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Announcements for Friday, January 27, 2012

Announcements

  • Spring semester work schedule for Tan Nguyen

    A reminder that Student IT Technician Tan Nguyen is now located in room 62 Heady Hall. 4-2719; tdnguyen@iastate.edu

    Here are the hours he's available for tech support this semester:M-F, 2-4 PM

    M, 8-9 AM

    W, 8-10 AM

News

  • Swenson discusses the pace of Iowa's economic recovery on Iowa Press

    Iowa's economic heartbeat is slowly recovering, but many are wondering how fast and how strong. ISU Department of Economics' Dave Swenson and Creighton University's Ernie Goss were guests on Iowa Press, discussing these issues. View the January 13 episode at: http://www.iptv.org/iowapress/episode.cfm/3919/video

  • Snedecor Lecture/Department of Statistics: "Bootstrapping r-fold tensor data," with Art B. Owen, Stanford University

    "Bootstrapping r-fold tensor data," with Art B. Owen, Stanford University

    Monday, January 30, 4:10 PM, Hoover 1312

    Abstract: The famous Netflix data is a sparsely sampled table with rows for customers and columns for movies (or vice versa). Both movies and rows are naturally modeled as random effects. Bootstrapping such data is problematic: no proper bootstrap can exist, according to a theorem of Peter McCullagh. Resampling rows and columns independently is effective though slightly conservative.

    Computerized data gathering frequently produces data sets with three-way or even higher order data tables. We present a bootstrap for such tensor valued data. Our version uses independent weights instead of multinomial ones. It remains mildly conservative. Poisson weights are close to the original bootstrap, but binary weights have computational and statistical advantages. Under certain conditions a single bootstrap replicate suffices to give a variance estimate. We apply our method to show that Facebook users in the UK make longer comments than those in the US when using their phone. The opposite pattern holds for comments made via computer.

  • Weekly media connections for the Department of Economics

    Mike Duffy spoke with the AP and The Daily regarding beginning farmers, and KTRM radio, Kirksville, MO and KMA radio in Shenandoah on land values. William Edwards spoke with David Hest of Farm Industry News about farmers' use of new weather insurance policies.

    Chad Hart spoke with John Pocock, Corn & Soybean Digest, on the loss of the ethanol tax credit and the impact on the corn market.

    Dave Swenson spoke with Dick Layman, a reporter for WHO Radio, on the declining savings rate and if we were lapsing into our old spending habits.

    Additional contacts for Swenson:

    • Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News, on economic indicators and perspectives to go with a story on President Obama's visit to Cedar Rapids.
    • Kate Wells of Iowa Public Radio (WOI) on Iowa's unemployment situation and its pace of recovery from the recession
    • Michael Devine, KVFD Radio in Ft. Dodge, on TIF and how it works in Fort Dodge.
    • Todd Dorr, The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, on President Obama's visit to Cedar Rapids and his emphasis on manufacturing.
    • IPTV STudios on response and observations about Obama's visit.

Graduate Student Announcements

Conferences and Calls for Papers

  • 5th Atlantic workshop on energy and environmental economics

    More information available at: http://www.eforenergy.org/toxa and toxa2012@eforenergy.org

Funding Opportunities

Job Opportunities

  • NAAEA Position announcement
  • Position in agroecology - Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
  • PhD economist for retail prices analysis at ERS

    ERS seeks an economist who will develop and conduct applied research on issues addressing retail food prices and the interaction between consumers and retailers as they relate to USDA food and agricultural policy. Areas of interest include determinants of retail food prices including input costs, seasonality and pricing strategies of various retail formats; forecasting farm-to-retail price margins; distribution of price changes; pricing strategies of retailers; advertising, labeling, and other marketing strategies; temporal and spatial variation in food prices; economics of food away from home (restaurants). Research will be conducted individually and in teams with economists encouraged to use both government and private/proprietary data in their analysis and publish their work in both peer-reviewed journals and ERS-USDA publications. Preference will be given to those with a strong background in applied microeconomics, industrial organization, econometrics, and economic theory, as well as an interest in applied policy-relevant research. A Ph.D. in economics or agricultural economics is required. Besides strong econometric skills, the position requires oral and written communication skills and an ability to communicate technical matters to a wide range of audiences. U.S. citizenship required. Send a CV, statement of interest, and writing sample to Abebayehu Tegene (ategene@ers.usda.gov).

Papers and Presentations

  • Presentation by Ron Deiter

    Ron Deiter presented "Economics and Collegiate Athletics: An Oxymoron or an Awoken Sleeping Giant?" to the ISU Retirees Association at the ISU Alumni Center.