July 2010
John Van Reenen and Francesco Caselli elected to the British Academy
Professor John Van Reenen and Professor Francesco Caselli have both been elected as fellows of the British Academy, the UK's national body for the humanities and social sciences.
Each year the British Academy elects into its Fellowship UK-based scholars who have attained distinction in any branch of the humanities and social sciences. The rigorous electoral process means that only a very small number of scholars in any field are elected.
Further details can be found in the News Archive of the main LSE website.
A full list of those elected to the British Academy this July can be found in the Fellowship section of the British Academy website.
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LSE Alumni 2000-2004 Reunion Lecture: "Will the world belong to Asia in the 21st Century?"
Time: 16:15
Date: Saturday 10th July 2010
Location: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Danny Quah
In 2001, Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, coined the term BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), arguing that by 2050 their combined economies would overtake that of the world's richest countries. The rise and rise of China has led to talk of the G2, while the continuing emergence of Asia, has led some to predict the predominance of 'Asian values' in the 21st century.
Professor Danny Quah, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, LSE Global Governance, examines Asia's phenomenal rise and her impact on the global stage.
For more information about this event, please see the Houghton Street Online website.
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Johannes Spinnewijn wins CESifo Affiliate Award
Johannes Spinnewijn has won a contest to be a distinguished CESifo affiliate.
From the CESifo website: "During the CESifo Annual Area Conferences, the Committee for the CESifo Prize grants the Distinguished CESifo Affiliate award to a young economist for the scientific originality, policy relevance and quality of exposition of his/her paper presented at the conference.
The selection committee comprises three renowned scholars from the area in question and is chaired by the Co-ordinator fo the respective Research Area".
The winning paper was entitled "Unemployed but Optimistic: Optimal Insurance Design with Biased Beliefs".
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May 2010
Department of Economics Public Lecture:
"The Career-Family Conundrum"
Time: 6.30-8.00pm, Thursday 27th May 2010
Location: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, Harvard
Chair: Professor Steve Pischke, Department of Economics
The talk concerns the challenges facing highly-educated young men and women who wish to have families while pursuing careers such as those in business, medicine, law, and academia. The long history of the career and family quest among college graduate women is explored, and relationships between demands in the labor market for workplace flexibility and the response by occupations, firms, and institutions are addressed.
Claudia Goldin is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard. Her research interests include economic history, labor economics, gender and economics, and the economics of work, family, and education. She is a director of the Development of the American Economy Program, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a fellow in the Society of Labor Economists, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society.
Goldin serves on the editorial boards of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and is the editor of the NBER Long-Term Trends in American Economic History Monograph Seres. In 1990-1991 she was the Vice President of the American Economic Association, and in 1999-2000 she was President of the Economic History Association.
For further information, please visit the LSE Public Events pages.
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Department of Economics Public Lecture:
"Financial Crises and Crisis Economic: Past, Present and Future"
Time: 6.30-8.00pm, Tuesday 18th May 2010
Location: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Buiding
Speaker: Professor Nouriel Roubini
Chair: Dr Bernardo Guimaraes
Watch: Video
Listen: Podcast
Professor Roubini, aka "Dr Doom", will launch his new book, Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance (Penguin, 2010) in which he argues that financial crises are not unpredictable "black swan" events but, rather, can be forecast - in effect, they are "white swans".
Nouriel Roubini has extensive policy experience as well as broad academic credentials. From 1998-2000, he served as the Senior Economist for International Affairs at the White House Council of Economic Advisors and then the Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department, helping to resolve the Asian and global financial crises amongst other issues. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and numerous other prominent public and private institutions have also drawn upon his consulting expertise.
He has published over 70 theoretical empirical and policy papers on international macroeconomic issues and co-authored the books "Political Cycles: Theory and Evidence" (M.I.T. Press, 1997) and "Bailouts or Bail-ins? Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Markets" (Institute for International Economics, 2004). Professor Roubini's views on global economics issues are widely cited by the media, and his blog was named one of 20 "must-read" sources by the WSJ.
For further information, please visit the LSE Public Events pages.
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Department of Economics Public Lecture:
"Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Pursued Indirectly"
Time: 6.30-8pm, Thursday 13th May 2010
Location: New Theatre, East Building
Speaker: John Kay
Chair: Professor Alan Manning, Head of the Department of Economics
John Kay is one of Britain's leading Economists. He has been professor of economics at the London Business School, and is currently a fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and a visiting professor at the LSE. He is the only professor of management to receive the academic distinction of Fellowship of the British Academy. He has been director of a fiercely independent think tank, set up and sold a highly successful economic consultancy business and has been a director of several public companies. He is available for interview.
For further information, please visit the LSE Public Events pages.
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Astrid Jensen
Astrid Jensen's many friends among the staff, students, and graduates of LSE are deeply saddened by her recent death.
Astrid joined LSE as an MSc student in September 2005. She suffered all her life from cystic fibrosis. By the spring of 2006 she was too ill to complete her MSc. A lung transplant in 2007 allowed her to rejoin LSE in 2008. She graduated with a Distinction in MSc Economics in 2009 and was greatly looking forward to staring on the MRes/PhD programme in Economics. Sadly she was never well enough to do so.
Astrid was a most warm and gallant person, deeply engaged in her studies, and committed to her friends and family. She lived courageously in circumstances that were sometimes very difficult, never defined by her illness, always looking to the next step in her life, always a joy to meet. We will miss her greatly.
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March 2010
Department of Economics Public Lecture:
"Top incomes in the long run of history"
Time: 6.30-8pm, Monday 1st March 2010
Location: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Sir Tony Atkinson, Centennial Professor of Economics
Chair: Professor Alan Manning, Head of the Department of Economics
Top incomes in Britan are in the news, but today's bonuses and executive remuneration have to be seen in historical perspective. Are top income shares high by the standards of the past? Is Britain different from other countries? What can economic theory tell us about the determinants of top incomes and how they have changed over time?
Sir Tony Atkinson is a British economist and Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford from 1994-2005. Before that, he held positions at Cambridge, UCL and LSE. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1974, and an Honorary Member of the American Economic Association in 1985, was knighted in 2000, and made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 2001.
The event is free and open to all with no ticket required; entry is on a first come, first served basis. For more information, please contact Emma Taverner or visit the LSE Public Events pages.
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John von Neumann Award 2010 given to Professor Tim Besley
The 2010 John von Neumann Award has been given to Professor Tim Besley for his research on political institutions by the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies at Corvinus University of Budapest. The award was established in 1995 and is presented annually to leading scholars whose influential works have had a substantial impact on the studies and intellectual activity of the students at the College.
Previous award holders include John Harsanyi (UC Berkeley), Hal Varian (University of Michigan), Janos Kornai (Harvard University and Budapest College), Jean Tirole (University of Toulouse), Oliver Williamson (UC Berkeley), Jon Elster (Columbia University), Avinash K. Dixit (Princeton University), Maurice Obstfeld (UC Berkeley), Gary S. Becker (University of Chigago), Glenn C. Loury (Brown University), Matthew Rabin (UC Berkeley), Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Kevin Murphy (University of Chicago) and Philippe Aghion (Harvard University).
Further information on Professor Besley's research can be found at his web page, with further information on the College and John von Neumann Award available from the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies.
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Economics Rankings
The Department is pleased to learn that we have been placed joint 8th in a recent ranking of the top 100 economics research schools as published by Tilburg University. Head of Department, Professor Alan Manning said this is "a very good result for us which I am sure reflects all the excellent work being done in the department in recent years".
Similarly, a recent study by Malgorzata Knauff and Rabah Amir on the ranking of economics departments worldwide in terms of PhD placement has placed us as 10th out of 54 other institutions. See Ranking economics departments worldwide on the basis of PhD placement for further information.
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February 2010
Department of Economics Public Lecture:
"Economics 0, Reality 1"
Time: 6.30-8pm, Thursday 4th February 2010
Location: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: John Lanchester
Chair: Professor Alan Manning, Head of the Department of Economics
John Lanchester is a British journalist, novelist and winner of the Whitbread Book Award. Author of the highly-acclaimed The Debt to Pleasure, John is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, with a monthly column in Esquire.
Has the credit crunch exposed the futility of academic economics? Has any collective body in the history of the world ever been exposed as "wronger" than economists? Should the LSE be closed down and converted into something more socially productive? In this debate John Lanchester challenges the profession of economics with fundamental questions about its purpose and direction.
For further information, contact Emma Taverner. This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.
Download the poster for the event. For further information please visit the LSE Public Events pages.
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January 2010
Economics Public Debate: "What Kind of Economics Should We Teach?"
Time: 6.30-8pm, Wednesday 20th January 2010
Location: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Paul Ormerod (Volterra Consulting); Geoffrey Hodgson, Professor of Business Studies, University of Hertfordshire and Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics; John Sutton, Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, LSE; Albert Marcet, Professor of Economics, LSE
Chair: Tim Besley, Kuwait Professor of Economics, Director of STICER, and Director of the Masters of Public Administration (MPA), LSE
The recent global crisis has led to questions being asked about whether the kind of economics being taught to students in leading economics departments was responsible for the widespread failure to predict the timing and magnitude of the events that unfolded in 2008. Critiques range from an absence of historical context in mainstream teaching of economics to excessive reliance on mathematical models. The panel brings together four leading economists to debate this issue and to discuss what changes in the economics curriculum and the way that it is delivered are desirable.
For further information, contact Emma Taverner. This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.
Download the poster for the event. For further information please visit the LSE Public Events pages.
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Students get a grounding in the big issues as LSE's innovative new course launches
A pioneering academic course that asks every undergraduate to grapple with the some of the world's most important problems has been launched at The London School of Economics and Political Science.
The course, LSE 100, will help students from all disciplines to sharpen their skills in the fundamentals of social science – how to find and weigh evidence, how to interpret and explain competing theories and how to present arguments persuasively. It should therefore deepen their understanding of their own subject, while giving them the ability to analyse society's most urgent questions.
The first group of 400 students began the course on 11 January 2010 and will be taught by some of LSE's leading experts, including the Director, Howard Davies and Professor Lord Nicholas Stern. Topics will range from "Is punishment a waste of time, suffering and money?" to "Does culture matter?"
The two-term course will be compulsory for all students from October 2010, running alongside their normal degree course. Each student on LSE100 will receive not a numerical mark but a Distinction, Pass or Fail. While the results will not affect the outcome of their degree, they will be part of their transcript and a good performance will significantly enhance their CV and demonstrate their skills to employers.
Howard Davies said: 'Success on LSE100 will be a real added trump card for LSE graduates in future. Through this course, we can ensure that they can engage in issues of public policy, of contemporary history, of economy and society, and can do that with people of different backgrounds and nationalities.'
Dr Jonathan Leape, who is director of the course, said: 'LSE100 will introduce new undergraduates to the fundamentals of thinking like a social scientist. It will stretch them in new ways by both broadening and deepening the way they think and remind them that real investigation and understanding begin where Google and Wikipedia finish. LSE graduates have always been adept at getting a grip on society's biggest issues and this course will enhance that ability through expert and innovative teaching and its interdisciplinary approach.'
For more information, please visit the LSE News and Media pages.
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November 2009
LBS/LSE/UCL Trio Seminar in International Macro
Time: 12-1pm, Thursday 26th November 2009
Location: R405, CEP Conference Room, 4th Floor, LSE Research Lab, Lionel Robbins Building, Portugal Street
Speaker: Jaume Ventura (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Organisers: Gianluca Benigno (LSE), Nicolas Coeurdacier (LBS), Moren Ravn (UCL) and Hélène Rey (LBS)
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Superfreakonomics Lecture: podcast now available
The podcast for the Superfreakonomics lecture (Monday 9th November 2009) is now available from Public Lectures and Events: podcasts (Search under November 2009). For information on the event, please go to Superfreakonomics.
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EC413 features on BBC R4 Analysis Programme
BBC R4 Analysis programme, broadcast 02 November 2009, featured one of our EC413 lectures in a segment on how the economics profession has (or has not) responded to the global economic crisis. Also appearing are Charlie Bean, Myron Scholes, Robert Skidelsky, Richard Thaler, and others.
For more information see BBC R4 Analysis - The Economist's New Clothes.
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Marcus Gstoettner and Anders Jensen win IAES Best Undergraduate Research Paper 2009
The Economics Department is thrilled to congratulate Markus Gstoettner (pictured left)and Anders Jensen (pictured right) on winning the 4th annual EconSources.com Best Undergraduate Paper Competition that is sponsored by the International Atlantic Economic Society.
Their joint paper entitled "Aid and Public Finance: A Missing Link?" was among four finalists from over 65 entries to the competition. Their paper has already received acclaim having been awarded one of three "Distinguished Participant Awards" in the Georgetown University's prestige undergraduate research conference in Washington DC, the Carroll Round.
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October 2009
STICERD Public Lecture: "Justice and the Moral Limits of Markets"
The STICERD Public Lecture will take place on Monday 12th October 2009. For further information on this event and how to obtain tickets, go to Justice and the Moral Limits of Markets.
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Economics Academic Winner of the 2009 Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award
The Department would like to congratulate Dr Johannes Spinnewijn on winning the 2009 Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award. The Upjohn Institute is an independent research organisation supporting and conducting policy-relevant research on employment-related problems for which this award is given.
Dr Spinnewijn's dissertation, titled "Essays on Optimal Insurance Design", analyses the optimal design of insurance contracts - and unemployment insurance in particular - considering different policy-relevant contexts that change the central trade-off between the provision of insurance and the provision of incentives. In comments on Dr Spinnewijn's paper, the awarding committee found his thesis to "excel in all four areas that we focused on: policy relevance, technical quality of the research, potential impact on real-world problems, and presentation". Details of this award will be published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the Institute's newsletter, Employment Research.
Further information on the award can be found at the Upjohn Institute's web page.
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Yrjö Jahnsson Award in Economics for LSE Economist and LSE PhD Student
The European Economic Association has announced the award of the 2009 Yrjö Jahnsson Award in Economics to Professor John Van Reenen of LSE, and Fabrizio Zilibotti (former LSE PhD student). This award is presented by the Finnish Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation and the European Economic Association on a biennial basis to up to two European economists under the age of 45 and is regarded as the most prestigious award in European economics, the European equivalent of the American Clark medal.
Professor Van Reenen's research can be found in his web page and Fabrizio Zilibotti's research can be found in his web page. Details of the award at the Foundation's website.
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News Archive
Click on the News Archive to read the news of previous years.
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