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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.
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Upcoming Schedule of Events
Fall 2006
This semester, we meet in C1007 at 5pm every other Tuesday
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9.19.06: C1007
Time: 5pm
Inaugural Meeting for Fall 2006 Semester
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10.17.06: Room C1007;
Time: 5pm
Workshop I : The Federal Funds Market
Instructions for Participating In The Experiment (will appear soon)
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10.31.06: Room C1007;
Time: 5pm
Discussion Session II : Panel Discussion of Small Business Economics
Participants: Dan Terferra, Mike Heaney
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11.14.05: Room C1007;
Time: 5pm
TBA
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11.28.05: Room C1007;
Time 5pm
TBA
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12.12.06: Location & Time: TBA
End of Semester Pizza Night
Spring 2006
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http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02112006.html
Weekend Edition
February 11/12, 2006
Forget Iran, Americans Should be Hysterical About This
Nuking the Economy
New News
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New President of Economics Club: Mike Heaney
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Inagural Fall Meeting scheduled for September 19th, 2006: Room C1007
Recent Speakers
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.
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Trade Wars and Sanctions
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Health Care
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Globalization and Outsourcing
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Trends in US Education
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Trends in US Manufacturing and Services
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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.
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