In Memoriam
Professor Charles W. Howe
1931–2024
In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to Frasier Meadows Retirement Community. There will be a Celebration of Life on Friday, April 12 at 2:30 p.m. in the Eldorado Room at Frasier. All are welcome. Read more about Chuck Howe at Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine
Larry Singell
We are deeply saddened to inform you that our former colleague, Larry Singell, passed away on April 22. Larry joined the Economics department in 1970 and published widely in labor economics and applied microeconomics. He was a larger-than-life figure in our department for many years before moving to administrative posts at CU. He was department chair for many years, helping to reorganize our processes and hiring numerous colleagues. He was later named Dean of the Business School. Larry reformed the Business School and was instrumental in setting a foundation for its growth. He also served several years as a special assistant to Provost Bruce Ekstrand and as a faculty ombudsman.
Larry was a fantastic leader and mentor for our older colleagues, and we hope many younger faculty found a way to get to know him a bit. He always asked about how you were doing, your family, plans, and professional accomplishments. He was one of the most positive people we knew, laughed easily, and was a joy to be around, as is his surviving wife, Barbara. They had three sons, including Larry Singell Jr, a prominent economist now senior vice provost at the University of Texas Austin, and numerous grandchildren.
John Joseph Korbel
John Joseph Korbel passed away at home in Cleveland Park, Washington D.C. on April 20, 2023 at the age of 76. John graduated from Williams College in 1969 majoring in Russian area studies and later completed a doctorate in Economics at the University of Colorado. Soon after, he taught as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Middlebury College. Read the obituary...
Fred R. Glahe
"Fred was born on June 30th, 1934 to Fredrick and Evelyn Glahe in Chicago, Illinois. Fred graduated from Purdue University in 1957 with a BA in Aeronautical Engineering and worked briefly at the Allison Engines division of General Motors on jet engine design and testing. Fred went on to receive his masters and PHD in Economics at Purdue in 1964 and became a Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado in 1965. At CU Fred founded The Economic Institute for Research and Education (EIRE) as well as authoring multiple textbooks and articles. Fred retired from CU in 2006."–DignityMemorial.com
Graduate Student Awarded Dissertation Fellowship
February 2023: Dongkyu Yang was awarded the Cambridge University Press Dissertation Fellowship ($10,000). This award is made possible through an endowment created through a partnership between Cambridge University Press and the Economic History association signaling a commitment to the development of the future leaders of the field, whose research will direct the study of economic history throughout the world.
Dan Kaffine and Akhil Rao (PhD '19) awarded a NASA Grant to study space debris
Sep 13, 2022, NASA Press Release 22-085
As part of NASA's efforts to address orbital debris, the agency is funding research proposals from three university-based teams over the next year to analyze the economic, social, and policy issues associated with space sustainability.
Orbital debris consists of human-made objects orbiting Earth that no longer serve a purpose, including mission-related and fragmentation debris, nonfunctional spacecraft, and abandoned rocket stages.
NASA takes the threat of orbital debris seriously as these objects can endanger spacecraft, jeopardize access to space, and impede the development of a low-Earth orbit economy, including commercial participation. These new awards will fund research that supports the agency’s commitment to address the problem.
"Orbital debris is one of the great challenges of our era," said Bhavya Lal, associate administrator for the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Maintaining our ability to use space is critical to our economy, our national security, and our nation's science and technology enterprise. These awards will fund research to help us understand the dynamics of the orbital environment and show how we can develop policies to limit debris creation and mitigate the impact of existing debris."
A panel of experts evaluated and selected the following three proposals:
- "Adaptive Space Governance and Decision-Support using Source-Sink Evolutionary Environmental Models," submitted by Richard Linares and Danielle Wood of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Moriba Jah of the University of Texas-Austin
- "An Integrated Assessment Model for Satellite Constellations and Orbital Debris," submitted by Akhil Rao of Middlebury College, Daniel Kaffine of the University of Colorado-Boulder, and Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation
- "Communication and Space Debris: Connecting with Public Knowledges and Identities," submitted by Patrice Kohl, Sergio Alvarez, and Philip Metzger of the University of Central Florida
NASA’s OTPS will make the teams’ results publicly available on the agency’s website. Selected teams also can work with the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as part of an international call for research proposals focused on orbital debris and space sustainability. —Read the press release on NASA's website.
Congratulations to Billy Mertens
Billy Mertens arrived 1st in his age group (55-59) at the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 18, 2022, with an astonishing finish time of 2 h 39 min 36 sec. You can view all the results at the Boston Marathon Website. Congratulations Billy!
Daria Bottan 2022 Marinus Smith Award Winner
"The Marinus Smith Award recognizes faculty and staff members who have had a particularly positive impact on our students. Honorees are nominated by those they teach, mentor, support and serve." Read more about the Marinus Smith Award on the New Student & Family Programs page.
“...Daria Bottan’s dedication, wisdom and passion helps Boulder students become better human beings. We are thankful that she guides classes towards scholastic achievement and success; academically, she is creating Buff super stars.” —Nominators: Donna Funke-Otting, family member of Kyle Otting
Grad student lands teaching position at prestigious Peking University
Christian "Payne" Hennigan named assistant professor in the School of Economics, where he will also utilize Chinese fluency gained at CU Boulder
Christian "Payne" Hennigan, who will graduate with a PhD in economics from the University of Colorado Boulder this May, has just been named assistant professor in the School of Economics at Peking University—considered one of the most prestigious universities in China. Hennigan, who will start the position on Sept. 1, 2022, in Beijing, said he considers it an honor to be part of Peking University and a “privilege to be in the capital city of such a dynamic” country.
“I will be around some of the best minds and best students in the world all engaged in the same kind of research that I am doing, with the support and community that comes with that,” Hennigan says. “More generally, I have found that many people in China are very optimistic about the future and full of hope in life. There will be more things going on than I could ever hope to fully experience.” Read the full article by Doug McPherson in the Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine.
Brian Marein (PhD '21 ) Awarded Allan Nevins Prize in American Economic History
Recent PhD graduate Brian Marein was awarded the Allan Nevins Prize in American Economic History by the Economic History Association, on behalf of Columbia University Press, at its annual meeting in Tucson, Arizona in October. The Nevins Prize is awarded annually for the best dissertation in US or Canadian economic history completed during the previous year. Brian’s dissertation, “The Economic Development of Puerto Rico After United States Annexation,” was supervised by Professors Taylor Jaworski and Carol Shiue and includes four chapters exploring complementary aspects of development: public health and the mortality transition, colonial roads and local development, changes in adult height, and long-run patterns in regional growth. Brian is currently a limited-term Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto.
The Nandu Award for the Best Quantitative-History Paper: Peiyuan Li
PhD candidate Peiyuan Li won the Best Paper Award at the Annual International Symposium on Quantitative History. The symposium creates a research platform for the application of quantitative methods to the study of Chinese history. Sponsored by Nandu Public Welfare Foundation, the review committee usually selects two papers each year to be given the first and second prizes. Peiyuan’s paper “Political Repression, Media Propaganda and Nation Building,” won the first prize in 2021. His paper, supervised by Professors Carol Shiue and Taylor Jaworski, examined the role of propaganda using political repression in nation-building of modern China.
Alumni Highlights
UWM Faculty Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Awards: Rebecca Neumann (PhD 2000, CU Boulder), professor of economics
In addition to other courses, Rebecca Neumann teaches two of the Economics Department’s largest sections of introductory economics. She strives in these gateway classes to encourage those who may be “afraid” of economics to succeed, said Kundan Kishor, department chair, in his nomination letter.
Neumann approaches economics by encouraging students to connect the subject with their everyday lives and current events. For example, a cookie auction helps students understand the demand curve. Music is sometimes part of the mix – Playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones at the start of class kicks off a discussion on opportunity cost, scarcity and needs versus wants.
Her innovative use of technology keeps both online and in-person students engaged as active class participants. Students credit Neumann’s passion and enthusiasm for the subject with sparking their interest in economics. One student from Economics 325 wrote: “This was the first economics course that I actually liked and found interesting. You are a great professor. Thanks for a good semester. I don’t dread economics as much as I used to now.”—UWM Report, October 23, 2023
Graduate Student Highlights
James Flynn's research featured in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine
Read the article:
Economist finds sweet success with soda taxes
Faculty Highlights
Associate Professor Francisca Antman gave a keynote lecture titled “Assimilation and the Racial and Ethnic Identities of Immigrants and Their Descendants” at the CFP 3RD CREAM/RWI Workshop on the Economics of Migration (6 September 2022; Essen Germany). She became President-Elect of ASHE in November 2022.
Emeritus Professor Charles de Bartolomé was a Fulbright Scholar at the Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, and was one of two keynote speakers at the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences at Comenius University.
Emeritus Professor and EHA President Ann Carlos will be giving the Presidential Address at the meetings of the Economic History Association (17 September 2022; La Crosse Wisconsin). The title of Professor Carlos’ address is “The Country they Built: The Dynamic and Complex Indigenous Economies of North America before 1429.”
Professor Yongmin Chen was one of the two keynote speakers, together with John Asker of UCLA, at the 2022 Asian-Pacific Industrial Organization Conference (APIOC 2022) in Sydney, Australia, December 9-11. His keynote talk was entitled “Search and Competition under Product Quality Uncertainty”. APIOC is one of the premier international conferences in the field of Industrial Organization. Recent keynote speakers of APIOC include Steven Berry and Dirk Bergemann of Yale in 2021, and Mark Armstrong of Oxford and Leslie Marx of Duke in 2019.
Karen Gebhardt is a 2023 UPCEA Excellence In Teaching Award recipient. This award recognizes those who have made significant contributions to credit or noncredit programs and who have provided inspirational teaching to professional, continuing, and/or online education students.
Emeritus University Distinguished Professor James Markusen received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Tuebingen. His official title in German is now “Herr Professor Doktor Doktor (honoris causa) Markusen.” He also taught a short course in simulation modeling in Kyiv in August 2021 with former colleague Thomas Rutherford to students from the Ukraine and Georgia. 
He and Ann Carlos both gave special lectures at the University of the Philippines in November 2022 (photo left) and James Markusen will give a keynote address to a conference at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in December 2022 in New Delhi.
Professor Terra McKinnish is currently the editor at Journal of Population Economics (since May 2020).