Hülya Eraslan Appointed Fellow of the Game Theory Society and Research Associate at NBER
We would like to congratulate Hülya Eraslan , Ralph O ’ Connor Professor of Economics at Rice and our Director of Graduate Studies , who has received two prestigious appointments . Most recently , Hülya was appointed a Fellow of the Game Theory Society , an organization created in 1999 to promote research , teaching and application of game theory , which studies strategic interactions in competitive and cooperative environments and is an essential tool in economics and other social sciences . Fellows of the Society are scholars who are honored for their contributions to game theory as well as their service to the Society . And this past summer , Hülya was appointed a Research Associate at the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge , MA . The NBER is a private , nonpartisan organization that facilitates cutting-edge investigation and analysis of major economic issues . It disseminates research findings to academics , public and private-sector decision-makers , and the public through its working paper series and some 120 conferences each year . Research fellows are appointed based on their research records and their capacity to contribute to NBER activities .
Hülya ’ s research program focuses on both theoretical and empirical analyses of bargaining and voting with applications to political economy and corporate finance . For example , she recently published ( with Renee Bowen and Ying Chen ) the lead article in the American Economic Review , the top journal in the profession , a paper entitled “ Mandatory vs . Discretionary Spending : The Status Quo Effect .” This paper studies budget negotiations over public and private spending that take place between two parties every year , and compares mandatory and discretionary spending rules . Mandatory spending is governed by criteria set forth in enacted law ; prominent examples are Social Security and Medicare . By comparison , discretionary spending , such as military spending , is decided through periodic appropriations . Hülya and her co-authors show that mandatory programs result in higher public goods spending and find conditions under which mandatory spending is preferable to discretionary spending .
Hülya is currently engaged in a large number of research projects with colleagues and graduate students at Rice . These collaborations include Professors Xun Tang , Jeremy Fox , YingHua He , Nina Bobkova , and Rossella Calvi , and students Yakym Pirozhenko , Kirill Evdokimov , Mingzi Niu , Dibya Mishra , and Ritika Sethi and examine a broad range of issues in political economy . She is also working on three projects comparing unanimity rule and majority rule , both theoretically and experimentally , in different multilateral bargaining environments .
Nobel Laureate James Heckman to Deliver RISE Lecture November 4
The tenth lecture in the RISE ( Rice Initiative for the Study of Economics ) Nobel Laureate Lecture Series will feature James J . Heckman , who is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago . He is also director of the university ’ s Center for the Economics of Human Development , where he has conducted groundbreaking work with a consortium of economists , developmental psychologists , sociologists , statisticians and neuroscientists showing that quality early childhood development heavily influences health , economic and social outcomes for individuals and society at large . Heckman has shown that there are great economic gains to be had by investing in early childhood development . Some of this research is with Flávio Cunha of the Rice Economics Department , including a paper on “ Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation ( also with Susanne Schennach of Brown University ) which won the 2014 Frisch Medal for the best paper published over a two-year interval in the journal Econometrica . Along with Daniel McFadden of the University of California at Berkeley , Heckman was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their development of theory and methods in the field of microeconometrics that are widely used in the statistical analysis of individual and household behavior within economics as well as other social sciences . He was especially recognized for the Heckman Selection Model , which is a method for estimating regression models which suffer from sample selection bias , a bias that arises when a nonrandom sample of a population is analyzed . Heckman is the recipient of many other awards , including the John Bates Clark Medal awarded by the American Economic Association for significant contributions to economic thought and knowledge by an economist under the age of forty , and the Jacob Mincer Award for lifetime contributions in the field of labor economics presented by the Society of Labour Economics . According to rankings compiled by Research Papers in Economics ( RePEc ), Heckman is the second most influential economist in the world .
Heckman will present his lecture , entitled “ Interactions as Investments ” on Thursday , November 4 , 2021 at 5:00 p . m . in the BRC ( BioScience Research Collaborative ) Auditorium . All Rice COVID protocols , including the wearing of masks indoors , will of course be followed . Please
REGISTER if you wish to attend . We hope to see you there !
The RISE Nobel Laureate Lecture Series is made possible by a gift from Doyle Arnold ’ 70 , who is profiled below .
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