Keri Jacobs, assistant professor with the Department of Economics, will fill a research and extension position focused on the economics of cooperatives and working with Iowa cooperatives to address emerging issues Jacobs joined the ISU faculty in 2010 with interests in economics related to agricultural business, land-use decisions and agricultural policy.

The Iowa Institute for Cooperatives, which represents 150 cooperatives in the state, has expressed its commitment to support Jacobs’ research and extension program. The nonprofit association currently is undertaking a fundraising project with a goal of $1 million. Jacobs will begin serving in the position on August 15.

Kaivan Munshi, Brown University, will present Friday's Department Seminar,"Black Networks After Emancipation: Evidence from Reconstruction and the Great Migration," starting at 3:40 PM in 368A Heady Hall.

Kaivan Munshi’s research career has been devoted almost exclusively to the analysis of social networks. His early research, supported in part by the NIH, focused on social learning in the adoption of agricultural and contraceptive technology, and the identification of migrant labor market networks. Within this line of research, Munshi (QJE 2003) was the first paper to credibly identify network effects – among Mexican migrants in the U.S. -- in the economics literature. This heavily cited paper spawned a new literature on networks in migration and development that continues to be a rapidly growing research area within economics. Munshi’s subsequent research, supported by the NIH and the NSF, has examined the effect of networks on education, health, and mobility, which are key determinants of growth and development. Much of this research has been situated in India, where caste is a natural social domain around which networks are organized (eg. Munshi and Rosenzweig, AER 2006, and Munshi, REStud 2011). However, other work has been situated in diverse locales, including Kenya, Bangladesh, and the United States.

Corbett Grainger, University of Wisconsin at Madison, will present Wednesday's Environmental/Resources Workshop entitled, "Resource Rents, Inframarginal Rents, and the Transition to Property Rights in a Common Pool Resource," starting at 12 PM in 368A Heady Hall.

Grainger is an assistant professor in the AAE Department at University of Wisconsin – Madison. His research interests are primarily in environmental and natural resource economics, with an emphasis on the distributional effects of regulations, property rights and institutions. Grainger's current work studies the effects of environmental regulations on different demographic groups, the political economy of environmental policies, and the economic and ecological effects of rights-based management in marine fisheries. He has a PhD in Economics from UC-Santa Barbara.

Enjoy photos from the recent EGSA Department of Economics spring picnic, held last Friday, April 13! Click on the image left to view the full photo gallery.