New School Open House

I know many of you have already narrowed down your lists of PhD programs, but if you have not, depending on what kind of program you are interested in, you may wish to look into the program at New School. The New School for Social Research (where the Economics Dept. is) is holding open houses on November 8, 2006 and December 5, 2006 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm in the Wolff Conference Room (65 Fifth Avenue 2nd Floor New York, NY 10003). If you would like to RSVP, the phone number and email to do so are: (212) 229-5710 and socialresearchadmit@newschool.edu , respectively.

If any of you become aware of other open houses for PhD Econ programs in the near future, please email me at klord@hunter.cuny.edu so I can post them here.

Best Regards as always,
Ken

Joe Stiglitz a the Grad Center Tuesday

Reminder: The seminar with Joseph Stiglitz will be held tomorrow (Tuesday at 11:45am) in rooms
C201-202 (Concourse, below the first floor). Professor Stiglitz will talk on: “A Modest Proposal for the Reform of the Global Financial System.”

Career Panel

On November 16th, from 1400-1600, Hunter will be hosting "Career Opportunities In City Government" in the Student Center. Among others, there will be speakers and representatives present from the NYC Department of Finance as well as from the NYC Department of Management and Budget. Students are asked to email career@hunter.cuny.edu if you are interested in attending.

An Article of interest

An interesting article appeared in the Financial Times

Business students portrayed as ethically minded in study

By Rebecca Knight in Boston

A study portrays today's business school studentsas ethically minded and concerned about issues of corporate social responsibility. The study, released yesterday, is based on research conducted by Net Impact, a group of MBA and graduate students who advocate that businesses should work for the social good. Net Impact polled 2,100 MBA students in 87 programmes in the US and Canada.

Students surveyed overwhelmingly said that they believed corporate profits and social responsibility could co-exist.

About 81 per cent of the students said companies should try to work "toward the betterment of society", while 18 per cent thought most of them were already seeking that goal.

Nearly 90 per cent said business leaders should factor social and environmental effects into their business decisions, with 60 per cent saying such an approach could be profitable.

In the aftermath of scandals at Enron and WorldCom, many US business schools have placed a greater emphasis on ethics courses in their programmes of study.

According to the survey, about 78 per cent of MBA students believed classes in corporate social responsib-ility should be part ofthe core curriculum in MBA programmes.

The survey, which was presented at a business school forum at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, also found that MBA students were interested in working in socially responsible jobs.

Nearly 80 per cent ofstudents polled wanted to find socially responsible employment at some point in their careers, according to the survey, while 59 per cent said they would seek such work immediately after graduating from business school.

The survey comes only a month after a separate study published by Duke University's centre for academic integrity found that 56 per cent of MBA students admitted cheating, compared with 47 per cent of graduate students in non-business programmes.

Business schools are highly competitive and have been criticised for fostering a "culture of greed" in MBA programmes.

Best regards,

Aziz

Thesis Workshop Tomorrow

From Professor Filer,

Given the full class schedule this year, the consensus seems to be that the best time for a workshop on thesis writing hints would be on a Saturday. Accordingly, I have chosen Saturday October 21st. We will review the requirements and I will try and provide as many hints as I can accumulated over years of seeing students succeed (and fail) in the process. We will cover scheduling, format, literature searches, how to pick a topic, etc. The ideal participant would be a student who plans on finishing a thesis for 2007 graduation (June, September or December) but all students would benefit. We will start at 11 and run until we are done (before dinner time!) Lunch will be provided. Please confirm participation by return e-mail so we will know how much lunch to obtain.

Regards

Professor Filer

War, Genocide and Economic Growth

Tomorrow's brown bag seminar (Thursday 10/19, 11:30am-1pm in HW 1537) will be given by Nils-Petter Lagerlöf from York University (on leave at Brown) who will present: War and Genocide: Is There a Connection to Transitions From Stagnation to Growth?

Now you know why we're called the Dismal Science. This should be a provocative talk combining both empirical analysis and growth theory. Matt Baker will be the next speaker on 11/2 with his talk on "Technological Progress, Property Rights, and Population Growth: A Structural Model of the Transition to Agriculture."

The entire schedule is online. All BA/MA students warmly invited to attend.
~~ Ingmar and Jonathan

ECO 721 Study Group

After conferring with both students and professors, I have arranged for the conference room (1537 HW) to be available for an ECO721 study group on Wednesday from 1:30-4:30. The study group will not be led/moderated. While we are happy to answer specific questions, your ability to succeed, especially in 722, will be strongly correlated to your ability to study, research, and learn in a more peer-oriented and individual manner. I realize that the time may not be convienent for you, however there are significant limitations on the availability of the conference room this semester.

*It has come to my attention there will be a fire drill at approximately 1:30, you may wish to wait until the drill is completed before beginning your review.

Best Regards,
Ken Lord

Invisible Children / Child labor

On behalf of Americans for Informed Democracy(AID), I am honored to invite you to attend a screening of a groundbreaking documentary called “Invisible Children" . “Invisible Children” is a rough cut documentary made by several young Americans to document the war in Northern Uganda , in which children are being abducted by a rebel army and forced to fight as child soldiers. After the film Professor Partha Deb who had done a research on the same theme of the movie will lead us in a discussion on the topic of child labor. This event will take place on Wednesday, October 11th at 1 pm, Thomas Hunter Room 105 Our plan for this event is to first screen the film, which is 55 minutes long and then have 30-45 minutes of discussion about what we’ve just watched together. Free Snacks will be served.

For more information see http://www.invisiblechildren.com/

Brown Bag Seminar

From Professor Conning

The Hunter Economics Brown Bag Seminar series has started up again. The talks will be held every other Thursday from 11:30am-1pm in the Economics Seminar room. All Hunter BA/MA students are very welcome and encouraged to attend. This semesters talks are focused on public finance (Brunner, Rockoff), macro (Westelius), and some very interesting demographic issues in economic development (Lagerlof, Baker, Kazianga).



Date

Speaker

Oct 5th

Eric Brunner (Quinnipiac College)

Tiebout Choice and Universal School Vouchers

Oct 19th

Nils-Petter Lagerlöf (York U and Brown U)

War and genocide: is there a connection to transitions from stagnation to growth?

Nov 2nd

Matt Baker (Hunter College)

Technological Progress, Property Rights, and Population Growth: A Structural Model of the Transition to Agriculture.

Nov 16th

Jonah Rockoff (GSB, Columbia)
Title to be announced.

Nov 30th

Harounan Kazianga (Columbia and The World Bank)
The Intra-household Economics of Polygyny: Fertility and Child Mortality in Rural Mali

Dec 14th

Niklas Westelius (Hunter College)



Imperfect Transparency and Optimal Monetary Policy

The website with the papers is available here: http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/RePEc/seminar/

You might want to mention that Hunter Faculty are also involved in organizing or presenting the seminars in two other series:

The Friday 1pm Labor, Education and Health Seminar and the Tuesday 11:45am Applied Economics Seminar
both held in room 5383 at the Graduate Center. Worth highlighting is a talk by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz to be held at the Graduate Center
Tuesday Oct 31 (Room C201&C202) entitled "A Modest Proposal for the Reform of the Global Financial System."

I've also made a public Google Calendar that lists the talks from all three series in one place.