Welcome from the Director

Welcome to the Economics Center for Teaching (EcoTeach), the instructional arm of the Department of Economics, which supports both undergraduate and graduate (M.A. and Ph.D.) degree programs, as well as the American Economic Association Summer Program.

It is an exciting time for the Center as we actualize the intellectual vision that has been developed by our faculty and given life through the Social Sciences Buildingefforts of Thomas Nechyba, Chair of Economics. Opened in Fall 2001, EcoTeach began support of this vision through the implementation of a large undergraduate program reform that emphasized a deeper understanding of core economics material in preparation for advanced course work. I am pleased, in Fall 2006, to begin my second year as the Director of EcoTeach and to continue our work to strengthen the latter stages of the undergraduate Economics major.

In particular we are in the midst of a five-year process of introducing new field courses that allow students to study more specialized topics that may have been only briefly mentioned in core courses. Each semester we will work to add to our current field course offerings and commit to regularly providing key field courses within each of four general areas of Economic research: Finance, History, Macroeconomics/International Economics and Microeconomics. We have created a table listing non-core courses by area so that students can choose courses based on the desire to deepen their understanding of particular areas in Economics.

We are also introducing an Honors Junior Research Workshop and an Honors Senior Research Workshop in each of the four areas: Finance, History, Macroeconomics/ International Economics and Microeconomics. These research workshops build on the knowledge and tools gained in field courses and will provide opportunities for students interested in participating in economic research within a peer and faculty workshop environment. It is our hope that through these new avenues, undergraduates will become a much more significant part of the Economics Department’s active research community. In doing so, students will also form strong bonds with faculty in this unique environment.

I am pleased to congratulate our first Davies Fellow, Tzuo Hann Law, who worked in Summer 2005 with Dr. George Tauchen, conducting independent research on the structure of financial markets at very high frequencies. Some of the topics that Law explored included: the effects of market microstructure noise on prices, abrupt changes in stock prices and how volume of trade relates to the behavior of asset prices. Law began his research as part of the Honors Junior Research Workshop in Finance in Spring 2006, and will continue in the Fall 2006 Honors Senior Research Workshop in Finance. His research will culminate in the writing of an honors thesis in Spring 2007.

For the Fall 2006 - Spring 2007 academic year, we are happy to offer several new field courses and to launch two additional Honors Junior Research Workshops in History and Macroeconomics. In these courses students will benefit from intellectual interactions with their peers, economics graduate students, and faculty as they are guided through an independent line of research. Successful students will be eligible for faculty nomination for a Summer 2006 Davies Fellowship and will be able to continue their research in corresponding Senior Honors Research Workshops in Fall 2007. Students may then choose to write up their research as an Honors Thesis.

The undergraduate major initiative is only one of numerous interesting and ongoing activities in EcoTeach. I encourage you to visit the EcoTeach site often for up-to-date information on the many aspects of studying economics at Duke.


Michelle Connolly
Director of EcoTeach