The midterm period is almost over....

with one more to go. Two study sessions for Prof. Deb's class will be held:

• Wednesday afternoon from 2:30 p.m. until 6,
• Thursday from 2:30 p.m. until the beginning of class

Both will be held (space allowing) in the 15th Floor conference room. I'll post any location changes if there is a need. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Prof. Deb has posted the new homework on his website. His suggestion is to at least look the question on the Chow test before the exam.

Important note: This Thursday's exam will be held in the assigned room (Room C109 in Hunter North), and not the computer lab.

Society for Economics Meeting Tomorrow

As a reminder, the Society for Economics will hold its first official meeting tomorrow at 2:00 pm. We'll be in the 15th floor conference room (Room 1538) Hunter West.

The agenda has been posted on Ryan's website. You can access it by clicking this link. There will be refreshments, and a study group for that night's micro exam will start right after the meeting.

See you there.

Weekend Study Sessions for....well, for just about any of our econ classes

For anyone that's interested in coming, the econ department conference room will be open this weekend from 10 am to 6 pm. It's room 1537 on the 15th floor in Hunter West. I'll be there banging out Lagrangians and waxing poetic about the economic efficiency of contracts.

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me.

See you there.

A few announcements

Econometrics (721) class cancelled this Thursday (10/20)

Per Prof. Deb, class will be cancelled this Thursday. The due date for Homework 4 has been pushed back to October 27th.

Lunchtime seminar this Wednesday

Prof. Chernick has extended an invitation to all BA/MA and MA students to attend the following seminar:

Wednesday October 19 th 11:30 - 1 pm Rajeev Dehejia (job market candidate) "The Business Cycle and Babies' Health: Further Results."
http://www.columbia.edu/~rd247/papers/dehejia_lleras_quality.pdf

Location: 1537 Hunter West

I'd like to add that this seminar and the one I attended today both use regression methods that are similar to the ones that we are learning in class....those of you that are starved to see how econometrics can be applied to the real world would be well-advised to attend.

Society for Economics Agenda suggestions

The executive committee and others that are interested are in the midst of developing an agenda for our first official meeting. While Eric, Ledi, and myself have ideas about what needs to be done this year, your suggestions are both welcomed and appreciated. If you'd like to see something discussed, please email me.

In particular, I'd love to hear about how you'd like our new Society webpage to look.

Lunchbox Seminar Tomorrow

From Prof. Conning:

Monday October 17th 11:30-1pm
Jonathan Morduch, NYU (with Rajeev Dehejia and Heather Montgomery) Do Interest Rates Matter? Credit Demand In The Dhaka Slums

New seminar dates have also been announced at: http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/RePEc/seminar/

The Morduch paper is a nice example of a 'differences in differences' approach to estimating a policy change impact. MA students taking 721 or 722, or thinking about thesis projects with a micro-data topic might find it an interesting case study to learn from.

Hunter College Society for Economics Meeting

There is a Society for Economics meeting scheduled for October 27 in the Conference Room on the 15th Floor at 2 PM. An agenda for the meeting will be posted the day prior. Members are welcome to remain after the meeting for a study group.

PhD information session with Dr. Filer

Prof. Filer has been kind enough to schedule an information session for students potentially interested in pursuing a PhD in economics. It will be this coming Wednesday (10/19) at 7:30 pm in the conference room on the 15th Floor (Hunter West).

This is a rare opportunity to get your questions answered about taking the next step. Please take advantage of it.

Hunter College Society for Economics

There are quite a few announcements to make, so please be sure to read through this entire post.

First, I am happy to announce that the Hunter College Society for Economics is now officially chartered by the USG. Our first act this year was to put together a tutoring group, and a special thanks is owed to Tamara for her efforts in getting everybody's availability together. Along with my fellow officers, her and Ariel have proven to be invaluable resources in getting everything started. Also , my personal thanks to all of the tutors that have made themselves available during their crazy schedules.

An e-mail and flyers will be distributed to the relevant instructors by the end of the week. The schedule will be posted on the blog by tomorrow afternoon. If you have any questions, please let me or Tamara know.

Second, until our 'official' website is launched, visit this blog for Society meeting times and locations. Meetings will take place on a weekly / bi-weekly basis as needed, with their attendant agendas being made available the day prior. Budget permitting, there will be food / refreshements, and a study group immediately following.

There will be an informal opportunity to meet everyone this coming Thursday (10/13) at the Phoenix Park at 7:30. Impromptu, I know, but I'll be there. And you know what they call guys who drink alone - so please come.

Also, Ryan has been gracious enough to grant us his webspace for Hunter-specific economics resources. You can access it by clicking this link, and it is also permanently posted under Student Resources in the right margin.

Okay...a couple of class-related announcements:

Per Prof. Deb:

A handout describing how to use Stata's do file editor and how to create and use log files is available at my website.

Homework 4 is also now available, along with the required dataset.

Per Prof. Conning:

Dear all in Eco 701,

After some pondering, I have decided to MOVE the Eco 701 midterm exam until OCTOBER 27th.

As several of you had pointed out, it would have been difficult to collect your homeworks before the originally scheduled October 20th date, yet the written solutions to the homework would have been an essential study aid.

What I propose is to move the midterm to October 27th. You will turn in your homework assignments on Thursday the 20th and I will post answers shortly after.

The only cost of this delay is that the midterm will now contain some additional material from 'Production' (chapter 18).

I will try to email everyone in the class and post announcements to the website and blackboard. If you know of anyone in the class who I may have missed, please forward this message.

I'll see you on the 20th.

Jonathan Conning

New due date for Micro Problem Set 3

According to Prof. Conning's syllabus, the due date for PS 3 in Microeconomics has been pushed back to October 20. So - whoever's been praying for the extension - keep up the good work.