Dvir, Strasser, Ünver join the BC economics faculty

Last year's faculty recruitment season was exceedingly successful, with the department filling each of the three authorized positions with an excellent candidate. Two of the new faculty, Eyal Dvir and Georg Strasser, work in the field of International Economics. Eyal, who is completing his Ph.D. at Harvard, will be teaching the graduate trade course and the undergraduate course in international finance in the fall. Georg, who is completing his Ph.D. at Penn, will be teaching a new graduate course in international finance next year. Georg's course will be offered in the spring, as will Fabio Ghironi's graduate international finance course, leading to a new graduate field in international finance. Strasser will be teaching macro theory at the undergraduate level. Joining the faculty as an associate professor will be M. Utku Ünver, who is coming to BC from the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been an Assistant Professor since 2005. Utku is a microtheorist who specializes in market design. He is particularly well known for his joint research on kidney exchange with Tayfun Sönmez and Alvin Roth. Ünver will teach undergraduate micro theory and in graduate micro theory next year.

Additions to the company of scholars

The latest additions to the department's roster of Ph.D.s are Nicola Lostumbo, a native of USA, who defended his dissertation on 9 December, and Natalia Zhivan, a native of Russia, who defended her dissertation on 15 December. Lostumbo wrote "Essays in Applied Macroeconomics" advised by Profs. Peter Ireland and Matteo Iacoviello. Zhivan wrote "The Employment of Older Workers" advised by Prof. Alicia Munnell.

Our congratulations to Dr. Lostumbo and Dr. Zhivan.

BC EC 2008 and all prior issues available

The October, 2008 edition of BC EC, the department's annual newsletter, is now available in PDF format, as are all prior issues of BC EC back to Vol. 1, Issue 1 of 1978.

Eleven Ph.D.'s awarded in University commencement

The 132nd commencement exercises of Boston College were held on 19 May 2008. Eleven economics students received the Ph.D. since the last commencement. They are listed with their thesis topics and advisors. Darrel Barbato, "Essays in applied microeconometrics" (Frank Gollop); Lewis Gaul, "Essays in macroeconomics and finance" (Fabio Schiantarelli); Marissa Ginn, "Three essays in applied macroeconomics" (Peter Ireland); Eren Inci, "Public policy towards entrepreneurship and innovation" (Richard Arnott); Gökçe Kurucu, "Essays on markets with network externalities" (Hideo Konishi); Jingzhi Ginger Meng, "Two essays in applied econometrics and finance" (Arthur Lewbel); Tatiana Mihailovschi-Muntean, "Monetary and fiscal policy mix as insurance in a model with heterogeneous agents" (Peter Ireland); Maria Punzi, "Essays on housing market and current account imbalances" (Fabio Ghironi and Matteo Iacoviello); Pallavi Seth, "Monopsony power and asymmetric information: Microeconometrics applied to health care" (Frank Gollop); Mauricio Soto, "The effects of pension funding rules on the behavior of firms" (Donald Cox); and Viktors Stebunovs, "Finance as a barrier to entry in dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium models" (Fabio Ghironi and Peter Ireland).

Sixteen students were awarded the M.A. at the commencement exercises: Samson Alva, Alessandro Barattieri, Rucha Bhate, Anna Blank, Isabella Blengini, Daniel Bliss, Aaron Fix, Francis Georges, Wataru Hirata, Shoghik Hovhannisyan, Chuanliang Jiang, Sailu Li, Murat Mungan, Shannon Phillips, Radoslav Raykov and Caglar Yurtseven.

Our congratulations to all!

Iacoviello promoted, tenured

Macroeconomist Matteo Iacoviello was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in this year's round of promotions. Iacoviello joined the BC faculty in 2002 after completing the Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. His work has won considerable acclaim, with publications in the JMCB, Journal of Macroeconomics, Journal of Monetary Economics, American Economic Review among others. He has served as a visiting professor in Milan and Hong Kong, a visiting scholar at Boston University and a consultant to the European Central Bank, Bank of Canada and International Monetary Fund.

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