In January, our own Nina Pavcnik was named the Interim Dean of Arts & Sciences. This appointment came after many months serving as the co-lead of the Future of Arts & Sciences project with Provost David Kotz ’86. Dean Pavcnik has been at the forefront of this important transformation for the college of Arts & Sciences and for Dartmouth.
A new Economics course, Research in International Economics (ECON79), was introduced in February giving students an opportunity to interact with leading scholars who present their latest unfinished research projects during lunchtime seminars.
In April, Desmond Ang, an applied economist and associate professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, gave a lecture titled: The Causes and Consequences of Discrimination: Lessons from (and for) Economics. This was the first of two Lectures on Inequality, Discrimination, and Opportunity (LIDO) presented by the Department this year.
The Big Green Economics podcast continued with episodes featuring professors Blanchflower in April and Irwin in May.
In June the Economics class of 2025 included 13 who were awarded honors, 21 were awarded high honors. Twenty four majors wrote theses. The annual poster session provided the largest number of entries to date.
July saw the retirement of longtime faculty member Alan Gustman. To celebrate his retirement, Professor Gustman gave a talk titled: From Punch Cards to AI: Dartmouth Economics From 1969 to Today," on September 16th. It was a reflection on his extraordinary 56-year career at Dartmouth and how the teaching and work of an economist has changed in the last half-century.
In August, Professor Claudia Olivetti was elected a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists.
In September, Professor Robert Staiger was named Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization. As chief economist, Staiger will direct the WTO's Economic Research and Statistic Division, a group of about 30 economists and statisticians, and provide expert advice on economic matters to the WTO's director-general.
September also welcomed the class of 2030 to campus and with it a record number of first year students enrolled in Econ classes. Our open house in the “blobby” was a hive of information sharing!
In October, Kavya Nivarthy ’25 was awarded the Jonathan B. Rintels Prize for the best honors thesis in the Social Sciences for the Class of 2025. Her excellent thesis The Taxing Divide: Realigning Political Effects of the 2017 State and Local Tax (SALT) Deduction Cap also won the Department’s Lewis B. Haney prize for outstanding honors thesis.
(Photo by Janice Fischel)
October also saw Emeritus Professor William Fischel receiving the 2025 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize for his transformative work on land use regulation.
In November, the second LIDO lecture of the year, The Economic Legacy of Colonialism Among Indigenous Populations in North America, was give by McGill University associate professor Maggie Jones.
Rocky and Silsby are quiet in December with students gone and faculty hustling to get their grades in. Staff are busy tying up loose ends before heading out for the holiday break. Happy holidays to all!