Ph.D. Alumnus appointed Egyptian Finance Minister

Economics Ph.D. alumnus Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy has been named the next Egyptian Finance Minister. Prior to his appointment, Hegazy was a professor at Alexandria University, specializing in Islamic Finance. He was sworn into office on January 6.

Hegazy defended his dissertation titled “The Contribution of Oil to the Economic Development of Kuwait (1962-1981): a Macroeconomic Approach,” under the advisement of Professor William Lott, in January 1985.

Read the UConn Today article about Hegazy here.

Professor Harmon in the Journal of Economic Education

Prof. Oskar Harmon, with his co-author Prof. James Lambrinos (Union Graduate College) had their paper Active Learning Exercises for Principles of Economics Courses” published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Journal of Economic Education (JEE). The JEE is a leading journal in the field of economic education and publishes articles on topics in teaching economics. Prof. Harmon’s article is included in the section of the journal dedicated to innovative electronic technology. In the paper Prof. Harmon and his co-author design a wiki to utilize current events and flash-based tools for instruction of concepts commonly taught in principles of economics courses.

Here is the link to the article at the publisher’s website.

Professors Alpert and Harmon present at AEA

Professor William Alpert and Professor Oskar Harmon were panel discussants in the session “The Effects of Online Economics Courses on Student Learning” and presented the  paper “The Effectiveness of Interactive Online Exercises across Delivery Format”,  co-authored with Professor James Lambrinos (Union Graduate College) at the American Economic Association, Annual Meetings, San Diego CA, Jan 3-6, 2013.  Their paper evaluates the effectiveness of online activities controlling for delivery format.  The data are from a Principles of Microeconomics class taught in three different delivery formats: traditional lecture, fully online (no in class meetings), or blended (combination of online lecture and in-class discussion.  Overall the empirical estimates are consistent with the hypothesis that participation in interactive learning exercises has a positive effect on exam score at a statistically significant level.  Professors Alpert and Harmon were also panel discussants in the session “The Effects of Online Economics Courses on Student Learning.”