RICE ECON
Fall 2017
News and Views from the Economics Department at Rice
WELCOME BACK!
We hope that you are returning from a
wonderful fall break, rejuvenated and
ready to close out a great semester. For
those of you still coping with the effects
of Hurricane Harvey, we hope that your
recovery is progressing – and many thanks
to those who helped in the recovery effort
via the Rice Harvey Action Team (R-HAT)
or other volunteer activities.
The Economics Department has added
quite a few courses over the past few
years. In this issue of RICE ECON, we
introduce a feature called “New Course
on the Menu!” that will highlight one of
these courses. For the Fall 2017 issue we
focus on ECON 441, Empirical Methods
for Industrial Organization, which will be
taught next semester by Professor Isabelle
Perrigne.
For those of you thinking about graduate
school in economics (or any of the other
social sciences), be sure to attend the
New Course on the Menu!
ECON 441 is a relatively new class that one
typically doesn’t find in an undergraduate
program. In the course, we cover four
papers that address different issues related to
Main Course: ECON 441
incomplete information, going over the models,
Empirical Methods in IO
the econometrics, and the data analysis. The first
paper topic is about a strategic game played by
Appetizers: ECON 200 &
radio stations for the release time of advertising,
ECON 209
and our application is the release of blockbuster
movies. I also cover nonlinear pricing, which
Master Chef: Prof. Isabelle
is quite advanced because it incorporates all
Perrigne
incomplete information. I then look at nonlinear
pricing in the telecommunications industry with
Dinner is Served: Spring
cell phone services. The last topic is auctions
2018, Tues and Thurs,
and the application is procurement by the city of
10:50 am - 12:05 pm
Los Angeles. For every topic, I find a different
Come enjoy a
data set that students can analyze, identifying
gastroeconomical delight!
how the data justify the model, reveal strategic
behavior by firms, and so on. I then explain
the derivation and implementation of an
econometric model and encourage them to write an empirical paper.
Menu
The class is designed for students who are interested in data analysis and quantitative
methods, and who also have an interest in industrial organization. It’s about markets,
strategy, interaction among firms, the pricing of products, and a wide variety of similar
issues. The class is especially useful for students who want to go into consulting jobs
(which often use a lot of these methods), into jobs with federal institutions with anti-
trust divisions, and who want to go on to graduate studies in Economics, particularly in
empirical IO. Empirical IO has a lot of tools that you need to master for these pursuits.
information session on applying to grad
school sponsored by the School of Social
Sciences and held in the Will Rice PDR at
noon on Monday October 16.
As you know, to help ensure that students
master the material introduced in some
of our core courses, the department
added one-hour labs to ECON
200, Microeconomics, ECON 308,
Mathematical Economics, and ECON 310,
Econometrics, making each of these a four
credit hour course. What do you think of
these labs? Please let me know at zodrow@
rice.edu or via the suggestion box on our
website.
We hope the rest of your fall semester goes
well!
George Zodrow
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Advising Corner
Fall 2017
Advising Office Hours
Monday
4:00–5:00 p.m.
Maria Bejan, BKH 251
Tuesday
12:45–2:15 p.m.
George Zodrow, BKH 260
Wednesday
4:00–5:00 p.m
James Brown, BKH 250
Thursday
1:00–2:30 p.m.
Peter Hartley, BKH 262
Friday
10:15–11:45 a.m.
Mahmoud El-Gamal, BKH 240
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