 |
UW-WHITEWATER
ECONOMICS SOCIETY
Welcome to the UW-Whitewater's Economics Club Homepage. Please find links below for schedule of events, recent news and some lists of discussion topics and workshops we will be running throughout the course of this upcoming year.
.
Upcoming Schedule of Events
Fall 2008
This semester, we meet in C1007 at 5:15pm every other Wednesday
-
9.17.08: C1007
Time: 5:15pm
Inaugural Meeting for Fall 2006 Semester
-
-
10.23.08: Room UC275A;
Time: 4pm
Panel Discussion I : The Recent Economic Turmoil
-
11.20.08: Room Fern Young Terrace;
Time: 4pm
Panel Discussion II : The Impact of the Current Economic Crisis
New News
-
The second in our series of panel discussions on the economy will be held on November 20th, from 4pm - 5:30pm at the Fern Young Terrace. The panelists include Steven Kuehl from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Diane Schobert of the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) and Rich Gray from Russ Darrow Financing.
The event is open to all. The panelists will be discussing how the current economic crisis has impacted them and the challenges that they are facing. After that, there will be a Q&A session where students, faculty and community members will have a chance to have any of their questions answered.
Look forward to seeing you there.
-
The UW-Whitewater Economics Society is pleased to host a series of panel discussions on the economy. The first panel discussion will be held on October 23rd from 4pm - 5:30 at the University Center (Room: UC 275A). The panelists will include Professors Stuart Glosser (Dept. of Economics), Russell Kashian (Dept. of Economics), and Yamin Ahmad (Dept. of Economics). In addition, we have Professors David Porter from the Finance Department and Richard Cummings from the Accounting Department in the panel as well.
We are intending the discussion to be open to all. We will be dicussing the economy in terms of where we are, how we got there, and what the government's proposed rescue package will do (in terms of the intended effect on the economy). It will be followed by a Q&A session. If students or people in the community have questions about the economy, how what is happening on the stock markets are going to affect them, are we in a recession etc, they can ask the panelists about them.
-
New Officers of the Economics Club: Robert Shepard (President); Mitch Grulke (VP); Chris Elfers (Treasurer)
-
Inagural Fall Meeting scheduled for September 17th, 2006: Room C1007
Recent Speakers
Kim Hixon, Representative 43rd Assembly District
David Merriman, Loyola University, Chicago
Gene Hackbarth, Director of Community Development Authority
Bradley Katz, Senior Category Specialist, Oscar Mayer Division of Kraft Foods, Madison.
Virginia Wilcox-Gok, Associate Professor, Northern Illinois University, IL.
Kristin Terris, Visiting Assistant Professor, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Discussion Topics
Please vote on the discussion topics you would be interested in participating in.
-
-
-
-
Trade Wars and Sanctions
-
Health Care
-
Globalization and Outsourcing
-
Trends in US Education
-
Trends in US Manufacturing and Services
-
-
Minimum Wages
Experiments/Workshops
Please vote on the experiments you would be interested in participating in.
- Consumer Price Index (CPI):
# Participants: Any
Details: Participants develop a simplified Consumer Price Index (CPI) based on purchasing decisions made by the members of the workshop. They use their simplified CPI to practice calculating inflation rates and to draw conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of an index like the CPI. The exercise also provides a concrete example of the sources of bias in the CPI, leading to a more advanced discussion of the measures the Bureau of Labor Statistics has taken recently to reduce these biases.
- Investment Coordination:
# Participants: 4-100
Details: In this workshop, participants represent firms that make investment decisions. They play a repeated game in which each firm privately chooses its level of investment. The one-shot game has two Pareto-ranked Nash Equilibria. In the Pareto inferior equilibrium all of the firms invest at a low level, generating a recession. In the Pareto superior equilibrium all of the firms invest at a high level, generating an expansion. Participating in the workshop helps students understand theories that posit coordination failure as the cause of economic fluctuations. Students see that when firms expect a recession, their resulting low levels of investment actually cause a recession. Likewise, when firms expect an expansion, their resulting high levels of investment cause an expansion.
- Effects of Real v.s. Nominal Interest Rates on Investment (Credit Markets):
# Participants: 12-60
Details: This workshop uses a hands-on approach to help students of introductory economics courses understand that investment depends on real rather than nominal interest rates. The difference between real and nominal interest rates constitutes one of the most important concept taught in macroeconomics courses. In this experiment, participants demonstrate for themselves how real interest rates affect investment decisions. They take the roles of borrowers and lenders, actively generating data which they then analyze. From their participation and follow-up analysis, students see macroeconomic theory in action and test its predictive power.
- Unemployment Compensation:
# Participants: 11 - 100
Details: This workshop illustrates how the level of unemployment compensation can affect unemployment rates and the distribution of income. Participants take the roles of workers and employers who use double oral auction labor markets to negotiate employment contracts. The instructor takes the role of a government that offers progressively more generous levels of unemployment compensation. The experiment produces data which students can analyze to test the general predictive power of economic theory. Students also use their data to test the specific hypothesis that more generous unemployment compensation causes a higher unemployment rate and a narrower distribution of income.
- Money as a Medium of Exchange:
# Participants: 12-60
Details: This workshop promotes discussion of the social origins and characteristics of money. Participants take the roles of traders who face a double coincidence of wants problem. As they recognize the benefits of overcoming trading frictions, participants spontaneously begin using a medium of exchange. The setting comes from Duffy and Och's (1999) experimental version of the Kiyotaki-Wright (1989) search model of money. In the Kiyotaki-Wright (KW) environment, agents specialize in production, but consume a good other than their own product. This experiment demonstrates how specialization and decentralization endogenously give rise to money. Furthermore, the experiment promotes discussion of the characteristics of an item that make it a good candidate for becoming money. Here, the commodity with the lowest storage spontaneously emerges as a generally accepted medium of exchange. A great introduction to those interested in pursuing intermediate macroeconomics and/or money and banking courses as to the kinds of topics covered in these courses.
- Federal Funds Market:
# Participants: 9-100
Details: In this workshop, students represent banks which borrow or lend in the federal funds market. As participants negotiate loans with each other, they see how Federal Reserve open market operations affect the interest rates on their loans. Participating in the experiment vividly demonstrates why the removal of banking reserves via an open market sale raises the federal funds rate, and why the addition of banking reserves via an open market purchase lowers the federal funds rate.
- Lucas Islands:
# Participants: 10-100
Details: This workshop demonstrates the effects on real aggregate output of anticipated versus unanticipated monetary policy. The experiment follows Lucas's (1972) description of unanticipated monetary disturbances leading to confusion about real values and hence to fluctuations in aggregate output. Participants simultaneously take the roles of workers and consumers in a version of Lucas's island economy. They make labor market decisions based on their estimates of how monetary policy is affecting the price level. Their decisions generate data which they then use to test the proposition that anticipated monetary policy has no affect on real aggregate output in this setting.
.
.
|
