To: Economics Majors, Joint Majors, and Concentrators
From: Susan Elmes, Economics Department DUS
Subject: Information for academic year 2006-2007
Date: August 2006

This memo is addressed to all students who have declared a major, joint major, concentration, or minor in economics to help you plan your academic program. Please take a few minutes to read through the information below and be sure to check the department's web page for any last minute changes.

New Chair

On July 1st the department welcomed a new chair, Janet Currie.  After 5 years as chair, Don Davis returned to the faculty. Prof. Davis's tenure as chair was one of the most successful in the department's history. Many of you are aware of the Economics Initiative which is an ongoing effort to augment the size and enhance the reputation of the department begun by Prof Davis (and if you are not familiar with it then check out New York Magazine). During the upcoming academic year Prof Davis will be teaching the graduate international trade course but we expect that in the near future he will return to the undergraduate class room to teach. We thank him for all of his service to the department.

Course Information

For the most up to date information on class offerings (including registration numbers) you should always check the Registrar's Directory of Classes. In most cases the economics department sets the course cap equal to the room capacity. Because of the shortage of class room space it is generally not possible to move classes to larger rooms. Hence, when class registration reaches the cap number you cannot be added to the class roster by the department or the faculty member. In this instance you must wait until the registration falls below the cap before you can register.

Finance Related Courses

The department is offering the following finance related courses in the fall semester. At this time we expect to offer all of these courses again in the spring semester.

Course	Day & Time	Instructor	Pre-requisites
W2261 Intro to Accounting and Finance (sec 1)	MW 8:10-10 PM	Zhang	W1105
W2261 Intro to Accounting and Finance (sec 2)	TR 6:10-8	Guirguis	W1105
V3025 Financial Economics	MW 6:10 - 7:25	Santangelo	W3211 &  W3213
V3265 Money and Banking	MW 4:10 - 5:25	Mehrling	W3211 & W3213
W4280 Corporate Finance	MW 12:30 - 2	Adler	W3211, W3213, W2261 & Stat W1211

W2261 Intro to Accounting and Finance
During the registration period in April, only section 1 of accounting and finance was open for registration and 179 students are registered for it (the maximum cap). We have now added section 2 on Tuesday and Thursday and we hope that some of the students in section 1 will switch to section 2. The course cap on section 1 will be lowered to 150 students to encourage students to register for section 2. The department will NOT remove any students from section 1.

W4280 Corporate Finance
Please make a special note of the time that Corporate Finance is offered, 12:30 - 2. The course is being held in Uris Hall and so it must conform to the standard scheduled class times of the business school.

Other Fall Course Changes

W4345 World Economic Problems
Prof Phelps will offer World Economic Problems in the fall semester. The course is a survey of the 20th century schools of thought in political economy. The course will not be offered in the spring semester.

W4615 Law and Economics 
Prof Che will offer Law and Economics in the fall semester.  The course will not be offered in the spring semester.

W4213 Advanced Macroeconomics 
The department will not offer Advanced Macro in the fall semester. We hope to offer it in the spring semester.

Seminars 

• Please note that seminars will be strictly limited to 15 students. Seminar registration is closed to on-line and phone registration and is done in person in the economics department at 9 AM on the first day of the semester (9/5). Registration is on a first come-first serve basis. During the first week of classes only seniors may register for seminars. After the first week of classes any student who has completed his or her core requirements in economics may register for any seminar that remains open (i.e. has fewer than 15 students). For more information about the registration process please see the senior seminar page.

• Students in the Econ-Poli Sci joint major must take W4921. This seminar will be offered in both semesters. In the fall semester, registration for W4921 is open to all students and in the spring, it will be restricted to students in the joint major only. All students in the seminar must take W4370 Political Economy either before or concurrently with the seminar. All students must have completed their econometrics requirement (either W3412 or POLS W4911) before taking the seminar.

• Students in the Econ-Philosophy joint major must take W4950 which is only offered in the spring semester. This year the joint seminar with philosophy will be co-taught by Philip Kitcher from the philosophy department and Ron Findlay from the economics department.

• Students in the Econ-Statistics and Econ-ORjoint majors must take the econometrics seminar, W4918, which will be offered in both semesters. In the fall semester Ed Vytlacil will offer a seminar focusing on the use of econometrics to evaluate public policies. In the spring semester Til Schuermann will focus on financial econometrics. It will be assumed that students registered for this seminar have a strong background in econometrics and statistics.

• Padma Desai will teach G4421 Topics on Problems of Emerging Market Economies this fall. This seminar is open to SIPA students as well as Columbia undergraduates. To register for this course you must contact Prof Desai to get her approval. You may take this course to fulfill your seminar requirement in the economics department. You do not sign up for this seminar during the seminar sign-up period.

• Students interested in Prof. Gulati's seminar in the fall should follow the regular procedure for seminar registration (register in person at 9 AM in the economics department on the first day of classes). However the registration cap for in-person sign up will be 12 students. The remaining 3 students will be chosen by Prof Gulati from the wait-list. To be chosen from the wait list you must meet with Prof Gulati that morning (the first day of classes) between 10:30 and 12 in his office. Be prepared to tell him what topics you may be interested in researching for your seminar paper.

Departmental Honors

All students who are interested in writing a senior honors thesis during academic year 2006-07 should have spoken with me during the spring 2006 term.  Regardless of whether you did or did not speak with me in the spring you must send me an email ASAP (se5@columbia.edu). In your email you must include a one paragraph description of your proposed topic and the paragraph must contain at least one economics question that you would like to address in your thesis. In a second paragraph tell me what in your background (either class work or work experience) that qualifies you to work on your proposed topic (e.g. if your topic is Russian exchange rate movements you might want to tell me that you have taken international monetary theory). Finally you should include in your email the name(s) of faculty members that you believe would be interested in working with you. If you do not know a faculty member who would be interested then you should look at the department's website for information on their research interests.

After I have received your email, I may contact you to set up a meeting to discuss your proposal.  My role is to help match students with an appropriate faculty member who will serve as the student's thesis advisor.  Once I have approved your proposal Laura Yan will register you into W4999 Honor Thesis.

W4999 will run as a year long course for 3 points per semester (students will be automatically registered again in the spring), with a grade reported only at the end of the academic year. Honors thesis candidates must have a gpa of at least a 3.7 in their major requirements, which includes the math and statistics requirements. Writing a thesis will substitute for the departmental seminar requirements. Students who wish to drop out of the honors program during the fall semester may do so, but he or she will receive no credit for the course and the course will be removed from his or her transcript. The student will then have to take a senior seminar to satisfy the seminar requirement. Please see the Honors and Prizes page on the department website for more information regarding the senior honors thesis and for a list of those students who received departmental honors in the class of 2006.

In addition to working one-on-one with your faculty advisor the senior thesis candidates will meet on occasion as a group to discuss their research and to present their final results. In the fall these meetings will be held on Tuesdays from 4:10 to 6 with Profs. Dhrymes and Miyagawa in attendance. You must be able to attend the Tuesday meetings if you would like to write a senior thesis.

Advising and Transfer Credits

• All economics transfer credits must be approved by the department of economics. This year the department will divide the transfer credit approvals between myself and Sunil Gulati. If you have transferred to Columbia and you would like to transfer some credits from economics courses taken before you came to Columbia then you should see me. If you are at Columbia and would like to take economics courses at another institution (including courses taken abroad) then you should see Dr Gulati. Throughout the semester each of us will hold office hours for transfer credit approvals. All of these office hours are/will be posted on the advisors page of the website.

• All requests for transfer credits must be submitted in either Dr. Gulati's  or my mailbox 24 hours in advance of your meeting. To submit your requests to receive transfer credits please use the departmental form. In addition to the form you must also submit a syllabus or a course description from the course for which you would like to receive credit. No transfer credits will be approved without a course syllabus (or description). You should seek preliminary approval for transfer credits before taking a class at another college or university. After you have taken the course you must bring to the department the course syllabus and examples of your course work (e.g. exams and problem sets). At that time the department will determine whether or not you will receive the course credit. Please refer to the section on Transfer Credits in the FAQ for more information.

• Contact information for all major advisors can be found on the advisors page. Please note that all joint majors are assigned two advisors - one in each department. The advisor in the economics department may be able to help you with course selection in your other department but he or she cannot advise you on the requirements of the other department nor grant any exemptions from those requirements. The same is true of your advisor in the other department (i.e. he or she can help you select economics courses but cannot exempt you from economics requirements).

Requirements

• Each year a few students fail to graduate on time because they fail to complete their major or joint major requirements. Most often they simply did not know what their requirements were. You can find all of your major requirements on the website on the requirements page.

• Over the summer the department has reviewed the transcripts of all of the newly declared majors. Each newly declared major was sent a checklist which detailed the requirements that you have completed to date and the requirements that you have yet to fulfill in order to graduate with your declared major. If you believe there was an error on your checklist you should contact Laura Yan (ly38) and detail for her the error.

• The DAR is a useful tool for looking at the classes that you have completed in an organized manner (organized by subject and not semester as a transcript is). However, for a variety of reasons, the DAR's check of major requirements is sometimes erroneous. Hence you should not simply conclude that a check on the DAR indicating that your requirements have been fulfilled (or the lack of a check indicating that they are not) means that you have in fact completed your major requirements. You should always compare your completed courses including your department approved transfer courses to the requirements listed on the economics department website (at the website above).

• If you are a joint major then only economics elective courses at the 3000 level or higher may be counted towards your major requirements. If you are an Economics-Philosophy joint major then only courses from the following list may be taken to fulfill your major requirements: W4020 Economics of Uncertainty and Information, W4080 Globalization, Incomes and Inequality, G4235 Historical Foundations of Modern Economics, G4301 Economic Growth and Development, W4321 Economic Development, W4329 Economics of Sustainable Development, W4345 World Economic Problems, W4370 Political Economy, W4400 Labor Economics, W4415 Game Theory, W4438 Economics of Race in the United States. W4465 Public Economics, W4500 International Trade, W4615 Law and Economics, W4625 Economics of the Environment, W4750 Globalization and its Risks, BC3011 Inequaltiy and Poverty, BC3019 Labor Economics, BC3029 Development Economics, and BC3041 Theoretical Foundations of Political Economy. Courses underlined in the list are offered in the fall semester.

Undergraduate TA Positions
This fall the department is hiring undergraduates to work alongside our graduate students as teaching assistants in several courses. Each assistant will be paid $1500 per semester. An announcement was emailed earlier this month and is posted on the announcements page.

Fed Challenge
The Fed College Challenge is an economics competition sponsored by the New York Federal Reserve Bank.  Five-member teams from colleges and universities in the New York Fed region make 15-minute presentations and respond to the judges' questions on current macroeconomic conditions, macroeconomic analysis, and the Federal Reserve System.  The judges are economists from the NYFRB, universities and private firms. The winners here in NYC will travel to Washington DC to compete in the national Fed challenge at the Board of Governors. The Fed Challenge is a great way to learn more about macroeconomics, monetary economics, and central banking as well as an opportunity to polish your presentation and networking skills. The workshop to prepare the team for the competition will meet on Wednesday evenings from 6 - 7:30. If you are interested in participating you should contact Sharon Harrison in the Barnard economics department.

Undergraduate Research Assistants
Faculty members looking for undergraduate research assistants will post notices on the bulletin boards in the economics department and on the economics department website. The notices go up first on the bulletin boards (located outside of 1022 IAB) where you will also find the latest information on jobs, internships and other opportunities for undergraduates. Alternatively if you know of a faculty member who would like to hire you as an assistant then please have that faculty member contact me so that I can arrange it. Please note that to register for research credit you must have my approval. We usually grant 2 credits for approximately 5-7 hours of work per week and students may register for W4996 for up to 3 semesters. Please note that while students may receive credit for this course, it may not be used as a substitute for elective or seminar requirements in the major.

Graduate Study in Economics
Students interested in pursuing graduate work in economics are encouraged to read the admission guide on econphd.net. In addition we have information on our website in the FAQ page. If you are considering graduate work you should speak with either your departmental advisor or me. Our advising hours can be found on the advisors webpage.

Prizes

All prizes are open to majors and students in the joint majors.

The Parker Prize is awarded each year to the top CC economics major that will be pursuing a Ph.D. in economics. The prize committee will consider applicants who are not planning to immediately start graduate school the next academic year, although preference may be given to those students who are entering a Ph.D. program in 2006-07.   Please be sure to let me know in the fall semester if you are applying for graduate study in economics for academic year 2006-07, or else plan to pursue a Ph.D. in economics within the next few years.

The David Estabrook Romine Prizes in Economics are available to both CC and GS students - one prize will be awarded for the best paper written in a senior seminar, and one prize will be awarded for the best senior honors thesis (the two prizes may not be given to the same student). Faculty will be asked to nominate students for these prizes and I will make the final choice in consultation with the faculty. All prize winners will be announced at the end of the Spring term. If you are taking a senior seminar in the fall of your senior year and you want to be considered for the Romine Prize then you should speak with your instructor before the first week of April. At that time your instructor will be able to tell you when the deadline is for submission of a paper to be considered for the Romine Prize. For more information about the prizes and a list of the prize winners in 2006 please refer to the Departmental Honors and Prizes page on the website.

Arrivals and Departures

Faculty Arriving
The department welcomes two new members this fall. David Lee is joining us from UC Berkeley. Prof Lee is a labor economist with a wide range of interests from health economics to political economy. Dennis Kristensen is joining us from Univ Wisconsin at Madison. Prof Kristensen is an econometrician who works on both time series and panel data problems.

Faculty Departing
We are also saying good bye to three members of the department. Mitali Das has joined the UC Davis faculty and Atila Abdulkadiroglu has joined the Duke faculty. And after many years of teaching, research and service to the department Stanislaw Wellisz has retired. All three will be missed.

Faculty On Leave 2006-07
Amarante (Spring), Casella (Spring), Davis (Spring), Edlund (Fall-Spring), Henry (Spring), Ho (Fall-Spring), Kopczuk (Spring), Mundell (Fall-Spring), Preston (Fall-Spring), Riordan (Fall-Spring), Vytlacil (Spring), von Wachter (Fall-Spring), Weinstein (Fall), and Woodford (Fall).