A reminder that the Department of Economics holiday party will be held on Wednesday, December 7, from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM in 368A Heady Hall. Join your friends and coworkers for food and fellowship!

Dramatic losses in population in rural Iowa counties have raised serious questions about the future vitality of these areas. The issue was broached in a recent article by Kyle Munson of The Des Moines Register. The article featured commentary from Professor Mark Edelman, director of the Community Vitality Center, and Liesl Eathington, assistant scientist with ReCAP. Read the full article at: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20111127/NEWS03/311270044/-1/gallery_array/Pockets-vitality-flourish-statistics-remain-grim

"Financial market globalization and endogenous rise and fall of nations," with Tomoo Kikuchi, National University of Singapore, Monday, December 5, 4:10 pm - 5:30 pm, 368A Heady Hall.

Tomoo Kikuchi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the National University of Singapore. His main fields of interests are Economic Growth and Development. He has mainly worked with overlapping generations models to identify causes for phenomena such as poverty trap, multiple equilibria, symmetry breaking and endogenous fluctuations. He has published two papers in Journal of Economic Theory among others. He obtained his PhD in Economics at Bielefeld University in 2006.

Abstract: This paper presents a theory of endogenous rise and fall of nations as a result of financial market globalization. The world economy consists of inherently identical economies, which differ only in their levels of capital stock. Each country is represented by the standard overlapping generations model, modified only to incorporate indivisible investment with uninsurable risk. When each economy operates in autarky, the steady state is symmetric and globally stable. After credit markets are integrated, the world economy is endogenously divided into two groups, whose primacy switches periodically when consumers are sufficiently risk averse and the capital share in production is more than one half.

The NSF Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) program is an umbrella for two complementary subprograms: Building Innovation Capacity (BIC), which involves an earlier stage that focuses on building innovation capacity, and Accelerating Innovation Research (AIR), which involves a later stage that focuses on the acceleration of innovative research. The former emphasizes the transformation of knowledge to market-accepted innovations created by the research and education enterprise, while the latter emphasizes the translation of research to commercialization by NSF-funded research alliances. A research alliance is defined as a research partnership formed for mutual benefit, and funded by NSF, between/amongst universities and other entities. In the final analysis, both programs, while focusing on different stages are concerned with the movement of academic research into the marketplace.

Lead academic institutions are limited to participation in only one BIC proposal. There is no organizational limit for AIR proposals. Each PI may submit only one proposal.

Letter of intent required January 4, 2012, full proposal March 1.

For more information: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504708

Your pre-proposal should contain the following information:

• Summary of the proposal (no more than 2 pages) highlighting the intellectual merits of the proposal

• Tentative list of participants (internal and external collaborators)

• Explain why your proposal would be competitive (1 page) -- explain the strengths and uniqueness of your proposal, given the review criteria.

• Explain how your proposal would address NSF’s Broader Impacts requirement (half page).

Preproposals must be submitted to Dorothy Pimlott (dpimlott@iastate.edu) by close of business, Monday, December 5, 2011.