July 2006
Professor Emeritus Lord Layard to chair The Good Childhood Inquiry
Professor Emeritus Lord Layard, founder director of LSE's Centre for Economic Performance, will chair a new inquiry into childhood for The Children's Society.
The Good Childhood Inquiry will be the UK's first independent national inquiry into childhood and aims to renew society's understanding of childhood for the 21st century, to inform, improve and inspire all our relationships with children. The inquiry will:
* Listen to the voices and views of children, young people and adults about their experience and understanding of childhood in the UK today.
* Identify and address important issues that face children and young people in the UK today
* Make recommendations to improve the way in which childhood is experienced and understood in the UK today.
For further information, please visit the LSE News and Media pages.
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Professor Tim Besley joins MPC
Congratulations are due to Professor Time Besley who has been appointed to the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee.
In addition to being Professor of Economics, Tim Besley is Director of the Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD). Prof. Besley’s research focuses on issues in Development Economics, Public Economics and the Political Economy. In-depth information on Prof. Besley’s research and a short biography can be found at his website.
Prof. Besley joins former Economics Professors Mervyn King and Charles Bean on the Committee. Professors Charles Goodhart and Steve Nickell have also served on the MPC in the past.
Related Links:
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May 2006
"Love your job or hate it? The economics of job satisfaction"
Professor Richard Freeman, Harvard University, NBER and LSE, will give a lecture at LSE on Monday 8 May. He will explore the economics of job satisfaction.
Every week employed people spend half or more of their waking time at work. With computers and email, work has become more intrusive. Many think about work and put in extra hours at the weekends. What determines job satisfaction at work? What do people do when they are dissatisfied? This lecture tells what we know and need to know to understand this critical part of our lives.
Richard Freeman is professor of economics at Harvard University, labour studies programme director at NBER and senior research fellow at LSE's Centre for Economic Performance (CEP).
This event marks the beginning of Manpower's collaboration with the CEP at LSE in the setting up of a Human Resources Lab.
Professor John Van Reenen, director of CEP, will chair this event.
For further information, please visit the LSE News and Media pages.
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April 2006
BP and the Department of Economics Public Lecture by Professor Luca Anderlini
Speaker: BP Visiting Professor Luca Anderlini
Topic: "On the Economics of Legal Systems and Courts"
Date: Tuesday 25 April 2006
Time: 6.30 pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Main Building
Legal systems and courts have a potentially enormous impact on the functioning of an economy. This lecture will focus on the economic rationale for judicial intervention in contractual disputes, and on the role of the legal system within which courts operate. Luca Anderlini is Professor of Economics at Georgetown University and BP Visiting Professor at the LSE for 2005-06. Before moving to the US he has held permanent positions at Cambridge and Southampton universities in the UK. He has also taught at Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.
Further information is available from the LSE Events website.
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March 2006
Professor Tim Besley to give the 19th Annual Simon Kuznets Memorial Lecture Series
Professor Tim Besley is to give the 19th Annual Simon Kuznets Memorial Lecture Series at Yale University. The lecture series will run over three days, with the first commencing on Monday 20th March, and will address issues on the 'Political Economy in Development'. Further information on the event can be found at the Yale University's pages.
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Economics Champions
The Department wishes to congratulate Mark Wilbor and Emma Taverner on their nominations for Service Excellence Champions run by the LSE Staff Development Unit. Both Mark and Emma contribute greatly to the smooth running of the Department and are, without fail, extremely proficient and helpful members of the Economics team, as these nominations go to show!
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February 2006
Article from L'Expansion: The London School of Economics vs. the Ecole d'Economie of Paris (EEP)
L'Expansion magazine compares the LSE with the Ecole d'Economie of Paris (EEP) in their article "The London School of Economics vs. the Ecole d'Economie of Paris (EEP)" (PDF). A translation (PDF) has been compiled by Laurent Bach.
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November 2005
Treble for Mr Tan
Congratulations to Kian Tat Andy Tan, now studying for an MSc in Economics, for a remarkable achievement in his Undergraduate examination performance.
Andy has won one of the Economics Department Prizes for outstanding merit in degree performance overall in the Department.
He was also nominated for, and was awarded, the McTaggart Prize. This is given to the student with the highest grades in each year
Finally, Andy has now completed his treble with the award of the University's Gerstenberg Memorial Prize in Political Economy. This is awarded to the candidate who has obtained the best first degree in the University of London in which at least half the papers taken are in Economics.
It's nice to know that Andy has chosen to remain in the Department for his postgraduate study.
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October 2005
New Arrivals in the Department of Economics
New Faculty
Christian Julliard
Christian Julliard has recently obtained both his MA and his PhD from Princeton University. His principle fields of interests are Macroeconomics, Finance, International Economics and Applied Econometrics. Christian will be teaching graduate macroeconomics and PhD empirical methods.
Philipp Schmidt-Dengler
Philipp Schmidt-Dengler has recently obtained his PhD from Yale University and his MA from Queen's University. His research interests are Industrial Organization, Applied Econometrics and Applied Microeconomics. Philipp will be teaching graduate IO and PhD empirical methods.
Ronny Razin
Ronny Razin joins the Department from NYU. Since obtaining his PhD from Princeton University (2001), Ronny's research has focussed on the theory of political campaigns and on the theory of intellectual property rights. Ronny will be teaching graduate and undergraduate political economy.
Javier Ortega
Javier Ortega, who holds a PhD from DELTA (Paris), is Lecturer at the University of Toulouse and on a sabbatical leave from Toulouse in 2005-06. Currently a Research Affiliate at the CEPR and a Research Fellow at IZA, Dr Ortega's fields of interest include labour economics, focusing on issues of immigration, unemployment benefits, working-time regulations, and work-sharing policies. He does research also on language policies.
Visitors 2005/6
Luca Anderlini (BP/LSE Visiting Centennial Professor)
Luca Anderlini is currently visiting the LSE from Georgetown University. He obtained his PhD from Cambridge University where he taught until 1999 before moving, via Southampton University, to Georgetown in 2001. His research interests include Repeated Games, Contract Theory, Public Goods and Computability in Game Theory and Decision Theory. During his visit Professor Anderlini will be teaching Microprinciples II.
Miguel Delgado
Professor Miguel Delgado is visiting from the Universidad de Carlos III de Madrid. Miguel graduated from our MSc Econometrics programme in 1983 and obtained his PhD from the LSE in 1989. He has published widely in the field of econometric theory and acts as a referee for several international journals. While at LSE he will be teaching graduate econometrics.
Gianmarco Ottaviano
Gianmarco Ottaviano is visiting the department from the University of Bologna and has written extensively on international trade and economic geography. Professor Ottaviano obtained his PhD from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Geneva, in 1998 and taught at Universities in Belgium, Italy and Switzerland before gaining a Professorship at Bologna in 2003. He will be teaching undergraduate, graduate and PhD international trade during his visit to the LSE.
Assaf Razin
Assaf Razin gained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1969. Now based at Tel-Aviv and Cornell Universities, his career has encompassed many Visiting Professor positions in the US and a broad range of affiliations to professional institutes and associations. Professor Razin's research interests include FDI and the Welfare State. At LSE he will be teaching graduate international finance.
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September 2005
IZA Award for LSE Economist
Congratulations to Professor Chris Pissarides on the award of the highly prestigious IZA award, jointly with Dale Mortensen, for their seminal contribution on the integration of labour markets into macroeconomic models. Chris is the first European scientist to receive this prestigious award.
Full details of the award can be found at the LSE News pages.
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Yrjö Jahnsson Award in Economics for LSE Economist
The European Economic Association has announced the award of the 2005 YJ Award in Economics to Professor Tim Besley of LSE, and Professor Jordi Gali of CREI. This award, which is made every second year to a European economist under the age of 45, is regarded as the most prestigious award in European economics, and is the European equivalent of the American Clark medal.
Professor Besley has made seminal contributions both to Development Economics and to the new literature on Political Economy in which he has played a pioneering role over the past decade. He has been a Professor of Economics at LSE since 1995, when he moved to the Department from Princeton University. He is Director of the Suntory-Toyota Research Centre (STICERD) at the School.
Further information on Professor Tim Besley's award can be found at the LSE News and Events pages.
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Appointment of New Undergraduate Tutor, Dr Judith Shapiro
I am writing to inform colleagues of a new appointment that we have made following the recommendations of last year's APRC Review Committee. It was proposed that we should extend the model used in our Master's programme. Accordingly, the incoming Departmental Tutor, Jonathan Leape, will now be supported by our new appointee, Dr Judith Shapiro, who will hold the (administrative) position of Undergraduate Tutor. The only effect which this will have on colleagues' arrangements is that Judith will be the point of contact that we should all use when referring undergraduate tutees, and it is she who will refer on to Jonathan those queries that she cannot deal with herself. In particular, when seeing your undergraduate tutees at the beginning of term, you may want to check the necessary facts before advising them on course choices, and Judith will be the person to go to on this.
The purpose of this new appointment is to improve the quality of services that we offer to our undergraduates. Judith's role is one that will evolve in the light of experience over the next year or so, but we see it as consisting of two elements. The first involves acting as a general back-up to personal tutors in the way that our Departmental Tutor (Alan Marin, now succeeded by Jonathan Leape) has done in the past. The second element in Judith's role will lie in introducing improvements in our general arrangements, and in undertaking initiatives in the manner that has worked well for us at the Master's level.
Judith holds a PhD in Economics, and has had lengthy experience in tutoring students as a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmith's and, more recently, as Academic Coordinator of the New Economics School in Moscow. We are delighted to welcome her to the Department, and we hope that colleagues will have an opportunity to meet her early in the Michaelmas Term.
Professor John Sutton, Convenor
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First PhD Presentation Meeting - London: 28-29 January 2006
The first PhD Presentation Meeting is to be held at the LSE on Saturday 28th January - Sunday 29th January 2006.
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News Archive
Click on the News Archive to read the news of previous years.
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