McKenomics
A Newsletter of the CMC Economics Association
Volume 1, Issue 50
November 2001
Introduction by the editors:
M. Keil and Dan O’Neill ‘02
This is the first newsletter
issue of the Economics Association at Claremont
McKenna College. We will
publish McKenomics three
times during the academic
year with the purpose of providing Economics Majors
with useful information and
to create a more personal
environment between the
Economics Faculty and Economics Majors.
In this volume, you will meet
the new members of the Department. We will start with
Professor Harold Mulherin in
this issue. David Riffer ’01
and Professor Keil have produced a standard set of 18
Heather Antecol. We want to
hear from you who you want
to be interviewed in the first
issue of the academic year
2002-2003 and whether you
want to have some questions
added or replaced (write to
DOneill02@mckenna.edu).
“There will be growth
in spring.”
Peter Sellers in Being There.
questions, which interviewees respond to in writing.
The next issue will present
Professor Jennifer WardBatts, followed by Professor
In this volume, we will also
help you find a better match
between your Senior Thesis
topic interest and faculty.
We will try to accomplish
this in two ways. First you
will find a list the primary
research interests of every
full time faculty member,
starting with macroeconomics in this issue. Second,
President: Dan O’Neill ‘02
Vice President: Dave Bradley ‘03
Editors: M. Keil and D. O’Neill
Social Activity Directors:
Shelby Johnson ’02,
Drew van Pelt ‘02.
each faculty member will list potential thesis topics that he/she will
be interested to supervise. In addition, central references will be attached.
There is also a section on the 3rd
Annual End of Academic Year
Awards, with a list of prizes.
Finally, Professor Keil has a column in which he will write about
some of the more interesting past
End of Semester Statistics Projects.
Meet the Freeberg Professor of Finance,
J. Harold Mulherin
Where were you born
and where did you
grow up?
I was born and grew up in
Savannah, Georgia. I lived
there until college at the
University of Georgia.
Were your parents economists or academics? If
not, what was their profession?
My father was a Business
Grad of the University of
Georgia and ran an industrial supply store founded
by his father. I worked
there in summers in high
school. During college
summers, I worked in the
factories that the family
store supplied.
My mother was trained as a
bacteriologist at Smith College. She worked in a hospital lab for over 20 years.
Did your parents encourage you to be an economist? If not, when did
you first become interested in economics and
what triggered your interest?
My first ‘economics’ pro-
ject was in the 8 th grade
where we empirically
showed the negative impact
of a new highway on a salt
marsh. Ironically, the highway serviced an oceanography institute. My formal
interest in Economics came
at the University of Georgia. While an undecided
major, I had the good fortune to have a series of captivating professors including Hiroaki Hayakawa,
Carter Hill and Paul Rubin.
Which universities did
you attend and why did
you choose those educa-
tional institutions?
I chose the University of
Georgia for undergrad because it offered wide variety
and a liberal arts education.
In addition to economics, I
took a lot of history, political science and classics.
Describe a “good CMC
student.”
I defer the definition of ‘good’
to our Philosophy colleagues.
Which single person (noneconomist) do you admire
the most and why?
Emeril Lagasse would be cool
Upcoming Events : Aida by Elton John and Tim Rice, December 9 at the Ahmanson Theater, L.
A., $20 per student including luxury bus ride and hors d’hoeuvres at Professor Janet Smith’s
house before the performance. Limit: 30 students. Administrators/Professors to participate so
far: President Gann, Profs. Keil, Mulherin, Smith. Reservations: avanpelt02@mckenna.edu
McKenomics
Page 2
Harold Mulherin Interview, continued
“Hire interesting new faculty
who do excellent research and
to hang out with.
like to fish and bicycle.”
What are the next three
places in the world you want
to visit?
Professor Harold Mulherin on
“What can CMC do to improve
its News and World ranking?”
Prof. Mulherin
will teach
ECON 192
“Topics in Corporate Finance” during
the Spring Semester 2002
Morocco, Vietnam and Patagonia.
What is the most recent
book (academic or not) you
read? What is your favorite
book?
Driving out here this summer,
I re-read Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas. My favorite book
is the Fountainhead.
What is your favorite
movie?
Casablanca.
What are your favorite
foods?
In Savannah I go for whatever
fish, shrimp or crabs that we
catch. But when not out on the
Atlantic, I never miss a
chance to get some fried
chicken, collard greens and
biscuits at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House. In New Orleans I
ECON 120: Nightmare on 9th St.
Statistics is one of the four
core requirements for the Economics Major. When I arrived
at CMC at the beginning of
the 1995-1996 academic year,
student work was typically
restricted to solving problem
sets with perhaps ten data
points by hand, or by using
antiquated software
(MINITAB or MYSTAT), in
addition to writing two or
three exams. A friend of mine
in the Math Department at
Bentley College in Massachusetts told me that she had successfully introduced end of
semester poster presentations
of students in front of a jury
of professors.
Being faced in my second year here with three sections of ECON 120, I thought
about active learning techniques in statistics that complemented the strength of liberal art students: superior
presentation skills, both orally
and in writing.
Towards that end, I introduced a professional Power
Point group presentation of
students in front of a jury of
peers, administrators and faculty, together with a prize. In
addition, textbooks or supplementary books were chosen
that emphasized statistical
computations using Microsoft’s Excel.
Some of the End of Semester
presentations have been quite
remarkable, even if they did
not win the Gosset prize for
the best presentation. In this
issue I want to talk about a
presentation titled “Does College GPA determine Starting
Salary?” by Maria Anguiano,
Giselle Baykal and Sihle
Dinani. The students set out to
determine whether it paid off
for economics majors to study
hard in terms of starting salaries. They also wanted to analyze if there was discrimination against females and if
you received a higher starting
salary offer with an econaccounting degree.
They soon found out that it is
not a simple task to match
starting salary offers to GPA,
since the former is collected
by the Development Office,
while the latter is in the files
of the Registrar’s Office. The
information is obviously confidential. However, they were
able to convince the two offices to match the information
anonymously for the year
1999. Unfortunately, they
were unable to establish a re-
drive across the country this
summer, I emphasized Dickie
Betts and Eric Clapton, both
of whom I caught in State
College before heading West.
Do you have children? If
they are adults, are they
economists? If they are not
adults yet, what do they
want to be when they grow
up?
Still single.
What do you do for fun?
Research, bicycling and
fishing.
by M. Keil
lationship for that year between the starting salary and
the GPA of students, a result,
which in itself is interesting.
However, in 1999, the unemployment rate in California
was 5.6 percent, meaning that
firms were quite desperate to
hire any student with an economics degree from CMC.
With one week to go before
the project was due, I suggested to the students to collect data for 1997, when the
unemployment rate was 6.7
percent. Here is what they
found for that year:
•
For every GPA point increase (on a 12 point
scale), Economics majors
receive $2,170 higher
salary offers.
•
Econ-Accounting Majors
received a $4,078 lower
average salary offer than
Econ Majors.
•
Females had a $3,226
lower salary offer, controlling for GPA, although their GPA average was not significantly
different from that of
male students.
Interesting, isn’t it? I hope
that we will read about your
project in this column soon.
“For every GPA point
increase (on a 12 point
scale), Economics
majors receive $2,170
higher salary offers.”
Watching the degrees
of freedom disappear.
Volume 1, Issue 50
Page 3
Economics Faculty: Research
Interests and Suggested
Senior
Thesis Topics in
Macroeconomics
In this section we will list research interests of faculty together with senior thesis topics
they would like to see students
work on. We hope that this will
make it easier to match Juniors
and Seniors with the “right” professor.
Richard Burdekin
(Full Professor). Monetary Economics. Inflation and Deflation.
“Monetary Policy and Asset
Prices.”
Bernanke, B. and M. Gertler,
“Monetary Policy and Asset Price Volatility,” in
New Challenges for Monetary Policy, Symposium,
Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas City, Kansas City,
1999, pp. 77-128.
“Deflation.”
Delong, J.B., “Should We Fear
Deflation?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity,
1999, no. 1, pp. 225-241.
“Central Bank Policymaking.”
Judd, J. and G. Rudebusch,
“Taylor’s Rule and the Fed:
1970-1997,” Economic Review, Federal Reserve
Bank of San Francisco,
1998, no. 3, pp. 3-16.
“Chinese Economic Reforms.”
R. Burdekin, “Ending Inflation
in stChina: From Mao to the
21 Century,” Cato Journal,
Vol. 20, no. 2, Fall 2000,
pp. 223-235.
Manfred Keil
(Associate Professor). Comparative Economic Performance of
Geographic Areas. PoliticoEconomic Interaction.
“The New Economy vs. the
Phillips Curve.”
1. Taylor, T., “Talking about
a New Economy,” The
Public Interest, 2001, 3-19.
2. Staiger, D., Stock, J., and
M. Watson, “The NAIRU,
Unemployment and Mone-
tary Policy,” Journal
of Economic Perspectives, 1997, 33-49.
“Presidential Approval Ratings and the Rational Electorate: The Role of Consumer Sentiments.”
1. MacKuen, M., Erikson, R. and J. Stimson,
“Peasants or Bankers?
The American Electorate and the U.S. Economy,” American Political Science Review,
1992, 597-611.
2. Norpoth, H.,
“Presidents and the
Prospective Voter,”
Journal of Politics,
1996, 776-92.
Marc Weidenmier
(Assistant Professor).
Money and Inflation,
American Economic History.
“Money and Inflation.”
1. Burdekin, R. and M.
Weidenmier,
“Inflation is Always
and Everywhere a
Monetary Phenomenon: Richmond vs.
Houston in 1864,”
American Economic
Review, forthcoming.
2. Friedman, M. and A.
Schwartz, A Monetary
History of the United
States, Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press,
1963.
“Economics of Natural Disasters.”
1. Odell, K. and M. Weidenmier, “Real
Shocks, Monetary Aftershock: The San
Francisco Earthquake
and the Panic of
1907,” Working Paper,
The Claremont Colleges, 2001.
2.
Odell, K., and M. Weidenmier, “The Road to
Recovery: Quakes and
Attacks,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 1, 2001.
Economics
Awards and
Prizes
And the winner is . . .
The 3rd Annual End of
Academic Year Awards will
be handed out at our end of
academic year banquet at the
Athenaeum, on May 6,
2002, 6:00-7:30 p.m.. There
will be seven awards this
year and we list the prizes,
together with the names of
the recipients for the last two
years below.
Outstanding Senior Thesis
2001: Richard Hossfeld,
"Politico-Economic
Interaction in the United
States, 1950-2000"
2000: Rebecca Lapin, "From
Government Reliance to
Nonprofit Reliance: The
Effects of Changes in
Welfare on Nonprofit
Organizations"
Outstanding Junior
2001: Nicholas Janof, David
Mahler, John O'Brien,
Daniel O'Neill
Outstanding Major
2001: Thomas Robertson
2000: Leanne Knight
Outstanding Achievement
in Quantitative Economics
2001: Thomas Robertson
2000: Rebecca Lapin
Outstanding Statistics Project
2001: Gregory Beaumont,
Emily Kochanowicz, Gavin
Teo
2000: Joanna Castro, Richard Hossfeld, Rohan Ranjaraj
Outstanding Sophomore
2001: David Giuntini
2000: Daniel O’Neill,
Nicholas Janof
We will announce a new
forecasting prize in the next
issue.
“Your economic theory makes no sense.”
Sting,
“The do-do-do, the da-da-da, is all I have
to say to you.”
Sting.
We’re on the Web:
http://econ.academic.
claremontmckenna.
edu/
Claremont McKenna
College
Civilization Prospers with Commerce
The Economics Department at Claremont McKenna College has 20 faculty members. By comparison, Pomona College has only 11 in its Economics Department.
Together with the Government Department, it constitutes one of the two most important departments at CMC. This is due to the mission of the college, which
states: “[The] mission ... is to educate its students for thoughtful and productive
lives and responsible leadership in business, government, and the professions,
and to support faculty and student scholarship that contribute to intellectual vitality and the understanding of public policy issues. The College pursues this mission by providing a liberal arts education that emphasizes economics and political science.”
There are roughly 400 majors at CMC who will see the word Economics on their
B.A. degree, ranging from Economics-Asian Studies to Economics-Theatre. Economics Majors are required to take six elective courses in addition to the core of
Principles of Economics, Intermediate Microeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, and Fulfillment of the Statistics Requirement. In terms of number of majors, the most popular is Economics, followed by Econ-Accounting and the Economics-Mathematics Dual major.
For more details, Web resources for Economists, and for the Honors Degree requirements, see our Web site.
T o p 1 0 L i s t o f “ W h y Yo u W a n t t o b e a n
Econ Major at CMC.”
During last year’s End of
Year Economics Award Banquet, the following Top 10 list
“Reasons Why You Want to
Be an Economics Major at
CMC” was presented. (There
are actually 15.) We found it
worth repeating here. By
Richard Hossfeld, ‘01 and
Manfred Keil.
# 15: Economists Supply it
on Demand.
# 14: Learn to use Lagrangians to maximize utility of
beer drinking and pizza eating.
# 13: Forget bull and bear, go
for Nabisco.
# 12: It is no fun to be different, so you might as well be
an econ major like the rest of
the school.
# 11: Blue Jean baby, LM
lady.
# 10: Mick Jagger and Arnold
Schwarzenegger both studied
economics and look at how
they turned out.
# 9: You don’t have to worry
about grade inflation at CMC.
# 8: The development office
will make sure never to lose
your address after graduation.
# 7: Understand the term
“fringe department.”
# 6: You get to take classes
from the best professors CMC
has. Just ask them, they will
tell you
# 5: You understand why the
economist was not embarrassed to introduce his partner
by saying, “Have you met my
wife, Mrs. Slutzky?”
# 4: Homoskedasticity good,
heteroskedasticity bad.
# 3: You can say “trickle
down” with a straight face.
# 2:Receive special swim suit
edition of The Economist with
Alan Greenspan on the cover.
And the Number One Reason why you want to be an
Economics Major at CMC
is:
1. You don’t have to worry
when Pomona students
chant, “that’s alright, that’s
ok, you’ll be working for us
someday.”