Welcome from the Chair

Welcome to the Department of Economics at Duke University. Much is and has been happening here over the past few years, and I am happy to take this opportunity to give you a brief picture of what we are all about.

Social Sciences BuildingAll of the recent changes in the department are rooted in a particular intellectual vision that the faculty developed over many years. It is a vision that emphasizes the fact that we ultimately are more than the sum of our parts if we operate in a flourishing intellectual climate that fosters the integration of activities across disciplines and sub-disciplines, across theory and empirical work, across teaching and research and across units within the university and the larger Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Research Triangle. Our faculty's research interests are diverse and intellectually broad, but they overlap in unique ways across different sub-disciplines because of the shared interest in applying theoretically sound analysis to important applied research questions. And our research activities not only increasingly overlap with one another but also increasingly involve our graduate and undergraduate students as graduate reading and lunch groups have flourished and an increasing number of research-focused undergraduate seminars are offered.

The last four years have seen the emergence of the EcoTeach Center that has become the primary resource for Duke undergraduate and graduate students in economics. Graduate StudentsIt has overseen the implementation of a large undergraduate program reform that emphasizes deeper understanding of core economics material in preparation for advanced course work, and it has spearheaded the process of developing innovative uses of instructional technology. Currently, it is similarly overseeing the implementation of an equally ambitious graduate program reform aimed at integrating the graduate program more fully into the teaching and research environment of the department. And, since last year, EcoTeach has been the home of the annual AEA Summer Program aimed at assisting students, especially those from traditionally underrepresented minority groups, in their transition from undergraduate work to Economics PhD programs.

To support these changes, we have had the pleasure of welcoming a large number of new tenured faculty to our Department as we continue to implement a four-year strategic hiring plan that connects closely to the teaching and research needs of EcoTeach. At the same time, we have increasingly reached out to other units within the university and across the Research Triangle to harness more fully the wealth of research talent that resides within the triangle. Economists are active in virtually all units of the university, and combined with our sister institutions across the Research Triangle, the area boasts one of the most impressive geographically concentrated groups of academic economists in the country. We are continuing to look for more ways to build on this unique strength.

Finally, if you are familiar with our location in the Social Science Building at Duke but have not visited us for a while, I invite you to stop by. Over the past year, the building has undergone significant changes, with a new administrative suite, a large new graduate student area and new offices to accommodate our larger faculty size. You may well encounter graduate students using the building as a virtual computer lab, with wireless laptops accessing an increasingly powerful network and computational cluster environment that we are just introducing. More changes are ahead over the next few years, but even now you might have to look twice to recognize this as the same building it was just a short while ago. Until you can visit us in person, I invite you to browse our web site and to return to it as new features will be added over the coming months.

Tom Nechyba
Thomas Nechyba
Department Chair