economics – Page 10

On Feb. 6, recent Wesleyan graduates returned to campus and shared their experiences in finance. The conference, titled "Finance — Theory and Applications: A Conversation with Alumni," covered mergers and acquisitions, value investing, trading and case study analysis. Attendees also had an opportunity to ask questions. Anand Gopalan ’09, James Hounsell ’11 and Eugene Wong ’09, all of whom have relevant experience in the field of finance, spoke at the event. Joyce Jacobsen, professor of economics, also gave remarks at the conference. The event was hosted by Abigail Hornstein, associate professor of economics, with support from the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life…

Professor of Economics Richard Grossman recently accepted two new posts. He was appointed to be a research fellow in the Economic History Program of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Founded in 1983, CEPR's mission is "to enhance the quality of economic policymaking within Europe and beyond, by fostering high quality, policy-relevant economic research, and disseminating it widely to decision-makers in the public and private sectors." Grossman is one of only a few American research fellows at CEPR. He was also recently appointed associate editor for socioeconomics, health policy and law of the journal Neurosurgery. See here for a bio of…

Masami Imai, professor of economics, professor of East Asian studies, is the co-author of an article titled "Attribution Error in Economic Voting: Evidence from Trade Shocks," published in the January 2015 edition of Economy Inquiry, Volume 53, Issue 1, pages 258-257. Rosa Hayes '13, currently a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, also is one of the paper's co-authors. This article exploits the international transmission of business cycles to examine the prevalence of attribution error in economic voting in a large panel of countries from 1990 to 2009. Masami and his co-authors found that voters, on average, exhibit…

Richard Grossman, professor of economics, delivered a keynote speech at the 10th Chief Risk Officer Assembly in Munich, Germany on Nov. 19. The speech was based on his book, WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them (Oxford University Press), and focused the consequences of government policy for economic risk. The CRO Assembly is organized by Geneva Association, an insurance industry think-tank, and the CRO Forum, which is made up of chief risk officers from large (primarily European) multi-national insurance and re-insurance companies. The conference took place at the headquarters of Munich RE, one of the world’s largest…

On Oct. 24, Richard Grossman, professor of economics, was a discussant at a conference titled “Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roots of Development," organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. Grossman commented on a paper by Dan Bogart (University of California at Irvine) titled “Securing the East India Monopoly: Politics, Institutional Change, and the Security of British Property Rights Revisited.” The paper focuses on the history of the English East India Company and ways it yields new insights on the relationship between politics, institutional change, and the security of property rights in Britain.

Richard Grossman, professor of economics, was invited to become a Research Network Fellow of CESifo, a leading European economic research organization based in Munich, Germany. The CESifo Group consists of the Center for Economic Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Ifo Institute of Economic Research, and the CESifo Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research. CESifo combines the theoretically oriented economic research with empirical research and is often at the center of economic policy debates in Germany and throughout Europe. As a fellow, Grossman will be a member of the Network’s Money, Macro, and International Finance area and…

Abigail Hornstein, associate professor of economics, and her former thesis student, Zachary Nguyen '12 are the co-authors of a paper titled "Is More Less? Propensity to Diversify via M&A and Market" published in the International Review of Financial Analysis, June 2014, pp. 64-88. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) could lead to a firm diversifying into new industries, and the impact of this may be related to the firm’s prior diversification. By using a panel of 1,030 M&A transactions from 2000-2010, Hornstein and Nguyen found that that previously diversified firms are more likely to pursue industrially diversifying M&A. "Both previous and contemporary diversification…

Bill Craighead, assistant professor of economics, is the author of a paper titled "Monetary Rules and Sectoral Unemployment in Open Economies" published in the June 2014 issue of the Journal of Macroeconomics. Search theory has given us a more realistic mechanism to study unemployment in macroeconomic models. In this paper, Craighead integrated search theory into an “open economy” macroeconomic model – i.e., a model of an economy that interacts with the rest of the world. One important question in open economy models is what measure of inflation should monetary policy respond to – consumer prices, which include imported goods, or producer…

Professor of Economics Richard Grossman gave a public lecture about his book, WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn From Them, at the Center for Economic Studies/Institute for Economic Research at Munich University on April 7. He delivered the talk in German. More information about the Munich Seminars is here. The book was published in November 2013 by Oxford University Press. A video of the lecture is available here.

The Board of Trustees recently conferred tenure to four Wesleyan faculty. Their promotions take effect July 1. They are: Lisa Cohen, associate professor of English; Abigail Hornstein, associate professor of economics; Miri Nakamura, associate professor of Asian languages and literatures; and Anna Shusterman, associate professor of psychology. Other tenure announcements may be released after the Board's May meeting. "Please join us in congratulating them on their impressive records of accomplishment," said Wesleyan President Michael Roth. Brief descriptions of their areas of research and teaching are below: Lisa Cohen joined the English Department’s creative writing faculty in Fall 2007. Her courses are…

Professor of Economics Richard Grossman is the author of an op-ed titled, "The Monetary Cosmopolitans," published March 27 on Project Syndicate, a website that publishes commentary "by global leaders and thinkers." Grossman expresses support for a new trend toward countries appointing foreigners, and those with considerable foreign experience, to what is widely considered a country's second most important post: that of the head of the central bank. "This represents a major departure from the tradition of filling central banks' top leadership positions with people who have spent most of their careers there—a tradition that, over time, allowed central banks to…

Thomson Whitin, the Chester D. Hubbard Professor of Economics and Social Science, Emeritus, died Dec. 9 at the age of 90. Whitin had already achieved distinction when he joined the Wesleyan faculty as a professor of economics in 1963. He graduated from Princeton University in 1943 and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II on the aircraft carrier the Bonhomme Richard. Having obtained a doctorate in economics from Princeton University, and teaching there until 1952, he joined the faculty of M.I.T. as an assistant professor. While on leave from M.I.T. from 1956–58, he served as…

Alumni Return to Wesleyan to Share Their Experiences in Finance

Grossman is Appointed Research Fellow, Journal Associate Editor

Imai’s Paper Examines the Prevalence of Attribution Error in Economic Voting

Grossman Keynote Speaker at Chief Risk Officer Assembly

Grossman Discussant at Economics Research Conference

Grossman Joins Economics Research Organization in Germany

Hornstein, Nguyen ’12 Published in International Review of Financial Analysis

Craighead’s Paper Published in Macroeconomics Journal

Grossman Leads Public Lecture on Economic Policy Disasters in Germany

Cohen, Hornstein, Nakamura, Shusterman Awarded Tenure

Grossman Argues for Diversity at Central Banks

Professor Emeritus Whitin Dies at Age 90