Dear Friends of Berkeley Economics,
I am honored to have the opportunity to serve again as chair of the Department of Economics at Berkeley. In the three years following my last term as chair, the Department has tremendously benefitted from the leadership of my successor (who is now my predecessor!), Shachar Kariv. Shachar has been something of a miracle worker, maintaining and enhancing the excellence and prominence of our research, teaching, and service missions during difficult financial times for the campus. He has done all this with a sense of openness and optimism that represents the best of Berkeley. Shachar’s shoes will be hard to fill, and, on behalf of the Department, I thank him for his outstanding service as chair, and for his continuing role as leader of our alumni outreach and development efforts.
This year the Department has added a new Assistant Professor, Dmitry Taubinsky, to our outstanding group of scholars in behavioral economics, and we managed to keep two of our star Associate Professors, Patrick Kline and Ben Handel, from leaving us to join the faculties at Chicago and Yale. Ben is now Faculty Director of our newly-established Gilbert Center for Applied Economics, established by a generous gift of Emeritus Professor (and former Department Chair) Rich Gilbert.
By many measures, Berkeley Economics is thriving. In the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings of top graduate programs in economics, our Department is tied for first place, and our undergraduate major has nearly doubled to over 1200 students in the past decade. This growth in quality and quantity has occurred despite challenges that are all too familiar: shortages of classroom space and instructional support for our undergraduate courses, graduate student funding that struggles to keep pace with competing programs, and the need to keep up with lucrative outside offers to our star faculty members. Yet we continue to excel, contrary to the repeated, shopworn predictions of our decline from peer institutions over the years. The newsfeed on our website (econ.berkeley.edu) and Econ Twitter account gives a sample of the ways our faculty and current and former students are having an impact on our profession and the world, including several stories that show how our alumni, students and faculty are leading the discussion of sexism in the economics profession.
A large part of our success is due to the support we receive from our talented and well-trained alumni and from admirers who value our style of economics. Our annual giving society, the Charter Hill Society for Economics, spearheaded by Christian Gordon (cmgordon@berkeley.edu), is only in its second year but continues to grow faster than our optimistic estimates, providing much-needed support for undergraduate and graduate instruction and research. Our Department continues to adapt and grow and flourish, thanks to your help. We ask again that you please do ‘Give to Econ’, if at all possible, to ensure our continued success.
Best regards,
James L. Powell
George Break and Helen Schnacke Break Distinguished Professor of Economics and
Department Chair
A link to past Econ Newsletter.