Earlier this month, Institute writer Lisa Camner McKay sat down with Teegawende Zeida, Assistant Professor of Economics, to discuss how discrimination impacts entrepreneurship, tax policy in countries with high inequality, and the value of understanding GDP.
Read the full article here.
Looking for a course to take in the Winter Term (D3)? Check these out:
Analyzing and providing solutions to current social and economic problems using statistical and data analysis techniques such as regression, quasi-experimental methods, and machine learning. Topics include income and social mobility, equality of opportunity, education, innovation and entrepreneurship, health care, judicial decisions, and climate change.
Duration: Jan. 09, 2023 to Apr. 07, 2023
Format: Lectures, lab, 4 hours per week.
Instructor: Tomson Ogwang
Labour unions in the marketplace. How unions affect, and are affected by, the labour and product markets. Topics include the effects of unions on wages, fringe benefits, turnover, inequality, productivity and the profitability of firms; union behaviour; who belongs to unions and why; collective bargaining; strikes; interest arbitration; public-sector unionism.
Duration: Jan. 09, 2023 to Apr. 07, 2023
Format: Lectures, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: Prerequisite(s): ECON 1P91 and 1P92.
Cross-listing: also offered as LABR 2P15
Instructor: Harvey Stevens
Current understanding of the economics of pandemics including COVID-19. Introduction to key economic and health facts about pandemics. Examination of theoretical models to explain those facts, as well as empirical evidence regarding the success of specific policies such as lock-downs.
Duration: Jan. 09, 2023 to Apr. 07, 2023
Format: Lectures, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: Prerequisite(s): ECON 1P91 and 1P92
Instructor: Taylor Wright
Economic development of the People’s Republic of China, emphasizing the recent reform period (1980s to the present). Topics may include China’s economic structure, institutions, standards of living, income distribution, foreign trade and investment, state versus private ownership, urban and rural reforms, and population policies.
Duration: Jan. 09, 2023 to Apr. 07, 2023
Format: Lectures, 3 hours per week
Prerequisites: Prerequisite(s): ECON 1P91 and 1P92.
Instructor: Qian Liu
Full list of available D3 courses available here
Diane Dupont, Professor in Brock University’s Department of Economics, has been named an inaugural Fellow by the Canadian Resource and Environmental Economics Association (CREEA).
The title was conferred at a virtual CREEA event in November in recognition of her work to advance the profession of environmental and resource economics and her significant contributions to CREEA and its operations.
Brandon Schaufele, Associate Professor of Business, Economics and Public Policy at the Ivey Business School at Western University, spoke about Dupont at the award event and later described Dupont as a world-renowned researcher. He commended both her ability to build research networks and her service to organizations that support researchers. He also pointed out she has built a thriving career in what has been, until recently, a male-dominated field.
“Diane is one of the first and leading female environmental economists in Canada,” said Schaufele. “She has provided an example for a lot people with her work on policy issues and leading research networks, in addition to her support of up-and-coming scholars.”
Dupont’s willingness to collaborate and explore interdisciplinary research opportunities has always been a priority, even in the early days of her research career when environmental economics was just beginning to grow into its own area.
Her determination to examine the issue through different lenses was unusual in the field at the time, but Dupont says that new approaches have combined with the emergence of big data to allow for positive change.
Dupont has also made time to support and mentor colleagues both within and outside of her discipline and to provide service through administrative roles, most recently as the Interim Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences from 2013 to 2017.
“It has been an honour and a delight to work with Diane in her various administrative roles both within the Faculty of Social Sciences and the broader University,” said Ingrid Makus, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. “Her commitment to research excellence and her generosity in supporting faculty, students and staff make her a wonderful colleague.”
Learn more about the award and Diane’s career here.
Economics Professor Robert Dimand takes the old saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” to heart.
Upon his arrival at Brock in 1987, Dimand discovered a discarded five-volume set of the American Economics Association Index of Economic Journals covering 1886 to 1929. Thumbing through the pages, he soon realized he’d uncovered a trove of potential research.
Listed among the expected male contributors were the names of several women. “I thought I was a fairly well-read historian of economic thought, but I’d never heard of these people,” he says.
“You don’t find them in the textbooks of the history of economic thought,” he says. “And yet it turns out that there are an enormous number of interesting contributions by women that haven’t been noticed.”
In part, that could be because, throughout history, women economists had to find ingenious ways around “all sorts of barriers to advancement,” he says. “Some worked in schools of social work or women’s colleges or as dean of women in a co-ed institution.”
Dimand has since made considerable contributions of his own to restore this “overlooked heritage in the history of economics,” co-editing A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists (2000) and The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought (2003).
Most recently, he co-edited The Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought (2018) with lead editor Kirsten Madden.
Dimand doesn’t just write about women economists, he also mentors them. In the Routledge Handbook, Dimand is listed as second author on chapters by two of his former students.
Preparing students to become co-authors and collaborators requires that they learn to look at published work in a new way, he says. “The most important thing before writing is to do a lot of reading but read it with an eye to a different thing from what you’re normally reading for in courses – not to learn about the subject matter of the article but about how an article is presented.”
Having refereed over 300 journal papers, Dimand is keenly aware of the need to keep the reader engaged. “You have to imagine that there’s a reader who keeps saying ‘so what?’ Either you have an answer for that, or you shouldn’t be doing the article that way,” he says.
Lola Fowler (BA ’12, MBE ’16) wrote the initial draft of “The First 100 Years of Female Economists in Sub-Saharan Africa” as a term paper for Dimand when she was a master’s student.
When she discovered “very little literature out there by Africans speaking to the African problem and even less by females,” Dimand challenged her to write the story herself.
As the two collaborated on the book chapter, he acted “almost like a peer reviewer,” Fowler says. “He was never insistent that things had to be done his way; it was usually a suggestion.”
That’s his style, she says. “Letting the student come to their own learning but always being there to guide.”
Fowler, who now works as a business analyst for the Ministry of Transportation, says Dimand helped her “realize the connection” between the formulas and their meanings. “That made me a better TA, a better writer, and a better economist.”
Talia Yousef (BA ’16) majored in Applied Economic Analysis. Her chapter, “Women Economists of the Arab Homeland,” is based on her ECON 4F90 honours essay, which Dimand supervised.
When she first started her undergraduate degree, Yousef says felt pressured to fit into what she saw as “very much a male-centered field.” But, Dimand’s class was different.
“He is such an advocate for women in economics. He really wanted me to feel empowered as a woman in my field,” she says. “That was reflected in the way that he encouraged me to make my work good enough to succeed and the way that he put my name first on the article.”
Yousef, who recently completed an MA in political economy from Carleton University, credits Dimand’s mentorship and ongoing encouragement with her success. “I don’t think I could have had this courage if he didn’t believe in me,” she says.
According to Dimand, both chapters represent significant firsts. Some information has been published on individual female economists in the Arab Homeland, but Yousef’s is the first overview of women’s participation. Since 2012, the Association for the Advancement of African Women Economists has been dedicated to building capacity and enhancing scholarship among women in the field, but “Lola’s chapter is the first to look at the history of women’s participation in economics in sub-Saharan Africa,” he says.
Fowler presented her chapter at the American Economics Association meeting of the Allied Social Sciences Associations and was invited to speak at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s African studies colloquium in Mexico City in September.
Through the history of economics, Dimand is confident that he has found a “fairly pleasant and painless way” for people outside the field to learn something about economics.”
Dimand describes his work as playing on the two senses of the French word histoire. “It’s not just history,” he says. “They’re also just really interesting stories.”
According to Fowler, Dimand is one of the “few professors who can tell you the story behind those numbers and make it really beautiful, make it fun, make it come alive for you.”
