Weintraub Appointed Acting
Dean of Faculty
Economics Professor E. Roy Weintraub has been named acting dean of the faculty of arts and sciences for Duke University.
Weintraub assumed the post July 1, succeeding S. Malcolm Gillis, who left Duke to become president of Rice University.
According to Duke Provost Thomas Langford, who made the appointment, Weintraub is "a distinguished teacher and scholar and a seasoned academic administrator whose leadership within the faculty will serve arts and sciences and the university well."
Weintraub served as chairman of Duke's Academic Council for two terms, and he was served as faculty representative on such committees as the president's Advisory Committee on Resources, the provost's Academic Priorities Committee, and the Long-Range Planning Steering Committee.
"Roy is ideally suited to lead the faculty during this critical transition period while we conduct a national search," Langford said. "President (Nan) Keohane and I are delighted that Roy has agreed to serve.'
Weintraub said he welcomed the challenge. "I'm very pleased to have been invited to lead Duke's distinguished arts and sciences faculty in this interesting and challenging period of institutional growth and change," he said. "Dean Gillis and Provost Langford have worked closely to set out a clear course for the future of arts and sciences at Duke. I look forward to building on these efforts and welcome the opportunity to work with my faculty colleagues, the provost, and President Keohane during what surely will be an important transitional time for Duke."
Weintraub has been a member of the Economics Department faculty since 1970. He chaired the department from 1983 to 1987.
James M. Henderson, Research
Professor, Dies
James Henderson, Research Professor of Economics, died October 5, 1992, in Duke University Hospital of cancer. He was 62.
Dr. Henderson, husband of Duke Economics Professor Anne Krueger, joined the Duke faculty in 1986 after leaving the World Bank, where for three years he had been senior economist in the bank's Economic Development Institute. Prior to that, he was a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota from 1959 to 1983.
Henderson's research maintained two consistent focuses throughout his career: resource concerns and quantitative methods for addressing them. He authored with Richard Quandt an innovative textbook, Microeconomic Theory: A Mathematical Approach, in 1958, which quickly became a standard for the modern treatment of macroeconomic theory. It was a godsend to generations of graduate students preparing for qualifying examinations, went through three editions and was translated into six major languages.
Henderson adapted linear programming and input-output models to the problems of regional development and later international trade and growth problems. In recent years he worked on policies and their effects on trade and growth, exploring the use of computable general equilibrium models to this end.
He brought to every question a sharply analytical mind and almost invariably adopted a perspective that was both refreshingly novel and clear.
In addition to his wife, Henderson is survived by a brother, Mr. John Kingston Coward of San Diego.
De Marchi Assumes Economics
Chair
Professor Neil De Marchi took over the Chair of the Economics Department for a three-year term in August 1992.
A former Rhodes Scholar, De Marchi earned his Ph.D. from the Australian National University. He first joined the Economics faculty in 1971.
According to De Marchi, the Department finds itself at a point where serious rebuilding will be necessary following recent faculty losses. Hiring therefore will be "a major focus of energies." In addition, the Department will be looking at possible modifications to the Undergraduate Major and at the nature and role of the core in the Graduate Program.
Sci.econ.research, a moderated Usenet newsgroup intended to disseminate the results of current research to economists on the Internet, was established in June 1993 by the Duke Economics Department.
The newsgroup will be moderated by Forrest Smith, senior editorial assistant at Duke Economics. The newsgroup will be archived at sunsite.unc.edu.
George Tauchen has been appointed editor of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics (JBES), the leading journal publishing applied work in business and economic statistics.
To devote full attention to his editorial responsibilities, Tauchen will no longer serve as associate editor of Econometrica or the Journal of Theoretical Econometrics.
A publication of the American Statistical Association, the JBES was started ten years ago by Arnold Zellner to provide a forum for applied problems in business and economic statistics.
The JBES publishes articles on a broad range of topics including empirical policy evaluation, applied demand and cost analysis, measurement of output and employment, forecasting, fluctuations, analysis of survey and longitudinal data, econometric modeling, empirical marketing, and other applied business and statistics problems. Two recent special sections in the journal were devoted to regime-switching models and the "back to basics' approach of using simple statistical methods and natural experiments for policy evaluation.
Tauchen, who previously served as associate editor for the journal, replaces John Geweke as its head.
Educational Odyssey Brings Yang from China
to Duke
Dennis Yang joined the Department of Economics faculty in August 1992.
A student of Nobel laureate Gary Becker at the University of Chicago, Yang's dissertation studied knowledge spillovers within farming families. The data from China suggest knowledge acquired by one family member can be shared with other family members leading to increased productive efficiency at little or no cost to the sharing individual. Under current economic conditions in China, farm production is based on the individual family unit.
A native of China, Yang came to the United States as a result of an indirect educational route.
Yang's parents, who work in the Chinese Aviation Administration, "went to the countryside" as part of the Cultural Revolution when Yang was a young child.
In 1978, the Chinese educational system was revamped as part of the national reforms. A consequence of the reforms was the institution of rigorous merit examinations to determine which high schools students would attend. Yang did well on his exams and was assigned to one of eight "special" schools in Beijing.
Yang's educational odyssey began in high school, when he was selected as one of two students from his school to attend a pilot multi-national high school program in Italy, sponsored by the World Bank.
Following high school, Yang came to the United States, where he attended George Washington for one semester before transferring to UCLA. He graduated from UCLA two years later, then moved on to do graduate studies at the University of Chicago.
Yang currently teaches Intermediate Microeconomic Theory and a new undergraduate/graduate course on the Chinese economy.
Yang said the course on the Chinese economy aims to explain the evolution of the Chinese economic system since 1949. The Chinese growth of the Chinese economy during that period can be broken into two eras, he said, one from the takeover by Mao Tse-Tung prior in 1949, the second beginning in 1978.
Since 1978, the Chinese economy has moved up "to another level of economic growth." The share of private enterprise in the Chinese economy has been increasing, according to Yang, to the point that it now provides over 50% of total Chinese GNP.
Although there has been some decline in economic growth over the past few years, Yang said he expects there is too much momentum for progress for China to return to its old ways.
Professor T. Dudley Wallace will spend seven weeks of the Fall 1993 semester in Moscow.
Wallace will teach macroeconomic and econometric topics at the New School of Economics. The New School of Economics is in its second year. It offers a program of graduate studies in economics and is sponsored jointly by Harvard University and the World Bank.
During the previous three Fall semesters, Wallace taught in China. In 1992, he taught at the Johns Hopkins/Nanjing Center for American-Chinese Studies, in Nanjing.
At the program in Nanjing, half the students and half the faculty are Chinese, and the other half are American. The American students take courses from the Chinese faculty, taught in Chinese, while the Chinese students take courses, taught in English, from the American faculty.
Wallace described the program at Nanjing as "cozy," as all the participants study and live under one roof.
Duke Economics Grants 18 New
Doctoral Degrees
The Department of Economics at Duke awarded 18 doctoral degrees in 1992 and, thus far, in 1993. The new Ph.D.'s from Duke, their new places of employment, and their thesis titles and supervisors are:
Guillermo J. Aboumrad: Banco de Mexico, International Division; "Oil Prices and the Real Business Cycle: The Case of Mexico" (Kent P. Kimbrough).
Sheila Amin: Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas; 'Externalities in the Export Sector and Long Run Growth: An Empirical Analysis of the Flower and Fruit Industries in Colombia" (Kent P. Kimbrough).
David Anderson: Assistant Professor, Centre College, Kentucky; "Optimal Compensation Systems" (W. Kip Viscusi).
Martin Cerisola: Economist, International Monetary Fund; "Essays on Black Market Spot and Futures Exchange Rates: The Case of Argentina 1985-1989" (Kent P. Kimbrough).
Peter Dohlman: "The U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Trade Arrangement: Political Economy, Game Theory, and Welfare Analyses" (Anne O. Krueger).
Mark K. Dreyfus: Senior Analyst, NERA, Cambridge, Mass.; Consumer Discounting Behavior and the Value of a Statistical Life Revealed in Household Automobile Holdings (W. Kip Viscusi).
Anne Forrest: Economist, Environmental Law Institute, Washington, D.C.; "Consumer Responses to Risk Information" (W. Kip Viscusi).
Christopher Giosa: Manager, Office of Federal Tax Services, Arthur Andersen and Co., S.C., Washington, D.C.; "The Opportunity Cost of Capital in the United States" (Robert Conrad)
Alison Hagy- Postdoctoral Fellow, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; "Child Care Quality: Hedonic Prices, Demand, and the Effects of Government Subsidization" (Marjorie B. McElroy).
Bridget Heidemann: Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Duke; "Retirement Decisions in Dual Career Households: Development and Estimation of a Stackelberg Model" (Marjorie B. McElroy).
Jane Ordovensky: Assistant Professor, University of the Pacific; "The Role of Community Colleges in the Post Secondary Enrollment Choice in Educational Attainment of Recent High School Graduates" (Charles Clotfelter).
David Orsmond: Economist, International Monetary Fund; "How Well Does the Black Market Premium Proxy the Restrictiveness of a Trade Regime?" (Anne O. Krueger).
Dixie Watts Reaves: Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech; "Valuing an Endangered Species and Its Habitat: An Application of the Contingent Valuation Method" (Randall Kramer and Marjorie McElroy.)
Allison Watts: Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University; 'Essays in Economics and Law from a Game Theoretic Perspective" (Hervé Moulin)
David Weaver: Economist, Division of Economic Research, Social Security Administration; "Labor Force Participation and the Demand for Health Care by the Elderly' (James Baumgardner).
Natalie Webb: Assistant Professor of Economics, Defense Resources Management Institute, Monterey, California; "Company Foundations and the Economics of Corporate Giving" (Charles T. Clotfelter).
Christian Weber: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Seattle; "The Economics of Fertility when Children Are Consumer's and Producer's Goods" (Allen C. Kelley).
Shawn M. Welch: Instructor, Duke University; "Essays on the Collapse of a Fixed Exchange Rate Regime" (Kent P. Kimbrough).
Two Young Russian Students
Emigrate to Duke
A young Russian couple, Anastasia and Daniel Avrutsky, have enrolled as economics majors at Duke.
The two were students at Moscow State University and were enrolled in Professor Vladimir Treml's macroeconomics course there in 1992.
Faced with a rising tide of anti-Semitic discrimination, the Avrutskies sought political asylum in the United States. They join several of Daniel's family members who now reside in the Durham area.
Daniel's family split up in 1919. One branch stayed in the Soviet Union, while the other emigrated to the U.S. An uncle, Jacques Poirier, is Duke Emeritus Professor of Chemistry.
Daniel's family is now all in Durham. "We joined my family, and found a wonderful place to study," Daniel said.
According to Anastasia, whose father, a physicist, is currently working in Paris, "anti-Semitism is getting worse." The Jews are traditionally blamed for everything in Russia. "In 1917, the Jews were blamed for introducing communism,' she said. "Now they are being blamed for the dissolution of the Soviet Union."
The Economics Department at Virginia Commonwealth University has established the Eleanor C. Snellings Scholarship in Economics to be awarded annually to a rising senior majoring in economics.
Professor Snellings, who retired in June, 1992, received her Ph.D. from Duke in 1959.
Professor William P. Yohe chaired a session at the January, 1993, AEA meetings in Anaheim, California, on computer aided instruction in economics.
A. Ronald Gallant, Adjunct Professor of Economics at Duke, has resigned his position on the faculty at North Carolina State University. Gallant has accepted an appointment as Latane Professor of Economics at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The informal arrangement which Gallant has had with the department as adjunct professor has now been formalized into a renewable-term contract. He will continue his long-established schedule of spending Thursdays in the Social Sciences Building.
Dohlman Wins Burger
Fellowship
Peter Dohlman has been named recipient of the first Robert M. Burger Fellowship under the SRC/Ed- ucation Alliance Fellowships Program.
Weintraub Wins Distinguished
Teaching Award
Professor E. Roy Weintraub was selected as the 1991-92 recipient of the Howard Johnson Distinguished Teaching Award.
In 1984, the Howard Johnson Foundation made one of the first major gifts to Duke's Capital Campaign for the Arts and Sciences. Perceiving a need for quality undergraduate instruction, the Foundation recommended that its gift be designated to support "those faculty members whose teaching is known to inspire confidence in, and respect for, the highest traditions of American democracy and free enterprise and western civilization."
The award carries with it a stipend of $3,000.
Kimbrough Serves as Acting
Chair
Professor Kent Kimbrough is serving as Acting Chair of the Department of Economics while Neil de Marchi spends the summer in Europe.
Moulin Organizes Choice Meeting
Professor Hervé Moulin in June organized the first meeting of the Society, "Social Choice and Welfare," in Caen, Normandy, France. Moulin, who is spending the year at the Universitis d'Aix-Marseille, as chair of the program committee organized 150 lectures for the four-day meeting. The conference was assisted by $50,000 from the Olin Foundation, Duke University, and various European agencies.
Professor Anne O. Krueger was appointed a member of the New York State Regents Commission on Higher Education for 1992-93.
Professor William Gentry was awarded a Lilly Endowment Teaching Fellowship for 1992-93.
In addition, Gentry has been named as a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Professor W. Kip Viscusi delivered the Olin Lecture at Washington University in St. Louis. The topic of Viscusi's lecture was "Pricing Environmental Risks.'
Professor E. Roy Weintraub spent the Fall 1992 semester as Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Venice, ca Foscari. While in Italy, he gave a set of lectures to undergraduates at the University of Venice, and faculty seminars there, and at the Universities of Milan, Rome, and Bologna.
While in Italy, Weintraub completed two papers on Formalist Mathematics and Economic Theory. His paper on Griffith C. Evans will be presented at the World Congress of the History of Science Society in Zaragosa, Spain, next year.
Professor Robert C. Marshall spent the Spring 1993 semester on leave from Duke. In February, he visited the Department of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. In March, he traveled to the University of Minnesota, where he taught during the Spring quarter.
Economics Department Shares Faculty
Resources
A number of joint appointments have been made this year involving the faculty of the Department of Economics.
William Gentry, Assistant Professor of Economics, has been awarded a joint appointment with the Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy. Gentry, who joined the Economics Department in 1990, specializes in public finance.
Four other Duke faculty members, Vijaya Ramachandran, Randy Kramer, Ravi Bansal, and Jim Leitzel, have received joint appointments in Economics.
Ramachandran is a Faculty Fellow in the Center for International Development Research and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Public Policy Studies in the Terry Sanford Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Business Economics in 1991 from Harvard. Her paper, "Another Look at the Resource Cost of Technology Transfer," will appear in the Review of Economics and Statistics.
Kramer is an Associate Professor in the School of the Environment. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, in 1980, and has been at Duke since 1988. He this year became the first director of undergraduate studies for the new major in Environmental Studies and Policy. Among the courses Kramer teaches are two cross-listed courses, "Resource and Environmental Economics," a larger survey course, and "Advanced Environmental Economics," a seminar. He has a number of recent publications, including a co-authored article in Agricultural Economics, "Choice of Utility Functional Form: Its Effect on Classification of Risk Preferences and the Prediction of Farmer Decisions"; and a co-authored chapter, "Agricultural Resource Policy," in G.A. Carlson, ed., Agricultural and Environmental Resource Economics, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Bansal, Assistant Professor in the Fuqua School of Business, came to Duke in 1990. He teaches a course for graduate students in stochastic macroeconomics.
Leitzel is Associate Professor in the Terry Sanford School for Public Policy Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Duke in 1986, then taught for three years at Vanderbilt University before returning to Duke in 1988. He has recently published "Collusion and Rent Seeking" (with Michael Alexeev), Public Choice, and "Reliance and Contract Breach," Law and Contemporary Problems.
Chinese Economists Discuss
Reforms
A panel of leading Chinese Economists participated in a panel discussion held at Duke in March, 1993. The presentation was sponsored by the Department of Economics (Johnson Fund for Undergraduate Studies), and the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute. Professor Dennis T. Yang coordinated the event.
The panel included Mr. Wu Jinglian, Standing Director, Development Research Center of the State Council; Mr. Guo Shuqing, Director, Economic Research Center, State Planning Commission; Mr. Zhou Xiaochuan, Executive Vice President, Bank of China; and Mr. Lou Jiwei, Director, Macroeconomic Department, State Commission of Restructuring Economic system.
Duke Distributes Map-Stat
Program
Kim Neuhauser, a Ph.D. candidate in economics studying under Professor Vladimir Treml, is acting as American distributor for AVISTA, a statistical mapping program for the 15 former Soviet republics.
The program, developed by Yuri Leibkind of the Central Institute for Mathematical Economics in Moscow, is being handled in the United States by the Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, of which Treml and Professor Edna Andrews are co-directors.
According to Neuhauser, AVISTA relies upon two databases: one containing standard socioeconomic and demographic statistics for each of the former Soviet republics; the other focusing specifically on Russia, with statistics at the oblast level.
The program will present its data in either map or tabular form. There are over 1000 different variables to the databases. A map of the former Soviet Union can be displayed and the desired statistics for a given region revealed.
Although the graphical representation of geographic regions is appealing and easy to understand, Newhauser said the primary focus for the program for serious researchers will be the underlying statistical information. "The program is peripheral to the database," she said. The statistics are easily ported to other database programs, and new statistics can be imported into the AVISTA.
AVISTA has been adopted by approximately 20 sites in the United States. Although it is currently only available in a Russian language version, an English version is being developed.
James Baumgardner: "Medicare Physician Payment Reform and the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale: A Re-Creation of Efficient Market Prices?" American Economic Review 1992.
Charles T. Clotfelter and Philip Cook: "Lotteries," in Peter Newman, Murray Milgate, and John EatwelI, eds., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance, Macmillan Press, 1992; "The Peculiar Scale Economics of Lotto," American Economic Review (forthcoming, March 1993); "The Gambler's Fallacy in Lottery Play," Management Science (forthcoming).
A. Ronald Gallant: (with George Tauchen) "A Nonparametric Approach to Nonlinear Time Series Analysis: Estimation and Simulation," in E. Parzen, D. Brillinger, M. Rosenblatt, M. Taqqu, J. Geweke, and P. Caines, eds., New Dimensions in Time Series Analysis, Springer-Verlag, (forthcoming); (with Halbert White) "On Learning the Derivatives of an Unknown Mapping with Multilayer Feedforward Networks," Neural Networks, revised and reprinted in Halbert White, Artificial Neural Networks, Blackwell, 1992; (with Daniel F. McCaffrey, Stephen Ellner, and Douglas W. Nychka) "Estimating the Lyapunov Exponent of a Chaotic System with Nonparametric Regression," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1992; (with Peter E. Rossi and George E. Tauchen) "Stock Prices and Volume," The Review of Financial Studies, 1992; (with Douglas Nychka, Stephen Ellner, and Daniel McCaffrey) "Finding Chaos in Noisy Systems," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1992; (with Marie Davidian) "Smooth Nonparametric Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Population Pharmacokinetics, with Application to Quinidine," Journal of Pharmacokinetics and Biopharmaceutics, 1992; (with Marie Davidian) "The Nonlinear Mixed Effects Model with a Smooth Random Effects Density," Biometrika, forthcoming; (with Peter E. Rossi and George E. Tauchen) "Nonlinear Dynamic Structures," Econometrica, forthcoming.
William Gentry: "Exchange-Rate Exposure and Industry Characteristics: Evidence from Canada, Japan and the U.S." (with Gordon Bodnar), Journal of International Money and Finance (forthcoming).
Henry G. Grabowski: "The Effect of Medicaid Formularies on the Availability of New Drugs" (with Stuart Schweitzer and S. Renee Shiota), PharmacoEconomics, 1992; "Brand Loyalty, Entry and Price Competition in Pharmaceuticals after the 1984 Act" (with John Vernon), Journal of Law and Economics, 1992.
Daniel A. Graham: "Public Expenditure under Uncertainty: The Net Benefit Criteria," American Economic Review, 1992.
Thomas Havrilesky: "An Empirical Analysis of Public Choice Aspects of the S&L Disaster," in The Crisis in the Banking Industry, Lawrence White, ed. (New York University Press), 1992; "Determinants of Inflationary Performance: Corporatist Structures vs. Central Bank Autonomy" (with James Granato), Public Choice (December, 1992); "The Misapplication of Hedonic Damages to Personal Injury Litigation," in Forensic Experts (Defense Research Institute, 1993); "Partisan Monetary Policies: Presidential Influence through the Power of Appointment" (with Henry Chappell and Rob McGregor), Quarterly Journal of Economics (forthcoming, 1993); The Pressures on American Monetary Policy (Kluwer, 1992).
Anne O. Krueger: Swimming against the Tide: Turkish Trade Reform in the 1990s (with Okan H. Aktan), ICS Press, 1992; The Political Economy of Agricultural Price Intervention in Latin America (with Maurice Schiff and Alberto Valdés, in collaboration with Jorge Quiroz), ICS Press, 1992; Turkey: Trade Reforms in the 1980s (with Okan H. Aktan), ICS, 1992; Economic Policy Reform in Developing Countries, Basil Blackwell, 1992; The Political Economy of Agricultural Price Policy, series editor (with Maurice Schiff and Alberto Valdés, 5 volumes, The Johns Hopkins University Press: Vol. 3: Africa and the Mediterranean, editor with Maurice Schiff and Alberto Valdés, 1991; Vol. 4: A Synthesis of the Economics in Developing Countries, by Maurice Schiff and Alberto Valdés, 1992; Vol. 5: A Synthesis of the Political Economy in Developing Countries, author, 1992); The Political Economy of Tax Reform, editor with Takatoshi Ito, NBER-East Asia Seminar in Economics, Volume 1, University of Chicago Press, 1992; "Theory and Practice of Commercial Policy: 1945-1990," in Herbert Giersch, editor, Money, Trade, and Competition: Essays in Memory of Egon Sohmen, Springer Veriag, 1992; "Institutions for the New Private Sector," in The Emergence of Market Economies in Eastern Europe (IRIS Prague Conference volume), Basil Blackwell, 1992; "Capital Movements and Trade in a Dynamic Perspective," in Horst Siebert, ed., Capital Flows in the World Economy, Kiel Institute of World Economics, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1991; "Global Trade Prospects for the Developing Countries," The World Economy, Vol. 15, No. 4, July 1992, pp. 457-474; "Economic Techniques and Economic Policy," (with A. Hershberger, J. W. Fox, and S. Edwards), Contemporary Policy Issues, Vol. X, No. 3, July 1992, pp. 1-15; "Government, Trade, and Economic Integration," AEA Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 82, No. 2, May 1992, pp. 109-114. Book reviews: Bhagwati, Jagdish, and Hugh T. Patrick, Aggressive Unilateralism: America's 301 Trade Policy and the World Trading System, in The World Economy, Vol. 14, No. 4, December, 1991, pp. 493- 494; Whalley, John, ed., Developing Countries and the Global Trading System (2 vols.), in Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXX, March, 1992, pp. 25-27; Pantojas-Garcia, Emilio, Development Strategies as Ideology: Puerto Rico's Export-led Industrialization Experience, and Schwartz, Hugh H., ed., Supply and Marketing Constraints on Latin American Manufacturing Exports, in Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 41, No. 1, October, 1992, pp. 219-224.
Robert C. Marshall: (with Jean-Francois Richard and Gary A. Zarkin), "Posterior Probabilities of the Independence Axiom with Non-Experimental Data," Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 1992; (with Michael J. Meurer and Jean-Francois Richard), "The Private Attorney General Meets Public Contract Law. Procurement Oversight by Protest," Hofstra Law Review, 1991; (with Michael J. Meurer, Jean-Francois Richard, and Walter Stromquist), "Numerical Analysis of Asymmetric First Price Auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, forthcoming.
Michael Meurer: "Informative Advertising and
Product Match" (with Dale Stahl), International Journal of
Industrial Organization (forthcoming); "Numerical
Analysis of Asymmetric First Price Auctions" (with Robert
Marshall and Jean-Francois Richard), Games and
Economic Behavior 1992; "The Gains from Faith in an
Unfaithful
Agent Settlement Conflicts between Defendants and
Liability Insurers," Journal of Law, Economics, and
Organization 1992.
Hervé Moulin: "Implementing a Public
Project and Distributing Its Costs" (with Matthew Jackson),
Journal of
Economic Theory 57, 1, 125-140, 1992; "All Sorry to
Disagree: A General Principle for the Provision of Non-Rival
Goods," Scandinavian Journal of Economics 94,
(1), 37-51, 1992; "Welfare Bounds in the Cooperative Production
Problem," Games and Economic Behavior 4, 373-401,
1992; "Serial Cost Sharing" (with Scott Shenker),
Econometrica
60, 5, 1009-1037;
"An Application of the Shapley Value to Fair Division with
Money," Econometrica 60, 6, 1331-1349, 1992.
Thomas Naylor: "The Living Dead" (with
Magdalena R. Naylor), New Oxford Review, September 1992.
George Tauchen: "A Nonparametric Approach to
Nonlinear Time Series Analysis: Estimation and Simulation"
(with A. R. Gallant), in E. Parzen, De. Brillinger, M.
Rosenblatt, M. Taqqu, J. Geweke, and P. Caines (eds)., New
Dimensions in Time Series Analysis, Springer-Verlag,
1992; "Stock Prices and Volume" (with Peter E. Rossi and A.
R. Gallant), Review of Financial Studies, 1992;
Nonparametric and Semiparametric Methods in Econometrics and
Statistics (co-edited with William A. Barnett and
James Powell), Cambridge University Press, 1992.
John Vernon: (with Henry Grabowski) "Brand
Loyalty, Entry and Price Competition in Pharmaceuticals after
the 1984 Drug Act," Journal of Law and Economics,
1992; (with W. Kip Viscusi and Joseph Harrington) Economics
of Regulation and Antitrust, D.C. Heath, 1992.
W. Kip Viscusi: Economics of Regulation
and Antitrust (with John Vernon and Joseph E. Harrington,
Jr.), D.C.
Heath & Co., 1992; Informational Approaches to
Regulation (with Wesley A. Magat), Regulation of Economic
Activity
Series No. 19, MIT Press, 1992; Fatal Tradeoffs:
Public and Private Responsibilities for Risk, Oxford
University
Press, 1992; Smoking: Making the Risky Decision,
Oxford University Press, 1992; "Age Variations in Risk
Perceptions and Smoking Decisions," Review of
Economics and Statistics, Vol. 73, No, 4, 1991; "A
Principled Basis
for Product Liability Reform," Journal of Regulation
and Social Costs, Vol. 1, No. 4, Nov. 1991; "Utility-Based
Valuations of Health" (with William Evans), American
Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 73, No. 5, Dec.
1991;
"Implications of Global Change Uncertainties: Agricultural
and Natural Resource Policies," in J. Reilly and M.
Anderson, eds., Economic Issues in Global Climate
Change: Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resources,
Westview
Press, 1992; "Occupational Safety and Health in the
1990s," in Daniel Bromley, ed., The Social Response to
Environmental Risk: Policy Formulation in an Age of
Uncertainty, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992; "Social
Insurance in Market Contexts: Implications of the
Structure of Workers' Compensation for Job Safety and Wages"
(with Michael J. Moore), in G. Dionne, ed., Insurance
Economics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992; "Bayesian
Decisions with Ambiguous Belief Aversion" (with Wesley A.
Magat), Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Vol. 5, No.
4, 1992. Book Reviews: Reinventing Rationality
by
Thomas Garity, and Risky Business by Elaine Draper, in
Journal
of Policy Analysis & Management Vol. I 1, No. 4,
1992.
E. Roy Weintraub: Towards a History of
Game Theory (editor), Duke University Press, 1992;
General
Equilibrium Analysis: Studies in Appraisal (paperback
reissue), forthcoming 1993, University of Michigan Press.
William P. Yohe: Computer Exercises:
Microeconomics (manual and software), Boston: Allyn & Bacon,
1992;
"A Quarterly Model of the U.S. Economy During and After
World War I" (with James L. Butkiewicz), Economic
Modelling (January, 1993, forthcoming);
Interactive Monetary Economics, Basil Blackwell
(forthcoming, 1993).
James Baumgardner: presented "What Is a
Specialist, Anyway?" University of Virginia, April, and at Case
Western Reserve University, Cleveland, November;
discussant, Third Annual Health Economics Workshop, Johns
Hopkins University, May; discussant, "Comparative Aspects
of Health Economics," Allied Social Sciences Associations
annual meeting, Anaheim, January 1993; presented
"Measurement of Practice Styles in an Optimization Context,"
University of North Carolina, December.
Edwin Burmeister: presented "Using the APT to
Control Portfolio Risks," Quantitative Investment Management
Conference, New York City, October; chaired session on
Empirical Methods in Finance, conference on Financial
Economics and Accounting, New York University, November.
Philip Cook: President's Distinguished Lecture
Series, "The Technology of Personal Violence," Carnegie Mellon
University, October 1991; "The Increasing Concentration of
Top Students at Elite Universities," Hosei University,
Tokyo, Japan, May.
William Gentry: presented "Taxes, Financial
Decisions, and Organizational Form: Evidence from Publicly
Traded Partnerships," American Finance Association, New
Orleans, January, and Tax Policy Research Symposium,
University of Michigan, April; "Capital Gains, Taxes and
Realizations: Evidence from Interstate Comparisons,"
University of Maryland, March, Syracuse University, April,
and American Winter Meeting of the Econometric
Society, Anaheim, January 1993.
Henry G. Grabowski: presented "Innovative
Structure and Performance of the Pharmaceutical Industry," Second
International Conference on the Economics of Innovation,
University of Milan, Piacenza, Italy, June; "Pharmaceuticals and
Health Care Costs," International Health Care Forum on Health
Care Policy and the Pharmaceutical Industry,
Gotemba, Japan, October; "Innovation in Pharmaceuticals
and Biotechnology," American Economic Association
Meetings, Anaheim, January, 1993.
Thomas Havrilesky: testified before Congress
on monetary policy, July; attended WEA conference, San
Francisco, July; AEA conference, Anaheim, January, 1993.
Allen C. Kelley: visited Ghana as part of a
United Nations team assisting in the University of Ghana Program
in Economic Demography.
Anne O. Krueger: Instituto Tecnologico y de
Estudios Superiores de Monterey, Symposium on the Competitive
Position of the North American bloc, November 1991,
panelist; AID 1991 Economists Conference, "What's Happening
in Trade? An Overview of Directions and Issues in Trade,"
Durham, November 1991; presented "Issues in Policy
Reform in Developing Countries," and chaired "The
International Economy after the Uruguay Round," Southern
Economic Association annual conference, Nashville,
November 1991; chair, National Science Foundation Task Force
on International Economic Trends and their Effects on the
Environment (Global Warming), Washington, D.C.,
December 1991; testified before U.S. House regarding
international trade and international product standards,
Washington, D.C., March; member of committee to visit
Department of Economics, Harvard, March; presented "The
Trade Blocs and the Bush Initiative," International Center
for Economic Growth Fourth Regional Conference with
Latin American Corresponding Institutes, Panama City,
Panama, March; presented "Trade Policy in Developing
Countries: Lessons for Ecuador and the Andean Pact
Countries," Central American Institute of Business
Administration, Quito, Ecuador, March; presented annual
Alice E. Bourneuf Lecture, "The Political Economy of
Economic Policy in Developing Countries," Boston College,
March; member of panel on critical global business and
economic issues, focusing on Mexico's emerging power, UCLA
Graduate School of Management Board of Visitors
Annual Management Retreat, April; George Mason University
Center for Study of Public Choice, "Political Economy
of U.S. Trade," April; co-organizer, Third Annual East
Asian Seminar on Economics, co-sponsored by National
Bureau of Economic Research, Korea Development Institute,
and Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research,
Sapporo, Japan, June; US Information Agency
Teleconference, "Latin America Facing Economic Changes,"
Washington, D.C., June; moderator, "Foreign Direct
Investment: Policies that Attract Investors," CNN World
Economic Development Congress, September; presented "Free
Trade Agreements as Protectionist Devices," at John
Chipman's 65th birthday celebration, University of
Minnesota, September; presented "The Effects of Regional
Trading Blocks on World Trade," University of Texas at
Austin conference on "NAFTA, the Pacific, and
Australia/New Zealand," October; presented "Policy Lessons
from Development Experience since the Second World
War," First Asian Development Bank Conference on
Development Economics, Manila, Philippines, October.
Robert C. Marshall: presented work on federal
procurement, The Fortieth Eastern Briefing Conference on
Government Contracts, Washington, D.C., 1992; discussant,
"A Forum on Potential Changes to the Treasury's Auction
Technique," Washington, D.C., June; presented new work on
collusion at federal procurements, "Markets as Games,"
sponsored by Commission of the European Communities,
September; presented work on collusion at federal
procurements, numerical analysis of auctions, Winter
meetings of the Econometric Society, Anaheim, 1993.
Michael Meurer: presented papers at
Summer Econometric Meetings, American Law and Economics
Association
meetings, Stonybrook Game Theory Conference, New York
University, University of Pennsylvania.
Hervé Moulin: presented two
seminars,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, April;
participated
in the Summer School on Economic Theory, Tel Aviv,
Israel; attended conference "Markets as Games," CORE,
Belgium, September; "The Next Ten Years in
Economics," University of Marseille, France, September; invited
speaker
at the Malinvaud economics seminar, Paris, November;
conference on "Equity and absence of envy," Université
Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, December.
Thomas Naylor: Visited as Board Member of
Christian Children's Fund Guatemala, March; researched Alpine
village communities in Switzerland, Italy, and
Austria, June, for chapter, "The Longing for Community," in
The
Search for Meaning; lectured at North Carolina
State University and the University of the South.
George Tauchen: Conference on the use of
supercomputers in economics, University of Texas at Austin, May;
Meeting of the Society for Economic Dynamics and
Control, Montreal, May; meeting of the Western Finance
Association, San Francisco, June; Summer Meeting of
the Econometric Society, Seattle, June; Conference on Large
Scale Computing in Economics, University of Illinois,
October; NSF/NBER Time Series Conference, Northwestern
University, October.
W. Kip Viscusi: American Enterprise
Institute Conference on fiscal Federalism, work on state
responsibility
for hazard warnings, March; served as faculty member
in course on science and liability for Federal judges, George
Mason School of Law, April, May; presented
"Discounting Health Effects for Medical Decisions," Vanderbilt,
September; presented "Communication of Ambiguous Risk
Information," Harvard University's Kennedy School of
Government, September; attended Executive Session on
Workers' Compensation, Kennedy School--session run by
former U.S. Secretary of Labor John Dunlop, included
over 30 union leaders, insurance industry presidents and high-
level officials, September; Brookings Institution
Microeconomic Conference, December.
James Baumgardner: "Empirical Model of
Practice Styles in Ambulatory Care," Agency for Health Care
Policy
Research, 1992-1994, $69,540.
Philip Cook: "Causes and Effects of
Youthful Drinking," National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism,
1992-1994.
Thomas Havrilesky: Won NSF grant for
$60,000 to study "Political Influences on Monetary Policy."
Robert C. Marshall: Pew Charitable
Trusts, "Decentralized Oversight of Procurement and Pricing."
George Tauchen: Second year of NSF grant,
"Extension and Applications of SNP Models for Multiple Time
Series."
W. Kip Viscusi: Completed work on NSF
Grant on the performance of liability insurance markets;
continued
work on two-year EPA grant on risk ambiguity;
received three EPA research grants to continue research on
environmental risks and global warming.
Elbert V. Bowden, long-time banking professor
in the Walker College of Business at Appalachian
State
University, has been named the Alfred T. Adams
Professor of Banking.
Bowden received his Ph.D. in Economics from
Duke in 1957.
First Union Foundations recent endowment links
Adams, recently honored for 50 years' service as a
banker in Northwestern North Carolina, and Bowden,
chair of banking in Appalachian State's department of
finance, insurance, and real estate since 1977.
Bowden serves as editor of Economic Outlook and
is a frequent speaker on banking and the economy.
Appalachian State is the only university in North
Carolina to offer an undergraduate major in banking.
The program focuses on banking as a career, with most
of its graduates being recruited by in-state banks.
Bowden said the Adams Professorship will allow
the program to continue its focus on banking
education.
Bowden spoke in glowing terms of Adams,
describing him as "a guiding light to the program."
Bowden said Adams "continues to speak to my classes
each semester and to serve as an advisor to my
students."
Amit Mitra, a 1978 Duke Economics Ph.D.,
returned finally to his home in New Delhi, India,
during the last year, after a successful career in
academics in the United States.
The director of the Policy Unit of the Business
India Group, Mitra set up a "think tank" whose purpose
was to push the government of India to liberalize
the Indian economy. Within eight months of setting
up the Policy Unit, the government of India began to
liberalize at a hectic pace.
Mitra regularly writes a column for Business
India, the second largest English-language magazine in
India with a readership of 500,000.
Graduate student Laura Baldwin has been awarded the
Katherine Stern Dissertation Fellowship.
Economics of Regulation and Antitrust,
co-authored by W. Kip Viscusi, John Vernon, and Joseph E.
Harrington, Jr., was published in 1992 by D.C. Heath
& Company.
The textbook has already become the leading
regulation text in use in colleges around the country.
It has been adopted by over 40 schools, including
every school in the Big Ten.
Vernon and Viscusi, of course, teach economics
here at Duke, while Harrington, who teaches at Johns
Hopkins, received his Ph.D. from Duke in 1984.
The Duke Program in Pharmaceutical and Health
Economics is undertaking international comparative
studies of the pharmaceutical industry. During the
summer of 1992, Professor Christine Huttin, of the
University of Paris and the European Economic
Community, worked at Duke with the Program's
director, Professor Henry Grabowski.
Huttin commenced a study of generic competition
in Europe patterned after work done in connection
with Duke studies of the American pharmaceutical
industry. Huttin has analyzed empirical data on
generic competition for the United Kingdom.
Another study being conducted at Duke simulates
the long-term effects of the 1984 Paten Restoration
Act, attempting to predict the expected patent lives
when all new drugs qualify for the full benefits of
patent term restoration.
Professor W. Kip Viscusi prepared guidelines on
the effect of regulatory expenditures on mortality for
the Executive Offices of the President. The guidelines
are to be implemented by the U.S. Office of Management and
Budget, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
The Department of Economics has established an
in-semester for-credit internship for Economics
Majors.
Designed to serve as a faculty-supervised, independent
study, project, the internship program seeks
to place interested students in a real, working-world
environment. Firms in Durham and in the Research
Triangle Park have agreed to participate.
Students engaged in an internship will meet once
or twice a week during the semester on-site with the
participating firm, engaging in whatever activity the
firm requires. The intern will then translate that
experience into an economic research project, which
will be evaluated and graded by a member of the Duke
Economics faculty.
Two student interns, senior Nicole Johnson and
junior Jeffrey Leavitt, spent the Spring 1993 semester
with Diener and Associates, a marketing firm in the
Research Triangle Park.
One of ODE's activities is the publication of the
Duke Journal of Economics for undergraduates'
papers.
The 1992 edition, edited by David Fishman, Leigh
Randall, and Robert Santangelo, featured the follow-
ing articles:
"Comparative U.S.-Japanese Management Philosophies and
Industrial Structures," by Thomas F.
Carrier.
"Peru: How Export Based Success Led to Economic Disaster,"
by Colin Curvey.
"The Interest Elasticity of Savings: A History of
the Debate," by Christen Bartelt and John Dell.
"Understanding the Savings and Loan Disaster and
the Failure of Policy Oversight," by Chris Kempczin-
ski.
Frank Sloan and Mark Y. An have joined the
faculty of the Duke University Department of Economics.
Sloan accepted a senior appointment as
Alexander McMahon Professor of Health Policy and Management.
Sloan
came to Duke from Vanderbilt University, where he
had taught for 17 years. He also served as chairman of the
Vanderbilt Economics Department from 1986-1989.
A 1969 graduate of the Harvard University Ph.D.
program in economics, Sloan has served as a member of the
National Infectious Diseases Council and National
Council on Health Care Technology. He is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of
Medicine.
Professor Sloan will teach Health Economics.
An is a new graduate of the Ph.D. program at
Cornell University, where he won the 1990 Liu Memorial Award.
He has published more than a dozen research articles
in Chinese, one of which earned him a Third-Prize Medal form
the chinese Statistics Society. His research
interests encompass econometrics, the analysis of labor market
dynamics,
and evolutionary economics. He will teach
econometrics and microeconomics.
Prior to enrolling at Cornell, An served as
Section Chief in the Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic
of
China from 1986 to 1988.
Carola Pessino and Ellen McGrattan, both
Assistant Professors of Economics at Duke, have resigned their
appointments.
Pessino was forced to resign in order to return
to her native Argentina where she is caring for her mother, who
has been ill.
McGrattan accepted a joint appointment with the
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the University of
Minnesota. She had spent the 1992-1993 academic
year in Minneapolis, working on her research program.
A graduate of the doctoral program at the
University of Chicago, Pessino's research focused on the
demographics
of sequential migration and family and gender
differences in economic development.
McGrattan's efforts centered on the development
of dynamic equilibrium models and numerical algorithms for
analyzing business cycles and computing welfare
costs of distortionary fiscal policy.
Professor James Leitzel of the Terry Sanford
Institute for Public Policy offered a new course during the
Spring
1993 semester, "Issues in the Transition of Economic
Systems." The course is cross-listed among Public Policy,
Economics, and Comparative Area Studies.
The main focus on the course is on the ongoing
Russian economic reform. "We've looked at various programs
of privatization, price stabilization, military
conversion, currency convertibility, and the like," Leitzel said.
Leitzel suggested that privatization in the
former Soviet Union is occurring at too slow a pace. "No large
enterprises have been taken out of the state
umbrella," he said. "To my knowledge, not one large state
enterprise has
been shut down because it is losing money."
The effect of the transition to a market
economy on the Russia must be examined with a clear evaluation of
conditions prior to reform. "I am concerned with
accurately gauging the pre-reform situation to better understand
the effects of reform on inflation, employment,
living standards, etc.," Leitzel said.
While focusing on the current Russian economic
scenario, the course examined economic transitions in a more
theoretical perspective. "Other specific
transitions from socialism are addressed," Leitzel said, as well
as, for example,
"transitions from wartime to peacetime economies,"
as in the U.S. after World War II.
Chinese Economist Justin Yifu Lin will teach in
the Duke Economics Department during the Fall 1994 semester.
Lin is currently an Associate Professor at
Peking University, as well as Deputy Director of the Department
of
Rural Economic Development for the Chinese
Government.
A 1986 graduate of the University of Chicago's
Ph.D. program in Economics, Lin is an Adjunct Professor of
economics at the Australian National University.
The 40-year-old economist has recently taught at UCLA and at
the University of Hong Kong. Lin has published
extensively in both English- and Chinese-language periodicals,
including "Rural Reforms and Agricultural Growth in
China," American Economic Review, March 1992.
In 1941, Duke University Professor Richard Lester,
writing in his text Economics of Labor, described labor
as
referring "either to those persons who live by selling
their services directly to employers or to the services that they
sell." Lester's institutional approach to economics, the
accepted doctrine of his day, claimed "there are no 'labor'
problems when persons work for themselves and sell the
articles that they produce" (p. 3).
In 1992, University of Chicago Professor Gary
Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work
in the loosely defined field of "labor economics." Becker
was cited for his theoretical injection of economic analysis
into nearly every aspect of human life, from human
capital formation to discrimination to the very beginning of
biological life -- (pardon the pun) maternal labor.
The man most responsible for the transformation of
the consideration of labor as an institutional relationship
between corporation and labor unions, collective good
versus individual good, and a scientific analysis of individual
labor/leisure and family choices using neoclassical
techniques, was H. Gregg Lewis, Becker's dissertation supervisor.
Lewis died in January 1992. He had been an active
member of the Duke Economics faculty since 1975, when
he left the University of Chicago anticipating its
mandatory retirement policy. He was named Emeritus Professor
in 1984.
In a telephone interview with Economics at
Duke, Becker recalled his days as Lewis' student. "He was a
terrific
person," Becker said. "I was very close to him and had a
lot of admiration for him.
"He had a very large input into my dissertation.
We met frequently, and I would bounce some things off him.
He was very important to me."
Becker said Lewis was important for his development
as an economist.
Becker described Lewis' impact on labor economics
as enormous. "He pursued using modern economics to study
labor economics." Becker suggested Lewis' contribution
was "on the theoretical side," although he "was very
empirically oriented."
In 1976, the Chicago-based Journal of Political
Economy published a volume of essays in honor of Lewis,
occasioned by his departure from Chicago after 40 years
as an undergraduate, graduate student, and faculty member.
In his introduction to the volume, Becker wrote:
"Graduate students generally came to Chicago with the belief that
labor economics was the home of institutionalism and of
hostility to systematic theorizing. They were surprised and
grateful to discover that neoclassical economic theory
could be extremely useful in understanding trade union
behavior, racial discrimination, wage differentials,
hours of work, labor force participation, and other aspects of
labor economics.... Lewis can rightly be called the
founder of the 'Chicago School' of labor economics."
Gregg Lewis was not today's prototypical faculty
member. For one thing, his door was always open to his
students. If he was accessible, he was extremely
demanding. Although Lewis was reputed to have mellowed as he
grew older, according to Becker, "even when he was mellow
he was a lot tougher than most professors."
For another thing, his publication record is
sparse. His major contributions to the literature on labor
economics
was his 1963 book, Unionism and Relative Wages in the
United States, which he supplemented in 1986 with Union
Relative Wage Effects: A Survey, and a paper he
co-authored with Becker, "On the Interaction between Quantity
and Quality of Children," published in 1973 in the
Journal of Political Economy. He also wrote two
important papers
which were published in Spanish but never in English:
"Participation of the Labor Force and the Theory of Hours
of Work," Revista de la acultad de Ciencias
Economicas, 1968, and "Employer Interests in Employee Hours
of Work,"
Caurdernos de Economia, 1969.
With the current emphasis on publication, one might
wonder whether Lewis would be a successful academic
economist. Becker described Lewis as a perfectionist,
suggesting he "had the capability of writing more." He
conceded "his lack of publication did slow down his
promotions."
Since Lewis' most important contributions were his
brilliant insights and his keen suggestions and criticisms of
his students' works, Becker suggested a shrewd department
"would find a way of keeping him."
Another Chicago Nobel laureate, George Stigler, in
his Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist, suggested
another
Lewis attribute that indebted the University to him.
"There was H. Gregg Lewis, the pillar of the economics
department. He was the person who solved the
administrative problems of the department and the academic
problems
of the students, all the while reconstructing labor
economics in its modern form" (p. 159).
Lewis' impact on Duke will extend beyond his
contributions to students' dissertations here (Leslie Laufer's
dissertation in 1983, "Demand for Schooling for Boys and
Girls in Rural India," was the last he supervised). Five
current Duke economics professors earned their Ph.D.'s at
Chicago. Two of them wrote their dissertations with
Becker's input. Becker served on the dissertation
examination committee of Jim Baumgardner (as well as that of
recently-resigned professor Carolla Pessino); and Becker
supervised Dennis Yang's dissertation.
Economics held onto its ranking as the third
most popular undergraduate major at Duke during the 1992-1993
academic year. Economics majors totalled 525, down
slightly from 534 for the previous year. History remained the
most popular course sequence, with 648 majors,
while Biology rose, from 466 majors in 1991-1992 to 626 majors
during the recently-completed term.
New matriculants in the Economics graduate
program are expected to hold steady for the 1993-94 year compared
with the preceding year, 35 to 34, respectively.
The actual number of applications received for placement in the
graduate program declined from 356 in 1992 to 311,
probably due to an increase in the application fee (from $50 to
$65), as well as a greater stress of quantitative
skills in the graduate program descriptive literature. The
Economics
program ranked fifth among departments in the
Graduate School in terms of number of applicants.
Duke Economics' intramural athletic programs
continue to flourish.
Led by captain Dixie Reaves and coach Brett
Katzman, the flag football team won the fall 1992
regular-season recreational league championship, then
won the playoffs for its third straight championship.
The team entered the recreational league because Duke
does not permit women to compete in the open league.
Reaves also organized teams in volleyball, basketball
and softball.
The Economics entry won the Spring, 1993, two-pitch
softball tournament, then went on to win the
regular-season championship in the competitive
division.
The Invisible Hands, the department's
recreational-division softball team, won the championships in
both the first 1992 summer session and the first 1993
summer session. The 1993 team went undefeated. The
entry in the second 1992 summer session finished
second in the league standings.
Professor Vladimir Treml spent the Spring 1992
semester as a Fulbright Exchange Professor at Moscow State
University.
Treml taught an undergraduate course in
macroeconomics, similar to Duke's Economics 51.
The difficulties being encountered in the
transition of Russia to a market-driven economy are reflected in
the
attitudes of Russian undergraduate students,
according to Treml.
"They still will not accept western notions of
economic principles," Treml said. "They don't accept the concept
of a market economy." Treml said his students at
Moscow State still use terms such as "just prices" and "just
wages"
when discussing economic phenomena.
Economic considerations aside, Treml discovered
an unusual aspect of Russian education. "They're horrified
at having to take written exams," he said. The
Russian students were accustomed to one oral final exam at the
end
of a course, and even though Treml explained that he
would give several written exams and a written final, the
students did not take it well. "They were
exceedingly unhappy when presented with very simple problems,"
Treml
said.
While in Russia, Treml continued to collect
economic statistics from various former Soviet republics. He
also
advised statistical agencies on ways to streamline
their data collection.
Peter Parks, Assistant Professor in the School
of
the Environment, has resigned his position at Duke.
Parks, who had been given a joint appointment
in
Economics for the 1992-1993 academic year, was the
Chair of the new Resource Economics and Policy
Program.
The courses offered by the School of the
Environment which attracted Economics students -- Resource and
Environmental Economics; Economic
Analysis of Resource and Environmental Policies;
Advanced Resource Economics; and Advanced
Environmental Economics -- will continue to be offered.
This edition of Economics at Duke was produced
at the Department of Economics at Duke University.
It was written primarily by Forrest Smith, with help
from Rhonda Wioskowski, Anne-Marie Hobin, and
Joyce Hemphill.
To receive up-to-date news from the Department
of Economics, send email to: fls@econ.duke.edu.
To commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary
of Trinity College's move from
Randolph County to Durham, Duke has packed up its
bags and moved again, and the Economics
Department has gone with it.
Actually, we're still in the Social Sciences
building on West Campus. But Duke has opted
for taking over campus-wide distribution of U.S.
Mail. As a result we've undergone a change of
address.
Please address future correspondence to:
Duke University
By the way, we underwent a change in our
telephone system recently, too, and for those of
you who haven't called recently, the Department's
new telephone number is:
(919) 660-1800.
Finally, the Economics Department now has
electronic mail capabilities. To contact the
department by email, try the following address:
fls@econ.duke.edu
Bowden, Duke Ph.D., Named Adams
Professor
at Appalachian State
More Miscellaneous Notes and News
Mitra Urges Indian
Liberalization
Regulation Text Corners Market
Pharmaceutical Program Extends
Scope
Undergrad Intern Program
Initiated
Burkland Heads ODE
Jeff Burkland, a Trinity College senior, served as
president of the Duke chapter of Omicron Delta
Epsilon for 1992-93. Other officers in the economics
honor society were Matt Shulman, Vice President;
Brian Hilliard, Treasurer; and Tony Schopen, Secretary.
Sloan and An Accept Economics
Faculty Posts
Pessino, McGrattan Resign
Appointments
Leitzel Formulates Transition
Course
Chinese Economist Lin to Teach at
Duke Economics in 1994
The Lewis Legacy: Becker Wins Nobel
Prize
Economics Enrollments Hold
Steady
Economics Department Intramurals
Dominate Opponents
Treml Spends Spring 1992 At Moscow
State U.
Peter Parks, Resource Economics
Head, Resigns
Department of
Economics
305 Social Sciences
Box 90097
Durham, NC
27708-0097