While others might be content to resign their retirement years to blazing Floridian sunsets or skill development on the putting green, Robert Flood is bringing a lifetime of real world experience at the International Monetary Fund to the department's faculty.
As part of the inaugural issue of the department's electronic newsletter, Increasing Returns, Chair Richard Jensen provides a brief introduction to the department's history, its mission, and some of its most significant accomplishments to date.
With the recent financial crisis and recession much in the news, rarely has a career in economics seemed so relevant. However, the department's vibrancy in 2009 also reflects substantial long-term growth in interest from undergraduates.
Senior Joshua Garrett began his studies at Notre Dame considering a life ahead as an engineer, but two introductory economics courses changed his thinking. Impressed with the caliber of the teaching and his classmates—and engaged by the intricacies of the subject matter—Garrett jumped ship into economics. He has not been disappointed.
A $38,000 per year fellowship at Yale will see 2008 graduate Kevin Baker through to his Ph.D. in economics by 2013. He has already completed what was a challenging first year and gives a great deal of credit for his success to his undergraduate studies.
Between them, William Evans, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics, and Assistant Professors Kasey Buckles and Daniel Hungerman won four multiyear grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Russell Sage Foundation for projects initiated from 2006 to 2009.
As it welcomed IMF veteran Robert Flood to the faculty this fall, the Department of Economics and Econometrics also added three assistant professors to its T&R cohort.
In the last few years, Department of Economics and Econometrics faculty have been recognized with several research grant awards from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, part of the National Institutes of Health) and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Late last year, Associate Professor James Sullivan and the University of Chicago's Bruce Meyer published an article in the American Economic Review related to their ongoing research into ways to measure and improve the well-being of poor families.
This past June, Christopher Waller, Gilbert F. Schaefer Professor of Economics, went on loan to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, beginning a two-year term as a senior vice president and the director of research.
The Lawrence J. Lewis Award is named in honor of Lawrence J. Lewis, a successful businessman and very active community volunteer whose first retirement project was to enroll at Notre Dame and receive his undergraduate degree at age 67 in 1983.The second award is the John Sheehan Award, named in honor of Professor John Sheehan, former chair of the Economics Department. The third award is the Weber Award is named in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore S. Weber, University Benefactors from Fairfield Connecticut.
The Federal Reserve’s half-point interest rate drop to 4.75 percent – a move intended to boost consumer confidence and blunt the economic damage from slumping housing and credit markets – actually was a bid to rescue ailing financial institutions, according to a University of Notre Dame economist.
Renowned economist William Evans from the University of Maryland has accepted an appointment at the University of Notre Dame as the first recipient of a Keough-Hesburgh Professorship, the innovative new program created to attract world-class scholars who demonstrate a commitment to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission.