u Faculty News

u Alum News

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Oxy Economics Newsletter! For those of you who participated last year, welcome back. For those of you who are new, we hope that you'll make the newsletter an annual habit. Where else can you hear about current events in the department, keep up to date with old classmates, and make new connections with economics majors from other eras?

The big news in the department last year was the introduction a new honors program. For decades, honors in economics was awarded on the vote of the faculty without any additional work being done, but now we've installed a new system that includes an honors seminar and an honors thesis. With Giorgio Secondi leading the way, we now have an honors program that truly deserves the name. Students with 3.5 GPAs (both overall and within the department) now can earn honors only by completing an honors seminar in the Fall and by writing and presenting a significant honors thesis in the Spring. In 2002-03, we were quite proud of the eight students who constituted the first crop of "new" honors winners, and the presentations were particularly impressive. As one non-economics staff member put it, "that was the best intellectual environment at a session of student presentations that I've seen in my 30 years at Oxy."

In terms of our faculty, 2002-03 marked the first year at Oxy for new Profs. Sita Nataraj and Madeline Zavodny, and both got excellent early reviews of their teaching. They were joined by holdovers Jim Halstead, Mary Hirschfeld, Jerry McIntyre, Robby Moore, Jennifer Olmsted, Giorgio Secondi, Jim Whitney, and yours truly. Sadly, a few of these stalwarts won't be around in 2003-2004, as Mary Hirschfeld headed off on leave to study theology at Notre Dame, Jennifer Olmsted moved on the Cal State Sonoma, and Madeline Zavodny returned to the Atlanta Fed (and a wedding!).

Once again, our students did us proud. For the third straight year, we graduated an unusually large and talented class. Our department once again had more seniors graduate than any other department, and we once again did quite well in terms of academic honors, with ten Phi Beta Kappas (including two junior Phi Betes). In addition, we're quite pleased that Meg Ryan was elected President of the ASOC; she's the second economics major to hold that position in the three years.

Well, that wraps up a new year, but we anticipate even more excitement in 2003-04. If you're in the area, please drop by and say hello. We'd love to see you!

Otherwise, please feel free to drop me a line at <woody@oxy.edu> or give me a call at 323-259-2776. I'm always delighted to hear from our alums.

Woody Studenmund

Last year was Jim Halstead's third year in the College's Early Retirement Incentive Program. Under this program, professors teach reduced workloads with a proportionately smaller reduction in salary. Until he retires, which he thinks will be soon, he will continue to teach his favorite classes: Principles of Economics I, Environmental Economics and Policy and the History of Economic Thought. On June 30, Jim resigned as Director of Academic Advising for the College after a 16 year run, during which he participated in the crafting of many changes in the advising and registration systems. Perhaps the most important of these was the development and establisnment of "Reggie," the College's computer-assisted registration process. Jim continues to serve on the Ad Hoc Committee for Evaluation of Teaching Effectiveness which has developed a new teaching evaluation form that will be submitted soon to the faculty for approval. This was yet again another slow year for brewpub touring, but Jim's total brewpub visitations continues to rise, now approaching 430. Most late Friday afternoons and early Friday evenings, Jim can be found sitting in the "post" position at Crown City Brewery in Pasadena; his promise to buy you a beer if you stop by to see him at the Crown remains in place.

Mary Hirschfeld is on leave in 2003-04, studying theology at the University of Notre Dame.

John Karayan, who is rumored to have gotten his nickname "Doc" due to his likeness to a Disney cartoon character, is looking forward to another great year. This past one was exciting, with the likes of Enron spicing up accounting and financial analysis (the topic of ECON 233, which he teaches). It also made even more interesting the expert witnessing on taxation and accounting which Doc has been doing on a piece of complex Federal business litigation. Along with presenting papers (e.g., on using cases to teach taxation) and publishing articles (e.g., on creating environments to foster product innovation), he published a text last year on strategic tax planning for managers which has been adopted by several MBA Programs. Doc's next book -- on State and Local Tax Planning -- is due out in the Fall. More importantly, his son got through his first year in college relatively intact, his daughter is now a senior in high school, and he & his bride celebrated their 31st anniversary at Eagle Rock's jewel, Cafe Beaujolais. It was a good year, even if he did end looking more like his namesake...

Jerry McIntyre had a blast his past year at Occidental College and is looking forward to another great year. After commuting from Santa Monica during the school year, he wandered more widely this summer visiting Santa Cruz, San Francisco, New York, and Washington D.C. He has continued his research on economic growth and international economics. In addition, he has also developed two new courses: Econ 311, International Economics and Econ 102. He is looking forward to seeing everyone in late August and is psyched and ready to start the semester. He invites everyone to drop in for an espresso and some economics when they return from the summer.

Robby Moore completed his service as President of the Faculty Council this past year. In addition, he co-organized and led a Teaching Workshop sponsored by the American Economic Association for Southern California teaching economists. His co-authored paper, "Regional Workshops to Improve the Teaching Skills of Economics Faculty," was published in the May, 2003 issue of the American Economic Review. He also had the experience of teaching the same class, "Personnel Economics" (Economics 352) at both Pomona College (as a Visiting Lecturer) and at Occidental. He looks forward to returning full time to the Economics Department for 2003-04 and will take over as Chair of the Economics Department at the beginning of the Spring Semester 2004.

Sita Nataraj just finished her first year of teaching at Oxy. She taught Principles of Economics II, Intermediate Microeconomics, and Economics of the Public Sector. In addition, she became treasurer of Phi Beta Kappa and faculty advisor for the newly-formed South Asian Students Association. In January, she presented a paper ("Comparing the Risks of Social Security with and without Individual Accounts," co-authored with John Shoven of Stanford) at the American Economic Association Meetings. Over the summer, she revised a chapter from her recently completed dissertation ("Age Bias in Fiscal Policy: Why Does the Political Process Favor the Elderly") and started a new research project on the politics of income redistribution. Sita is looking forward to her second year at Oxy.

Giorgio Secondi started his fifth year at Oxy by teaching in the Core Program for the first time. He taught a Core writing seminar titled “Economic Development and the Market,” and he had a wonderful time. He hopes to teach in Core again soon. This year he also taught 101, 102, and his economic development class. Giorgio also served as coordinator of the new Honors Program in the department. Eight students received College Honors after participating in the yearlong program and completing research theses under faculty supervision. The theses investigated such topics as intellectual property rights protection in developing countries, Medicare reform, and the economics of restaurant tipping. On the research front, Giorgio continued to work on the issue of intergenerational transfers in China and wrote an essay on the East Asian economic crisis of 1997-98. The “big news” came at the end of April, when the college gave him tenure and promoted him to Associate Professor. He looks forward to spending many more years at Oxy.

Carolyn Sissoko is a new faculty member who just received her Ph.D. from UCLA in March 2003.  She will be teaching Principles of Economics II and Intermediate Microeconomic Theory in the fall and Economics of Financial Markets and European Economic History in the spring.  Her dissertation focuses on the monetary and financial foundations of early European economic growth.  She expects to use her spring semester classes to start working on a money and banking textbook.

Woody Studenmund continues to serve as department chair and continues to love teaching his econometrics and managerial economics courses. He had to put on hold for a year the revision of his econometric textbook (recently called "one of the most important new texts over the last 30 years") so that he could devote his energies to leading the College's strategic planning efforts (called Dynamic Planning). That 18-month-long planning process has now moved on to the implemention stage where specific initiatives for the improvement of Oxy's academic programs are being prepared and considered, so Woody will be able to return to his textbook revision this year.

Mike Tamada continued as the Director of Institutional Research. His projects included analysis of students' choices of majors, helping with assessment of the success of Oxy's diversity efforts, and using panel data to study the relationship between schools' graduation rates and admit rates (percent of applicants admitted). Mike occasionally teaches one class per year. He advises the men's and women's Ultimate Frisbee Clubs and annually travels to Potlatch, a large coed Ultimate tournament in Seattle, to play with the Oxy reunion team. He spent a month in Shanghai, China in the fall of 2002 on fellowship to teach Ultimate. He also travelled to Denver in the summer of 2003 to attend the conferences of the Western Economic Association and the Society for American Baseball Research.

In addition to teaching Intermediate Microeconomics and International Economics last year, Jim Whitney added a new Frosh seminar to his course list in Fall 2002, "Sports and Entertainment in Today's Economy." This gave him an opportunity to bring some of his long-standing research into professional team sports into the classroom. He will be on sabbatical in Fall 2003, working on a new sports economics research project and preparing another new course for Spring 2004, "Law and Economics." When he returns in the Spring, he will also resume his service on the College Advisory Council. Jim and Linda's daughter, Camille, born in the Fall Quarter of his second year at Oxy, is now entering her sophomore year at Smith College in Massachusetts.