| Undergraduate Newsletter - Fall 2006
Dear Economics Students:
Another year is well begun and registration time is upon us. Four of our classes for this winter will be taught by faculty who have no CTECs for undergraduate classes here, so we thought you might like to know a little more about them. The Undergraduate Economics Society (UES) put a list of questions to them and we report their responses below.
Steffen Habermalz joins us after teaching at University of Nebraska and Marquette University. He has been teaching Economics 281 this fall and will do so again in the spring. This winter he will be teaching Labor Economics and also running the Senior Honors Program. Joel Horowitz has been a senior professor at Northwestern for five years not, but has previously only taught Ph.D. level courses in econometrics. This winter he is looking forward to getting to teach undergraduates again in Economics 281. Todd Sarver is a new Ph.D. who joins us from Boston University. Last summer he taught the preparatory class for our incoming Ph.D. students and next quarter he will be teaching Economics 310-2. Finally, Mirko Wiederholt is a macroeconomist who joins us after teaching at Humbolt University in Germany. He will be teaching Economics 361 International Trade.
The Undergraduate Economics Society is always looking for more members to help plan and put on events. Anyone interested in joining should contact Kenny Jin (k-jin@northwestern.edu).
If you have questions about anything relating to the major, please come see me or one of the other economics advisers. Here is our schedule, but if these times aren't good for you, please let me know and we can try to work out something better. Also, if your last midterm was a disaster, some of our graduate students are in the tutoring business, and hopefully you can arrange some sort of beneficial gains from exchange. Here is their contact information.
I hope that the rest of your quarter goes well and that it soon gets back to being unseasonably warm. I look forward to hearing from you.
Mark Witte
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Economics
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Steffen Habermalz – Econ 339 Labor Economics, MW 11-12:30 |
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http://www.faculty.econ.northwestern.edu/faculty/habermalz/ |
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Giessen, Germany (born in the heart of nature [see if you can figure this out]) |
- Where did you go to school?
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University of Giessen (1994-98), University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (1998-2002) |
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Take a wild guess… |
- What was your most interesting job, other than teaching at NU?
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Being an unsuccessful financial advisor (1991-94) was unrewarding but interesting on some levels. |
- What is your research interest?
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Labor Markets (Signaling, Information, Education, Inequality), Trucking, and Beer. |
- What's your favorite television show?
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Frasier, by far. |
- Who do you hope wins on Dancing with the Starts?
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To (loosely) quote Frasier, "Even with an electron microscope I could not locate my interest in 'Dancing with the Stars.'" |
- Will NU football win the Rose Bowl next year?
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A definite "Jein." |
- If I were to read only one economics related book (non-textbook) over the Winter break which one would you suggest it be?
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The Invisible Heart by Russell Roberts. |
- What is the best class you ever took, and why was it the best?
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Labor Economics with Prof. Heywood at UWM. Excellent topic, excellent teacher. |
- What life advice would you give students here?
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Don't watch shows like "Dancing with the Stars." |
- What unexpected thing would we learn in your class?
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If I told you now it wouldn't be unexpected! |
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Joel Horowitz – Econ 281 Introduction to Econometrics, MW 2:00-3:30 plus section |
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http://www.faculty.econ.northwestern.edu/faculty/horowitz/ |
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Pasadena, CA |
- Where did you go to school?
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Stanford and Cornell. |
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Physics. |
- What was your most interesting job, other than teaching at NU?
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Office of Policy Analysis, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency |
- What is your research interest?
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Econometrics. |
- What's your favorite television show?
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I rarely watch TV, so I don't have one. |
- If I were to read only one economics related book (non-textbook) over the Winter break which one would you suggest it be?
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Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. |
- What is the best class you ever took, and why was it the best?
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"The Outsider in Literature" at Stanford. Why is a long story. |
- What life advice would you give students here?
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Get a broad, liberal arts education. Your years here are the last opportunity most of you will have to do this. Don't miss it. |
- What unexpected thing would we learn in your class?
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If I tell you, it won't be unexpected any more, which would spoil the fun. |
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Todd Sarver – Econ 310-2 Micro II, TTh 9:30-11:00 plus section |
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http://www.faculty.econ.northwestern.edu/faculty/sarver/ |
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I am from Lawrenceburg, Indiana, which is just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. |
- Where did you go to school?
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I went to the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio for my undergraduate degree and to Boston University for my graduate studies. |
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My undergraduate major was Mathematical Economics, which as you might guess was a combination of math and economics. The Economics Department had just begun to offer this degree as a way of preparing students for the technical requirements of an economics graduate program. |
- What was your most interesting job, other than teaching at NU?
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I spent a summer volunteering in Texas where I worked with immigrants who had been injured trying to cross the boarder to the United States. Aside from exposing me to some important issues, it was an enlightening cultural immersion experience. |
- What is your research interest?
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I am very interested in how individuals make decisions in different environments. For example, I study how people make choices involving risk when factors like regret are present. I am also interested in many areas of game theory, which is the study of how multiple individuals interact in strategic environments. |
- What's your favorite television show?
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I cannot say I have a favorite, but I like "CSI" and "Grey's Anatomy." |
- What life advice would you give students here?
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It may be a bit cliché, but I think that during college is a good time to think about what you want to accomplish in life. As an undergraduate, I realized that I wanted to better understand social and economic issues and possibly provide better solutions. This realization gave me renewed enthusiasm for studying economics and sociology. |
- What unexpected thing would we learn in your class?
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I will be teaching Econ 310-2 this winter. We will be discussing some interesting issues, such as when markets fail to be efficient and what alternative mechanisms may provide proper incentives for economic agents to act efficiently. What may be unexpected is how easily these principals can be applied to a wide varied of situations that students will encounter in their work and personal lives. |
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Mirko Wiederholt – Econ 361 International Trade, MW 2:00-3:20 |
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http://www2.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/institute/wpol/html/staff/Mirko.html |
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Berlin. |
- Where did you go to school?
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Humboldt University Berlin and European University Institute |
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Economics. |
- What was your most interesting job, other than teaching at NU?
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I worked as a musician after high school. |
- What is your research interest?
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Macroeconomics. |
- What's your favorite television show?
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I don’t have a TV. |
- If I were to read only one economics related book (non-textbook) over the Winter break which one would you suggest it be?
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Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. |
- What is the best class you ever took, and why was it the best?
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I liked all the classes that helped me to understand the real world. |
- What life advice would you give students here?
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Work hard. There are wonderful jobs out there for well-trained economists. |
- What unexpected thing would we learn in your class?
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Economics can be fun. |
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