Coming in October, The Upton Forum 2009 with Hernando de Soto, President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru. The Upton Forum 2008 with Douglass North, co-recipient of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was a great success. See the Beloit College Magazine for a report on the forum.

Prof. Josh Hall won the Best Educational Note Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE), for his article "Teaching Private Enterprise Through Tunes: An Abecedarium of Music for Economists" co-authored with Bob Lawson and Dirk Mateer.

Ben Chrischilles '09 and his family's long connection to Beloit College were profiled recently in the Beloit College Magazine.

Prof. Josh Hall presented his research at an economic education poster session at the AEA meetings in San Francisco. Titled "Homer Economicus: The Simpsons in the Economic Classroom," the poster summarized his use of the television show The Simpsons to teach about economics and public policy.

Prof. Bob Elder gave a presentation entitled "Applications of Mechanism Design" to students and faculty in the Economics Department at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 11, 2008. In the literature in which economists apply game theory, a "mechanism" describes the rules of a game, and "mechanism design" involves constructing rules that steer games toward desired outcomes. Bob is on sabbatical during the Fall Semester of 2008, and one of Bob's sabbatical projects involves the use of game theory to model college fund-raising and the use of mechanism design to steer college fund-raising toward successful outcomes.

In his talk at Macalester, Bob presented a model of a comprehensive campaign in which funds raised could finance an on-campus capital project and/or could add to college endowment. The model recognized that the fund-raiser has incomplete information about each donor's maximum willingness to give. Given this environment of incomplete information in which fund-raisers operate, Bob explored conditions necessary to satisfy each donor's participation constraint (if this constraint goes unsatisfied, the choice by a donor not to participate in the campaign is a choice not to give to the college) as well as conditions necessary to maximize each donor's expected utility from participation.

In Bob's model, either of two states of nature can arise: (1) if the sum of donations exceeds (or equals) the cost of the capital project, the on-campus facility is fully-financed and is constructed, and any excess donations above the cost of the project are added to the college's endowment; or (2) if the sum of donations is less than the cost of the capital project, the on-campus facility is not financed and not constructed, and all donations are added to the college's endowment. Thus, in each state of nature the decision to construct on not to construct is made in accordance with the aggregate wishes of donors as expressed by the sum of their donations.

Department Initiates Charles G. Koch Student Research Colloquium and Speaker Series
As part of the Miller Upton programs, the Department of Economics & Management at Beloit College has initiated the Charles G. Koch Student Research Colloquium and Speaker Series.

Directed by Professor Joshua Hall, the research colloquium has two primary goals. First, the colloquium gives students the opportunity to further develop their interest in the ideas and institutions underpinning a free and prosperous society. This is achieved through the discussion of seminal articles aimed at deepening students' understanding of the market process. The second goal of the colloquium is to further develop our students' research abilities. The economics department faculty agree with Nobel Laureate James Buchanan's adage that "writing is research." We believe that students understand economic ideas more deeply by applying them to novel contexts and articulating an argument to a wide variety of audiences.  Each member of the colloquium is expected to write an article with the eventual goal of publication in a newspaper, magazine, or academic journal. Throughout the semester, Professor Hall works with the students on honing their research, writing, and communication skills.

Both of these goals are supported with a monthly speaker series that brings outside scholars to campus.  This speaker series complements the annual Upton Forum by exposing students to the next generation of scholars working on questions central to our understanding of the nature and causes of wealth and well-being.   In addition to being able to observe and discuss important new research in political economy, students are able to learn from the example of these carefully selected speakers.

While the speaker series is open to all majors of the economics department, because of its hands-on nature, the colloquium is limited to eight students selected by Professor Hall in consultation with the rest of the faculty.  If you have questions about the research colloquium or speaker series, please contact Professor Hall halljc@beloit.edu.

The Charles G. Koch Student Research Colloquium and Speaker Series is supported by a generous grant from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Two Graduates Win Fubright Scholarships
Laura Grube, a 2008 Economics and Management major, has been awarded a 2008 Fulbright scholarship to study land reform and political transition in South Africa. See here for complete story. In 2008 the Department of Economics and Management awarded Laura The Wall Street Journal Award and Lewis Severson Prize. In 2007 she won both Elaine & Les McAllister Award for Juniors, and the Belmark Alumni Internship Award.

Anthony Skriba, a 2007 double major in Economics and East Asian Languages and Culture, recently won a Fulbright Scholarship to study current Chinese population migration trends in Wuhan, China.See here for complete story In 2007 Tony received both the Albert Topps Award,and the Lewis Severson Prize from the Department of Economics and Management. In 2006 he received Jed Rhoads Prize for Juniors from the Department.

Faculty/Student Publication
Josh Hall published an article with student Madeline Helling in the May 2008 issue of Economic Affairs. Titled "High Cotton: Why the United States Should No Longer Provide Agricultural Subsidies to Cotton Farmers," the article was an outgrowth of a writing assignment for Hall's introductory economics class. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120085629/abstract

Public Comment Mentioned by Business Week
In May of 2008 Josh Hall wrote a letter in response to a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission request for comments on the appropriate regulatory treatment of "event contracts." His letter was quoted in a July 2008 news analysis by Business Week.

Emily Chamlee-Wright's article "Signaling Effects of Commercial and Civil Society in Post-Katrina Reconstruction" appears in the 2008 (volume 35 numbers 7/8, pages 675-626) edition of International Journal of Social Economics.  Abstract: This paper examines the role private action has played in overcoming the collective action problem posed by Hurricane Katrina. Mutual assistance, commercial cooperation, and the redevelopment of key community resources help to overcome collective action problems by reducing the high costs of an early return and by signaling the potential for widespread recovery to individual actors.  Though most redevelopment plans assume that a large-scale government response is the only way to overcome the collective action problem, I argue that private recovery efforts within commercial and civil society challenge this assumption.

Prof. Emily Chamlee-Wright Awarded Hayek Prize
Emily Chamlee-Wright, the Elbert H. Neese Professor of Economics at Beloit College, has been awarded the Hayek Prize by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation for her work at the intersection of studies of entrepreneurship, philanthropy, civil society, and market activities.. See here for Beloit College Press release, and here for prize announcement by The Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

Economist Blog discusses Prof. Chamlee-Wright's Katrina Recovery Research.

Prof. Josh Hall supplied data revisions and updates for The Economic Freedom of the World: 2007 Annual Report.