas City area to create an education research laboratory. The Kansas City Area Education Research Consortium will help the districts analyze their own data and data collected by the respective state agencies.  Billions of dollars are going toward the country’s education system — the consortium will help ensure those dollars are fueling successful practices.

“School districts, even the larger ones, generally lack the resources to conduct in-depth analysis of their own data,” says Podgursky. “Nor do they have the capacity to develop external benchmark or ‘control group’ data.  The goal of the consortium is to provide this capacity.”

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has invested almost $1 million in grants and has committed five years to fund this center and help launch the effort. There are other potential sources of funding which include the Institute on Education Sciences of the United States Department of Education.

The consortium will tackle many issues: tracking students across state and district lines, charting where teachers were trained and how this affects their performance, and measuring the effectiveness of professional development. The researchers could also look deeper into the effects of school choice and Kansas City’s charter schools.

The aim of the consortium is to improve the education of K-12 students. “Ultimately, the goal is to use data to improve the performance of schools and student learning,” says Podgursky. “The way to do this is to move money and resources away from activities that are less effective and toward those that are more effective.”

 

The Department of Economics has one Faculty Position open.

E0 Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

The Department of Economics seeks applications and nominations for the Sam B. Cook Chair in Economics.  This is a fully endowed chair in macroeconomics, broadly defined. Substantial scholarly achievements and a commitment to teaching excellence at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, consistent with appointment at the endowed full professor level, are required.  Applications should include a cover letter and vita.  Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. 

CONTACT: Recruiting Chair, Sam B. Cook Chair in Economics, University of Missouri, Department of Economics, 118 Professional Building, Columbia, MO  65211-6040. 

The University of Missouri is an EO/AA/ADA employer.

Beryl W. Sprinkel, BS, BA ’47, a high-ranking economic adviser in the Reagan administration, died Aug. 22 in Beecher, Ill. He had Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a rare neuromuscular disease. He was 85.
When Sprinkel began his freshman year at MU, his goals were to study music and become a band director, the Chicago Tribune reported. Instead, he was motivated by an influential economics professor and earned his bachelor’s degree in that field. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago.
Sprinkel worked at Harris Bank in Chicago for 29 years reaching the level of executive vice president before he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1981. It was at this time that he joined the Reagan administration as undersecretary for monetary affairs in the Treasury Department. In this position, his duties included defending the dollar’s value, managing the national debt, and working with the Federal Reserve on interest rates and money supply. At the time of his appointment, Sprinkel said, “One of my goals is to get his inflation under control. We have a public mandate to get the economy turned around.”
Sprinkel was a monetarist. This theory holds that economic variations within a given system, such as changing rates of inflation, are most often caused by an increase or a decrease in the money supply.  He believed that decreasing the money supply’s growth rate would be anti-inflationary.  It was reported that during his tenure, these views often put him at odds with the Reagan administration’s advocates of supply-side economics, a belief that tax cuts would lead to widespread financial prosperity. He often criticized the Federal Reserve for a “too expansive and much too volatile” money supply.   In 1985, Reagan named him as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
After stepping down from the council, he returned to Chicago as a consultant. Robert Genetski, an economist who worked with Sprinkel in Chicago, says his mentor saw history repeating itself during the past couple of years. Genetski recalled Sprinkel saying, “These guys are setting us up for another financial crisis, there’s not enough liquidity in the system.”
Genetski said when he joined Harris Bank that Sprinkel had a reputation as a demanding boss. “I soon found that his only demand was that all research be thorough and that it be conducted in an open and honest manner.”
When Sprinkel was not thinking or consulting about economics, he was indulging in his love of music by singing and playing guitar. Books he wrote include: Money and Stock Prices and Money and Markets: A Monetarist View.
Sprinkel is survived by his third wife, Lory Reed Sprinkel; a son from his first marriage, Kevin Sprinkel of Chester Springs, Pa; two stepchildren, Janet Reed of Highland Park, Ill., and David Reed of Western Springs, Ill; and 10 grandchildren.

Economics Department to Host Annual Undergraduate Open House
 
Where: Economics Department, 129 Professional Building
 
When: Wednesday, September 16th – Thursday, September 17th, 9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
 
Stop by the Economics Department during our 2009 Open House. Learn more about:
 

• pursuing a major or minor in economics
• economics as a pre-law or pre-med degree
• preparing for the job market or graduate school
• undergraduate research and teaching opportunities
• internships and career opportunities

 
Enter a drawing for prizes.  Refreshments provided. More Details here.

Summer 2009

Michael Podgursky, professor in the Department of Economics; Shawn Ni, Middlebush Professor of Economics; and Cory Koedel, assistant professor, have secured two additional grants to assist in research using  longitudinal data on Missouri students and teachers. The first study, Retiring Productive Human Capital: Estimating the Effect of Teacher Retirement Benefit System Incentives on Workforce and Student Achievement, will examine the effect of the teacher pension system on schools and their performance.
“Incentives built into teacher pension systems allow retirement at early ages, but not all teachers take these retirement options,” says Podgursky. “We plan to examine whether more effective teachers are more likely to retire early, and the consequences for school performance of early retirements.”
The competitive grant is funded by the Institute on Education Science of the U.S. Department of Education through the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER). The grant funds two years and is in an amount of over $400,000.    
In another study led by Podgursky, the researchers will examine the effects of investments in teacher training on student achievement. They will look at what types of teacher preparation and professional development are most effective in raising student achievement. This grant funds three years of research and is in the amount of $480,117.
This grant is also funded by the Institute on Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education and the economists will partner with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to develop and analyze a student and teacher level longitudinal database.
“One important goal of this research is to develop econometric models to identify factors affecting teacher and school productivity,” says Podgursky.

 

 

Improving the country’s educational system is a popular topic. The growing interest of politicians in performance-pay plans for teachers has resulted in the scrutiny of value-added assessments — methods for measuring the competency of schools and teachers. New research on the effectiveness of these measures was debated in a recent article of Education Week in which one of MU’s professors defends the methods but suggests some modifications.    

In the value-added model, teachers are measured by evaluating the gains that their students make on standardized tests over the course of a school year. Some researchers say this is a fair way of rewarding teachers whose students improve by objectively measuring the learning gains students make from fall to spring. A Quarterly Journal of Economics study by Jesse Rothstein, a Princeton University economist, suggests that value-added models may not produce accurate results. Rothstein’s main concern is that students are not randomly assigned to classrooms. Instead, they may have been sorted based on their prior achievements, which could result in erroneous measures of teacher value added.

Cory R. Koedel, assistant professor of economics at MU, along with his research partner, Julian R. Betts of the University of California, San Diego, found that the student assignment bias that Rothstein cites could be transitory.

In the article “Studies Probe ‘Value-Added’ Measures” in Education Week, Koedel said, “Some years you get along with your class better than others.”

In a paper that is being revised for publication in the journal of Education Finance and Policy, Koedel and Betts found that researchers can lessen the effects of student-sorting bias by incorporating more years of data from teachers’ classes in the calculations.

In their study, Koedel and Betts replicated Rothstein’s techniques with data from San Diego public schools between academic years 1998–1999 and 2001–2002. While they found similar signs of bias with one year of test scores, the size of the effect was reduced by including additional years of data.   

"Rothstein shows that the value-added methodology is not a panacea for measuring teacher effectiveness.  While our paper corroborates this general finding, it also shows that value-added may perform better than is suggested in his study.  In terms of informing policy, our key result is that teacher evaluations that span multiple years are significantly more reliable than evaluations based on a single year of data.  In some cases, evaluating teachers over multiple years smoothes out estimation bias to the point where it has, at best, a negligible effect on value-added estimates.  When negligible bias can be confirmed in the data, value-added modeling can provide valuable insights about teaching effectiveness," says Koedel.

Koedel says he wouldn’t characterize the value-added debate as having proponents and opponents. “To me, I think we are all interested in the same thing, which is improving education.  In the case of value-added, we just want to do it right.”

To read the Education Week article in its entirety, click http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/07/01/36valueadd.h28.html?tkn=XLL

 

The Missouri P-20 Center for Education Policy Research hosted a conference recently to discuss data tracking of students from preschool through college. The conference, the first of its kind in the state, was attended by about 100 legislators, researchers, and educators. 

The Center is a campuswide collaboration dedicated to rigorous research on student learning and educational policy. Its goal is to promote the use of data to answer questions that are applicable to educational decisions in Missouri and beyond. In fact, the research from this program will likely affect the upcoming revision of the No Child Left Behind Act.

“Few factors are more important to long-term economic growth than education,” says Middlebush Professor of Economics Shawn Ni, whose main focus for this project is the econometric analysis of data of teachers’ effects on student performance and on factors that affect teacher turnovers.

The program, while housed in the Truman School of Public Affairs, has four key researchers from the Department of Economics: Professor Michael Podgursky, Research Analyst Mark Ehlert, Assistant Professor Cory Koedel, and Ni.

“To make an education system efficient, the right incentives for teachers must be in place,” says Ni. “Our research objective is to analyze how teachers respond to incentives and offer policy recommendations based on the analysis.”

“The emerging research collected through the program could establish Missouri as a national leader in longitudinal data, meaning data taken over a period of time,” says Podgursky.
The data is collected during a time period spanning a student’s early childhood through completion of his or her higher education. Without longitudinal data, researchers are unable to determine how to effectively spend education funding and which education interventions improve student outcomes and which do not.

“This data can be used to identify effective schools and teachers, which we must do if we ultimately want to determine what makes them effective, and replicate their success elsewhere,” says Koedel.

The conference, held in Reynolds Alumni Center, was broken into four sections: preschool education, elementary and secondary education, higher education, and the use of Missouri data to improve educational outcomes. Three major areas of national activity in educational policy that affect research are the choice of school, test-based accountability systems, and performance incentives. Through these areas, the program hopes to utilize the longitudinal data to not only track students but also teacher performance.

A federal grant will provide funding to use Missouri’s longitudinal data system to identify effective teacher-training programs.