Publish Your Research!
Have you met Professor Eraslan?
Hülya Eraslan, Ralph O’Connor Professor
of Economics, Interim Department Chair
Research Interests: Political Economy, Game
Theory, Corporate Finance
Hülya Eraslan is the Ralph O’Connor Professor
of Economics at Rice and currently serves as
the Interim Department Chair and Director
of Graduate Studies. She received her Ph.D.
from the University of Minnesota and has
previously held positions at the Johns Hopkins
University and the Wharton School of Business
at the University of Pennsylvania. Her area
of expertise is bargaining and voting with an
emphasis on applications in political economy and corporate finance. Her
publications include work on legislative bargaining models, bankruptcy, and
voting rules with asymmetric information which she has applied to environments as varied as U.S. budget negotiations, corporate bond markets, Chapter
13 personal bankruptcies, and government formation negotiations in European
parliamentary democracies.
How did you first get interested
in economics?
I did my undergraduate degree in computer engineering. I remember being
fascinated with the prisoners’ dilemma
in one of the engineering courses I took.
It made me realize that mathematical
models can help us understand human
interactions that play a crucial role in
economics and politics. That was the
turning point that made me decide to
pursue a graduate degree in economics.
What drew you to game theory
and political economy as an
area of research?
Again the turning point was a course
I took, this time in my first year as a
doctoral student at the University of
Minnesota. It was an elective course
on bargaining theory taught by a young
and energetic assistant professor who is
now the Dean of Social Sciences at Rice!
Many collective decisions are of course
made through bargaining in politics and
corporations. My interest in bargaining
and voting drew me to political economy
and corporate finance.
In layman’s terms, tell us about
your current research and the
impact you hope it achieves.
My current research is on collective
decision making in dynamic environments. One particular example is
government budget negotiations. Every
year a new budget is negotiated and
the budget implemented in a given year
affects the negotiations in future years.
For example, in the U.S., mandatory
spending is enacted by law and remains
in place unless explicitly changed.
Mandatory spending consists largely of
entitlement programs such as Medicare
and Social Security. There have been
rising concerns about the increases in
spending on entitlement programs in
recent years. My research on budget
negotiations aims to find out the effects
of different institutions on government’s
provision of public goods such as entitlement programs and especially tries
to identify what budgetary institutions
facilitate efficiency.
Several journals publish research papers
in economics written by undergraduates,
including:
The Yale Undergraduate Journal of
Economics and Politics
Penn Journal of Economics
The Developing Economist (University
of Texas at Austin)
UCLA Undergraduate Journal of
Economics
Undergraduate Economic Review
(Illinois Western University)
For a comprehensive list of journals
specializing in undergraduate research,
see the website of the Council on
Undergraduate Research
As the Director for the Graduate
Studies for the Economics
Department, do you have any
advice for students thinking
about graduate school?
I recommend taking a proof-based
mathematics course. Real analysis is an
excellent option. I also recommend taking the graduate micro sequence. These
courses signal to the admission committees that the applicants know what they
are getting into. For students who are
U.S. citizens, I also recommend working
at one of the Federal Reserve Banks as
a research analyst prior to applying to
graduate school. Many Federal Reserve
Banks have outstanding placement
records and they consistently place their
research analysts in top Ph.D. programs.
What do you enjoy the most
about Rice?
I love being at Rice because of its people: supportive administration, first-rate
faculty, bright students, and
dedicated staff.
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