Highlights from 2008
Retirement of two highly respected colleagues
Derek Deadman and Ian Bradley two former Senior Lecturers and Associates to the Department of Economics are retiring after a long and outstanding service to the department and the University of Leicester.
Derek and Ian have a combined 78 years of service between them and Professor Peter Jackson (Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences), Professor Kevin Lee (Dean of the Graduate School) and Dr Gaia Garino (Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics) have been reminiscing and sharing the special memories they have of Derek and Ian.
Also, all staff in the Department of Economics wish them a long and happy retirement and they all would like to say a special goodbye and good luck (in their own inimitable way) to them.
Derek and Ian's farewell reception pictures.
UN-LINK meeting in New York chaired by Professor Stephen Hall
Professor Stephen Hall was the Chair of a three hour panel discussion at the UN-LINK meeting in New York last Thursday 23rd october 2008. The UN project LINK is organised jointly by the dept of economic and social affairs at the UN and project LINK, ( Stephen is on the organising committee of the project). It meets twice a year to help formulate the UNs forecast of the world economy which feed into the G7 negotiations. The meeting was dominated by the current financial crises called for the creation of a new world regulatory structure for the finance industry and coordinated monetry and fiscal policy to deal with the crisis. There were 5 other members on the panel, Ray Barrell from the national institute of economic and social research, Giorgio Basevi from Bologna university, Jose Antonio Ocampo from Columbia universty and former under secretary general of the UN, John Walker from Oxford economics and Carl Weinberg from high frequency econnomic .
For more information regarding the United Nations Project Link please follow the link.
Staff Distinction: Dr Abbi Kedir
The Department of Economics is delighted to announce that Dr Abbi Kedir, has won a Visiting Scholarship to the very prestigious World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University of Helsinki.
The WIDER visiting postion (Helsinki) is a research spell to be spent on investigating "Health, nutrition and productivity" as an extension to Dr Kedir's previous work on household panel data.
Dr Kedir is also the leading investigator for two other research projects:
- The Leicester-Gondar link and The British Academy fellowship:
On the 19th of April to 28 of April, a visitor from the Leicester-Gondar link in Ethiopia will be arriving to Leicester to work on a paper with Dr Kedir on "Health conditions and household welfare in Ethiopia". - In July this year another visitor will be arriving from Tobago to work with Dr Kedir on The British Academy fellowship which is a research on "Measuring Poverty and Inequality in Trinidad and Tobago" based on household panel data.
Issues hitting the headlines
Leicester Professor Panicos Demetriades talks about the head-on-issues that have been hitting the headlines:
Former Economics and Law Graduate fired in the Apprentice
After appearing on The Apprentice for eight weeks, former Leicester graduate Sara Dhada was unceremoniously booted off the show on Wednesday 14th May.
Sara, who read Law and Economics at this University, was fired by Sir Alan Sugar after being set a task of selling at a wedding fair at the NEC.
Two of our Economic graduates secure coveted positions with MediaCom
Rhona Phu and Sareena Kaur, two of our 2008 graduates have recently secured coveted positions with MediaCom. MediaCom is the UK’s largest global communications agency. As a communications agency, MediaCom plan and buy communications for large and small companies all over the UK and the world. MediaCom work across all household names including T-mobile, Universal music and film, IKEA, Direct Line, Mint, Lucozade, Sky, EA Games, Ribena, Beechams, Aquafresh to name but a few!
This year, MediaCom teamed up with the Department of Economics at Leicester to award an annual prize of £50 to the BSc student that produced the best final year computer-based project in either Applied Econometrics or Business Statistics which was decided by the Board of Examiners for Economics.
The winner of the MediaCom Economics prize was BSc student Sareena Kaur. As well as receiving this accolade, MediaCom, additionally and separately offered a job interview to Sareena. In fact, they also offered other interviews to students who had also performed well in the project, one such student was Rhona Phu. Both students had successful interviews and consequently they were employed as Graduate Econometricians with the company.
Sareena works across Dolphin Bathrooms, Moben Kitchens, GSK, IG and Sharp bedrooms within the UK market and Rhona works across the Dell account, working across the European, American and Asian markets.
This venture with MediaCom came about through discussions with a recent BSc student who now also works for the company as an Econometrics Manager. Therefore, this partnership has proven to be a very successful for all concerned and it is hoped that it will continue long into the future.
MediaCom also took the first lecture at the start of the second semester this year to discuss the use of econometrics and statistics in the real world and the use that their company makes of these areas.
- Read more about Sereena's experience with MediaCom
- Read more about Rhona's experience with MediaCom
- Further information pertaining to MediaCom
University of Leicester Finance Society's day out in London
Last year, the University of Leicester Finance Society hosted its first trip to London and visited the Bank of England Museum and the London Stock Exchange.
The Finance Society was founded by two University of Leicester second year students in January 2008, one of whom is from the Economics department and one is from the Law department. Since that time they have recruited 5 other people onto the committee, three from Economics, 1 one from engineering and 1 from Law. Their intention is to help students gain more of an insight into the Finance and Corporate Law sector.
The visit to the Bank of England allowed the students to explore the evolution of the early English banking system, and it provided them an interactive opportunity to learn about the different roles of the bank since its creation in 1964. They discovered how the Bank of England’s first deposits helped finance war efforts in France during 1793-1815 as well as the management of government borrowing during the 1st and 2nd World Wars. The tour visualised the progression of money into legal tender, this included the introduction of the ‘Golden Standard’ illustrating its contributions to inflation control and the growth in international trade.
Equally, the London Stock Exchange Seminar proved to be an insightful experience into one of the UK’s largest and most influential financial institutions. The structured seminar focused on the progression of the London Stock Exchange away from the vision of high flying stock brokers screaming at large computer screens to the role that computer software and internet access now have on the stock market. The seminar was hosted by a life-long employee of the London Stock Exhange who introduced the Finance Society to the true face of stock broking providing an overview of the securities market and the specialist fund markets and how they are traded. The seminar also explored the vital role of regulation in today’s market and concepts such as short-selling which has had such a profound impact on the UK financial market recently. As part of the seminar, students were able to speculate the closing value of the FTSE 100 at 16.29 for the closing auction the most volatile time of the trading day.
All in all, the day proved to be very informative and Sam Lowry (a 3rd year Maths with Astronomy student) said “the highlight for me was the Stock Exchange. The seminar was really well run and at no stage did I feel confused or out of place which I feared I would. However, I was gutted to have missed out on guessing the FTSE closing price right by one point! I would thoroughly recommend this trip to anybody who wants to learn about the world of finance, even if they aren't doing a finance degree!"
To date the University of Leicester Finance Society have hosted a variety of career-inspired events including ‘Stock Market trading’ sessions and ‘speed-networking’ sessions with a range of graduate employers. If you would like any further information regarding Finance Society and their events please contact su-finance@le.ac.uk .
School in Panel Data Econometrics
A school in Panel Data Econometrics will be held by Professor Badi Baltagi at the University of Leicester, Department of Economics from the 1-5 September 2008.
Applications of panel data methods in all fields of economics have been on the rise in recent years. This is an intensive course that considers methodological and substantive issues concerning the analysis of panel data. The course aims to introduce participants to the techniques of panel data econometrics and their application to economic data.
Health Econometrics Workshop
University of Milan - Bicocca: 4-6th DECEMBER 2008
In recent years, health econometrics has been playing an important role in supporting health and social care policy decisions. This Workshop provides the opportunity to disseminate advances in the methods and applications of health econometrics.
For further information about the Workshop you can contact Dr. Francesco Moscone at fm83@le.ac.uk.
See photographs from the Conference
Economic Students Gain Recognition through National Management Skills Award
128 Students from the University of Leicester, 11 of which were from the Economics Department, were congratulated on their achievements at a recent Celebration Event for the Leicester Award for Employability Skills.
The event, which took place on May 8th in the Charles Wilson Building, marked the students’ successful completion of the Leicester Award for Employability Skills, run by the University’s Careers Service. The students were presented with a Management Skills Award, endorsed by the Institute of Leadership & Management, by the Vice-Chancellor Professor Bob Burgess.
Hannah Perks, a third year student with the Economics department participated because she was president of the University Choral Society 2007-2008 and felt that the skills she had learnt in that role would be acknowledged by doing the Leicester Award. When asked what she gained form attaining the award she commented that, “The Leicester award has enabled me to reflect on my time at the University constructively and to look to the future with focused aims”. She also recognised that the skills she has attained, particularly in presenting, will be extremely useful for the future.
Hannah is first on the left.
Yet another paper by economists at Leicester listed among the hottest 10 in a leading journal
Professor Panicos O. Demetriades, Doctor Svetlana Andrianova and Dr Anja Shortland (former lecturer at the University of Leicester) have co-authored an article entitled "Government ownership of Banks, Institutions and Financial Development" which has appeared in the Journal of Development Economics, February 2008. This publication is a leading journal in the field of development economics. As well as the article appearing in the journal it was also placed tenth in among the journal's top 25 hottest articles.
This continues an impressive list of papers written by economists in the department that have appeared in the prestigious top 10 list on Science Direct. For example, two papers in behavioural economics co-authored by Dr. Ali al-Nowaihi and Dr. Sanjit Dhami made it to respectively the 3rd and the 8th positions on this list. The details of these latter papers are as follows:
"A Note On The Loewenstein-Prelec Theory Of Intertemporal Choice." Mathematical Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 1, pages 99-108 (2006).
"A simple derivation of Prelec's probability weighting function." Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 50 (6), pages 521-524 (2006).
Success at the African Econometric Society
Two members of the Department, Professors Badi Baltagi and Stephen Hall, have been invited to become fellows of the African Econometric Society. Professors Baltagi and Hall were two of the three keynote speakers at the Society's 13th Annual Conference on Econometric Modelling, held at the School of Economics Sciences at the University of Pretoria in the second week of July. Additionally, Mr. Hakeem Mobolaji, a PhD student in the Department, was awarded a scholarship for the Conference, at which he presented his paper, 'Globalisation and financial development in Sub-Saharan Africa (1980-2005).'
The African Econometric Society is an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation to statistics and mathematics. Members of the society are associated with academic institutions and the private and public sectors. They share the goal of advancing econometric research, especially related to (but not limited to) African themes.
Badi Baltagi is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at Syracuse University, Part-Time Professor at the University of Leicester and associate editor of the Journal of Econometrics. Stephen Hall is a Professor of Economics at the University of Leicester and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. He is also editor of Economic Modelling, and a member of the executive Committee of the UN project LINK. Hakeem Mobalaji is a PhD student in Economics at the University of Leicester. His PhD thesis is on "Financial Development, Human Capital and Economic Growth in Sub Saharan Africa."
The Department of Economics would like to warmly welcome the arrival of the following four new lecturers:
Dr Daniel Ladley, whose research interests are: Market microstructure; financial economics; computational, agent-based and evolutionary approaches.
Dr James Rockey, whose research interests are: Political economics; applied econometrics; economic growth.
Dr Javier Rivas, whose research interests are: Microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization and social networks.
Dr Hyeyoen Kim, whose research interests are: Large data sets; macroeconomic shocks; purchasing power parity.
Leicester Economists article, placed in top 25
An article by three economists in the department, Dr. Ali al-Nowaihi, Mr. Ian Bradley and Dr. Sanjit Dhami has been chosen as one of the Top 25 Hottest articles in Science Direct (published in Economics Letters). The article is placed in the position 15/25. However, the list includes articles that have been published 10 years ago and so with time there will potentially be further changes in that list.
The complete citation for the article is:
This is the third time that Dr. Ali al-Nowaihi and Dr. Sanjit Dhami have broken into the list of Top 25 Hottest Articles in Science Direct. All these three articles are in the field of behavioural economics, in which these authors hae contributed actively.
