Economics

Scott Rozelle, Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and co-director of Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. Scott Rozelle will stay after the official talk at 6PM to discuss a Winter Term 2022 internship and post-grad job opportunities working at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy & Institutions (SCCEI). These job descriptions are posted on Handshake using keyword search: SCCEI.

Do smaller class sizes improve student learning? Does raising the minimum wage increase unemployment? Does teen motherhood cause poverty? Important policy questions like these are fundamentally about causality, and to answer them we need to move beyond “correlation isn’t causation” and figure out when it is. Professor Scott Cunningham will introduce students and faculty to directed acyclic graphs (DAGS), a powerful graphical tool that helps clarify the relationships between variables and guide theory-based research design decisions. No prior experience with DAGs is assumed.

The spread of misinformation is among the most pressing challenges of our time. New platforms for human interaction and information sharing have opened the door to misinformation, disinformation and other forms of networked manipulation, which not only mislead and create divisions, but also diminish trust in democratic institutions and ourselves. In this talk, I will focus on critical reasoning as antidote. I will pay special attention to misinformation that comes wrapped in data, statistics, and algorithms.

Lecture by Dr. Tim Ferris, the CEO of Mass General Physicians Organization. Come learn about the current US Health System, its complexities, its problems and potential solutions to increase access, improve quality and lower costs.

Speaker: Scott Rozelle

Speaker: Hilary Hoynes, U. C. Berkeley (P’ 19)

Title: Social safety Net Investments in Children

Today, no society is immune from the effects of capitalism. In Haiti “Batay La,” or the struggle, has been ongoing since before the slave revolution that founded the Caribbean nation. Batay La examines the current anti-imperialist movement in Haiti, led for decades by grassroots workers’ rights organization Batay Ouvriye (Workers Fight). Founded in 1994, Batay Ouvriye is known throughout Haiti as a fierce, uncompromised organization dedicated to overturning the system of exploitation of poor workers.

“Free, fair, and Alive: The Commons and the Post-Capitalist Future”

Globalism and capitalism as we know it are failing us — and the evidence is all around us in the destruction of our environment, and the privatization of our shared wealth. What can we do to shift the story line, and re-write our future? What alternatives do we have at hand?

Amanda Bayer (Professor of Economics at Swarthmore College) will present about the diversity initiatives in the Economics profession. In 2016, together with nine other liberal arts colleges, the Middlebury Economics Department participated in a modest field experiment, coordinated by Amanda Bayer, in which we provided incoming students from underrepresented groups with information about a diverse array of economists and economics research.