David Gerard

Author: David Gerard

CTL Workshops

Here it comes, our tri-annual message on CTL Workshops:

If you think a Cartesian coordinate is a what you wear to go with your favorite sweater, it might be time for you to bone up on your quantitative skills. And, right on cue, the CTL if offering a series of quantitative workshops — 90 minutes to a better, more quantitatively adept you. The topics are basic algebra, graphs, and word problems, and there are two chances for each.

Workshops are in Briggs 420 and run 90-ish minutes.

Graphing

5:30 PM on Wednesday, January 11^th
7:30 PM on Monday, January 16^th

The graphing workshop will cover the following topics:

Graphs of linear equations, quadratic equations, exponential functions, trigonometric functions and more…
Significance of slope in various applications
Displacement of graphs

Word Problem

5:30 PM on Thursday, January 12^th
7:30 PM on Tuesday, January 17^th

The word problem workshop will cover the following topics:

Problem solving strategies useful in working with quantitative concepts
How to extract useful information from a problem and how to relate similar problems
Hands-on experience working on interesting and challenging word problems

Algebra

5:30 PM on Friday, January 13^th
7:30 PM on Wednesday, January 18^th

The algebra workshop will cover the following topics:

Basic algebraic operations and the law of exponents
Binomial multiplication and factorization
Important algebraic identities
Techniques for solving quadratic and fractional systems of linear equations
Basic concepts and identities of trigonometry

DS 391 — Keynes, Cowen & Capitalism

The Economics Department once again proudly announces its community read for the term. The formal title of the course is DS 391 – Keynes, Cowen & Capitalism, and sign up sheets are tacked to my bullitin board. You can get instructor approval from either Professor Galambos or me (or both!). We will see about arranging a time.

Here is the reading list:

Roger Backhouse and Brad Bateman’s Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes.

Tyler Cowen The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will(Eventually) Feel Better .

Tyler Cowen “The Inequality that Matters,” from The American Interest online.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy.

The Backhouse and Bateman book is a quick read, and Professor Bateman is tentatively scheduled to visit as part of our Senior Experience. Backhouse and Bateman have promoted their work with pieces in the the New York Times and more recently in The Guardian.

Tyler Cowen’s little ebook also talks about some of the problems and prospects of American capitalism, and should be interesting to set side-by-side with the Keynesian worldview. As a bonus, the book has been heavily reviewed, and there is certainly no consensus view on whether he is right or wrong. There have been a couple of recent reviews juxtaposing Cowen with Brynjolfsson and McAfee. We should be able to do the same.

One of the key issues of capitalism moving forward seems to be the division of the proverbial pie, and Cowen’s piece in The American Interest is one of the more thoughtful pieces on inequality that I have come across. I especially like the “betting against the Wizards” example of picking up pennies in front of the steamroller.

Once we have our enrollment, I will coordinate a schedule.

Students (and faculty) are required to read and respond thoughtfully.

“Economics is what economists do”

As I was preparing for Econ 100 for next term, I came across a piece by Roger Backhouse and Steven Medema on the definition of economics. Or, to put it more bluntly, what exactly is economics anyway?

Backhouse and Medema run through a bunch of textbook descriptions of what dismal scientists spend their time thinking about, and offer up a few choice quotes. The first candidate is from the indefatigable Paul Krugman and Robin Wells from their intro textbook: “Economics is the study of economies, at both the level of individuals and of society as a whole.”

That seems pretty accurate, but I don’t think economics is nearly as exciting as they make it sound. ;-)

Here’s another from David Colander, a man who knows a thing or two about The Making of an Economist. He says “Economics is the study of how human beings coordinate their wants and desires, given the decision-making mechanisms, social customs, and political realities of the society.”

Coordination, indeed. For us market types, scarce resources are generated and distributed via market forces (e.g., prices), and there are all sorts of “agents” running around maximizing this and that — utility, profit, market share, Facebook friends, etc…

Harvard’s Greg Mankiw simply says “Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources.” Pithy, to the point, possibly accurate, and consistent with what Robert Heilbronner tells us in The Worldly Philosophers. More on that later.

Or perhaps try the more pro-market friendly Gwartney and Stroup et al.: “[E]conomics is the study of human behavior, with a particular focus on human decision making.”

Couldn’t that describe psychology?

Scarcity, choices, allocation, behavior, decision making — not exactly narrowing down our subject here, are we?

So, for the punch line, here is the classic Jacob Viner quip, “Economics is what economists do.”

That’s it!

Thanks to Mr. T for the tip. You can read the full piece here.

And here is the citation: Roger E. Backhouse and Steven G. Medema. 2009. “Retrospectives: On the Definition of Economics.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(1): 221–33.

Backhouse, by the way, is one of the co-authors of our ECON DS-391 and Econ 601 books. So we’ll be hearing more from him in the coming weeks.

“Get Her Something Expensive and Useless”

It’s that time of year where we bid you Happy Holidays from the Economics profession.

Up first, we have a truly heroic figure, Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogeonomics.* I don’t know your preferences as well as you do, so whatever I give you is probably sub-optimal, unless you tell me exactly what you want. And even then, wouldn’t you rather just have the cash anyway? For those of you intermediate micro students, you know that kids prefer cash over any in-kind equivalent.

Kudos to Professor Waldfogel for willing to be “that guy.”

Speaking of Scrooge, was he really such a bad guy? Not so, says Steven Landsburg. Let’s give it up for our annual Scrooge endorsement from this classic Slate piece:

In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser–the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.

If you build a house and refuse to buy a house, the rest of the world is one house richer. If you earn a dollar and refuse to spend a dollar, the rest of the world is one dollar richer–because you produced a dollar’s worth of goods and didn’t consume them.

Ah, I just feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Moving on to The Atlantic, where we have “The Behavioral Economist’s Guide to Buying Presents.” Now this is some truly indispensable advice. Like Waldfogel above, the money point is to just give money. But, for the true romantics who feel compelled to give a gift, the behavioralists recommend this:

Buying for a guy? Get him a gadget. Buying for a girl? Get her something expensive and useless.

The gadget I get.** The expensive and useless? That’s from Geoffrey Miller’s, The Mating Mind. Here’s a brief explanation of courtship:

The wastefulness of courtship is what makes it romantic. The wasteful dancing, the wasteful gift-giving, the wasteful conversation, the wasteful laughter, the wasteful foreplay, the wasteful adventures. From the viewpoint of “survival of the fittest” the waste looks mad and pointless and maladaptive… However, from the viewpoint of fitness indicator theory, this waste is the most efficient and reliable way to discover someone’s fitness. Where you see conspicuous waste in nature, sexual choice has often been at work.

This presents something of a conundrum because “expensive and useless” seems to be at odds with Waldfogel’s hyper-utilitarian cold, hard cash suggestion.

So if you want to hedge your bets, give her Euro!

…

* The book is a follow up to the classic, “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.” Clearly, the book title Scroogonomics can be chalked up to the value-added of the publishing house.

**Conceptually, that is. I generally get ties and socks.

See Euro Future

Here’s Charlie Calomiris from back in 1999, predicting a bad end to the Euro.

I predict that the euro will be a weak currency (one that will not retain its value against the dollar), and that it will not be a permanent currency. Ultimately, the euro will most likely be remembered neither as a textbook example of the social gains of properly defining the optimal currency area nor as the harbinger of global exchange rate stability, but rather as an illustration of the importance of fiscal discipline for monetary credibility, and as a monetary example of the tragedy of the commons.

European union will likely strengthen the attraction of the dollar as a numeraire and a store of value. Countries outside of Europe will continue to peg their exchange rates to the dollar. And when the European Monetary Union ultimately collapses, it will itself provide a positive shock to the real dollar exchange rate that will hurt countries that have pegged to the dollar. All of this is unfortunate from the standpoint of global macroeconomic stability—an example of how political constraints that limit rational policy and encourage public profligacy make the global economy less stable than it otherwise would be.

I picked that up from Marginal Revolution, where Tyler Cowen points out that economists from Paul Krugman to Milton Friedman were pessimistic on the long-term prospects.

Here’s Freidman:

I think the euro is in its honeymoon phase. I hope it succeeds, but I have very low expectations for it. I think that differences are going to accumulate among the various countries and that non-synchronous shocks are going to affect them. Right now, Ireland is a very different state; it needs a very different monetary policy from that of Spain or Italy. On purely theoretical grounds, it’s hard to believe that it’s going to be a stable system for a long time.

If we look back at recent history, they’ve tried in the past to have rigid exchange rates, and each time it has broken down. 1992, 1993, you had the crises. Before that, Europe had the snake, and then it broke down into something else. So the verdict isn’t in on the euro. It’s only a year old. Give
it time to develop its troubles.

The snake?

At any rate, Cowen’s point is that economists may have whiffed the financial collapse, but they seemed to hit the ball on the Euro.

Johnson on Stigler on Regulation

Simon Johnson is the co-author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, which we wrote about here. This week, Russ Roberts interviews Johnson on EconTalk, and a summary of the interview. Here’s a taste:

On Regulatory Capture: Prof. Johnson says he is a follower of George Stigler, who made the point that when you regulate industry, industry will attempt to capture the regulators. Bankers are able to capture the regulation and get themselves huge commissions to take on risk. We witnessed one of the most sophisticated episodes of regulatory capture in the history of humankind.

On who benefitted: The benefit of this kind of rent-seeking accrues to executives in the bank – and not to shareholders.

Interesting point, that we also brought up here.

Economics Department Read, Winter 2012

We have been sponsoring a reading group (DS-391) in the economics department over the past four terms, and we will continue that with two books during the winter term. If you have some spare time in the next five weeks, you might try getting a jump on these.

The first is Roger Backhouse and Brad Bateman’s Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes. The authors’ names might sound familiar from a couple of posts ago where I briefly discuss their op-ed in the New York Times about the need for economist as “worldly philosopher” rather than “dentists” (Keynes’ term) honing in on the intricacies of the little picture. Indeed, the book portrays Keynes both as a deep thinker and an accomplished technical theorist.

The second is Tyler Cowen’s brief yet epic e-book, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better. This is one of the most thoroughly reviewed pieces I have ever seen, with scholars and bloggers and otherwise lining up to weigh in. There is plenty to talk about with this one.

Both books should be accessible to economics students at any level.

Black Friday View from Briggs 2nd

I just looked out my window and saw a flock of seagulls (no, not that Flock of Seagulls) antagonizing one of the resident bald eagles.

I guess this isn’t all that unusual from the seagulls. Did you know:

Herring gulls dive-bomb predatory birds at a steep angle from above and behind, as they make a piercing shriek – “kaiow!”.

Some gulls also defecate or even vomit on the predator for good measure.

My emphasis, as if any was needed. Ick.

Click the pic for the full story and a bigger picture.

Via MR.

The Economics of Black Friday

Is Black Friday a day to give thanks for low prices, or a symbol of the gross excesses of retail capitalism? Robert Frank discusses:

In recent years, large retail chains have been competing to be the first to open their doors on Black Friday. The race is driven by the theory that stores with the earliest start time capture the most buyers and make the most sales. For many years, stores opened at a reasonable hour. Then, some started opening at 5 a.m., prompting complaints from employees about having to go to sleep early on Thanksgiving and miss out on time with their families. But retailers ignored those complaints, because their earlier start time proved so successful in luring customers away from rival outlets.

Frank is in the “race to the bottom” crowd, and while even if the bottom is economically “efficient,” it seems to me that he would disagree with the distributional implications — low-income wage earners being exploited, crass consumerism running amok, dogs and cats living together, etc…

Champion of commercial culture, Tyler Cowen, counters:

This is portrayed as a zero-sum or negative-sum game, but I view the matter, at least in efficiency terms, more optimistically. The alternative to waiting in line and fighting the crush is to go shopping some other day, hardly a terrible fate. More analytically speaking, the average return in other endeavors limits how bad these rent-seeking games can get, otherwise just switch and stay home and read your blogs, as some of you perhaps are doing right now.

In fact it seems that early December has in general the cheapest prices of the year, not Black Friday.

Dare I suggest that some people like waiting in those lines with their thermos cups and stale bagels. You could try to argue they are “forced to do so,” to get the bargains, but in a reasonably competitive world each outlet will (roughly) try to maximize the consumer surplus from visiting the store, including the experience of waiting in line.

Whole thing here.

Contrary to popular belief, black Friday is not the day I turn in my grades. But now that the term is over, we will have some time to do some blogging!

The Cartoon Road to Serfdom

Speaking of The Road to Serfdom, here is a handy link to the Mises Institute’s reprint of the “cartoon” guide to the Hayek classic.

Over the past four terms, we have focused on books that focus on the dynamics of the capitalist system. We started with Schumpeter’s biography and followed that up with Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. These really gave us a 10,000-foot view of where Schumpeter thought the system might head coming out of World War II. Schumpter seems sanguine about the “inevitability” of socialism, while Hayek gives us a much different, quite chilling vision of the meshing of politics and the economic system. Certainly, I would attribute part of this to Schumpeter and Hayek’s respective views of the importance of the price system — Schumpeter asserting that it is overplayed, whereas Hayek underscores its importance.

Next term, we will continue to sponsor an economics read, though our focus will likely shift to the future of the system coming out of the current crisis. I will be posting those books shortly in the event that you want to get a head start over break.

Early Holiday Book Recs

Ah, Winter Break is almost upon us, which means that it is almost time to get to my pile of books. I’m not sure what came over me, but I just went out and bought a whole bunch more that I can’t possibly get to.

Here’s the latest in the queue:

Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes. I picked this one up after reading this New York Times piece where the authors argue that contemporary economists are lacking in the “worldly philosophers” department (see also the previous post).

Douglas W. Allen The Institutional Revolution: Measurement and the Economic Emergence of the Modern World. A perfect little something for the New Institutionalist that has everything. Allen is an expert on transaction cost economics, co-author of some great work on agriculture contracts, and one of the funnier economists you are likely to ever meet. I will bet dollars to donuts that the book contains at least one example that you’ll be dropping at your next mixer (From the publisher: “Allen provides readers with a fascinating explanation of the critical roles played by seemingly bizarre institutions, from dueling to the purchase of one’s rank in the British Army”). It says available December 1, but I got my copy in the mail today.

Eugene Fitzgerald, Andreas Wankerl, and Carl Schramm. Inside Real Innovation: How the Right Approach Can Move Ideas from R&D to Market – And Get the Economy Moving. Schramm is from Kauffman, one of our recent visitors to the innovation class touted this as a must read, and I hear rumors that this will rear its head in Econ 405 next term. A convincing trifecta!

Michael Lewis Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World. If you read this blog semi-regularly, you’ve probably seen something about Lewis’ new compilation of economic disaster tourism writing. I was going to recommend this as an e-book, but it has an unusually awesome dust jacket. Great for the plane.

Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. This was on my wish list and I no longer remember who tipped me off to it. Looks great, if a bit thick.

I have some course-related pieces that probably aren’t such fab holiday gift ideas, but I will get to them as I get to them.

Enjoy!

NPR Profiles Rand, Hayek, and Keynes

Following a couple of articles last week on how economists don’t do the “Big Think” anymore, NPR offers us up some stories on “thinkers who have had a lasting influence on economic policymakers.”

Who are these thinkers, you ask? Well, first up is Ayn Rand, the notable “objectivist” author of the classics The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Probably wouldn’t have been my first choice as a big economic thinker, but she is certainly still making headlines. Ouch.

Next up for the NPR listeners is Austrian school economist, Frederich Hayek. Hayek is a would-be macro rapper, market proponent, and author of The Road to Serfdom — this term’s group read. Is it ironic that National Public Radio is profiling him?

Finally, NPR gives us John Maynard Keynes himself, another would-be macro rapper. Keynes would no doubt agree that NPR is on to something with their profiles of influential economists:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Keynes himself is hardly a defunct economist, his lasting influence prompted Richard Nixon’s lamentation, “We are all Keynsians now.” Indeed, the venerable General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money spawned Keynsianism, New Keynsianism, Post Keynsianism, and a lot of other Keynsianisms. The links all seem good to me.

I’m giving this one the upstart “people you should know” tag.

So get to know them.

The Long and Winding Road

As we continue On the Road with Hayek this term, we are faced with questions such as “what is capitalism?” and “what does it mean to have economic freedom?” These are questions that we tend not to get at when we are teaching the nuts and bolts of supply & demand or getting to the bottom of a subgame perfect equilibrium. But a nice piece in the New York Times argues that maybe we should pay more attention to the former than the latter. It is on the role of economists and economics in the face of radical economic and social change:

Perhaps the protesters occupying Wall Street are not so misguided after all. The questions they raise — how do we deal with the local costs of global downturns? Is it fair that those who suffer the most from such downturns have their safety net cut, while those who generate the volatility are bailed out by the government? — are the same ones that a big-picture economic vision should address. If economists want to help create a better world, they first have to ask, and try to answer, the hard questions that can shape a new vision of capitalism’s potential.

The whole article is well worth the read and also worth thinking about as we continue our lifelong quest in developing an economics ciricullum.

Also fundamental seems to be this piece by Luigi Zingales on meritocracy and democracy.

[M]eritocracy is a difficult principle to sustain in a democracy. Any system that allocates rewards on the basis of merit inevitably gives higher compensation to the few, leaving the majority potentially envious. In a democracy, the majority generally rules. Why should that majority agree to grant a minority disproportionate power and rewards?

… Even the most meritocratic people, then, can vote against meritocracy when it damages their own prospects. No wonder meritocracy is so politically fragile.

However, two factors help sustain a meritocratic system in the face of this challenge: a culture that considers it legitimate to reward effort with higher compensation; and benefits large enough, and spread widely enough through the system, to counter popular discontent with inequality.

Certainly, we can see rather vocal and enthusiastic segments of our population questioning both of these assumptions. What are the implications for American-style capitalism?

No Nukes is Good Nukes? Or, No Nukes is Bad Air?

The first Economics Colloquium is November 9 at 4:30 in Steitz 102. Here are the details:

No Nukes is Good Nukes? Or, No Nukes is Bad Air?

Paul S. Fischbeck

Carnegie Mellon University

What if the U.S. phased out its nuclear power plants? Where would the power come from? Would the reliability of the electricity system suffer? What about the effects on emissions of carbon dioxide and criteria pollutants?

Paul Fischbeck provides his approach to addressing these questions, along with some provocative results, in the inaugural lecture of a new Economics Colloquium series. He is professor in both the Departments of Engineering & Public Policy and Social & Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon, and an expert on quantitative risk assessment and the treatment of uncertainty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wednesday, November 9

Steitz Hall 102

4:30 p.m.

Streaming Profitability? Less So Than July

Back in July I was telling you about Netflix and its remarkable stock price ascension. At the time, its price was rising rapidly with a price flirting with $300, and it was overall looking like a good bet (click on the chart to your right). If the author was to be believed, it was a great bet. Indeed, the stock price rose 60 points in the week following that post (did our loyal readers run out and bid the price up?).

So let this be a lesson about getting your stock tips from The Atlantic, things can change pretty fast these days. Today I pick up my local computer and Netflix shareholders — the ones who haven’t bailed, that is — are bemoaning a stream of remarkable decisions that have kneecapped the company’s stock price, sending it into a free fall back toward $100 per share.

UPDATE: During the time I was writing this post, the stock price opened 40 points lower at about $75. Wow. Here it is in real time.

Of course, this could be one of those cases where Netflix management is taking the long view instead of grubbing for short-term profits. The original argument is that there were significant barriers to entry in streaming content, and that seems to be what management still believes — no close substitutes, no potential entrants with the same type of content.

This will likely make its way into both IO and the Senior Read. A very interesting situation, indeed.

The Magic Sauce?, or Where’s the Beef?

Here’s a couple of easily digestible, certainly thought-provoking, pieces on business start ups and job creation. The first is via Professor Finkler, who sends along one of these new, cool Kaufman Foundation sketchbooks. In this one, Kaufman President Carl Schramm asserts the best indicator of whether a country will grow is the number, not the size, of firms created every year. That’s quite an assertion. Here’s more from the Kaufmann blog.

In the blue corner, James Surowieki at The New Yorker argues that small businesses are not the source of growth.

Who are you going to believe?

Lawrence Scholars in Law / Business Event

This Wednesday, Basil Vasiliou (1972 alum) will be on campus to talk about the potential benefits of a masters in business administration (MBA) and a law degree. The Lawrence Scholars in Law and Lawrence Scholars in Business programs are co-hosting the event. Mr. Vasiliou’s talk will be at 5:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Cinema, and is followed by an informal dinner with students in Andrew Commons, Parish/Perille rooms.

After graduating from Lawrence, Mr. Vasiliou picked up an MBA from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Fordham, and he has worked in the financial sector, including serving as chairman and CEO of Vasiliou & Co. since 1986.

You might consider bookmarking this page to keep abreast of the Lawrence Scholars events.

A Lot More Light

This Saturday, October 29 is a maelstrom of opportunities for those of you looking to eventually enter the working world as Lawrence launches its 2011 More Light! Career Conference. There are many, many alumni coming back to give some pep talks on leadership, taking initiative, career paths into various vocations, and what you students can do to prepare for Life After Lawrence NOW.

The particulars are quite remarkable:

Leadership in Life After Lawrence – Stansbury Theater 9:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. with the following distinguished alumni:

ABC News “Nightline,” Co-Anchor, Terry Moran ‘82
Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Division President, Joanne Bauer ’77
Emmy Award-Winning Filmmaker, Catherine Tatge ‘72
Former U.S. Ambassador to India, David Mulford ‘59
Business Executive, Author and Professor, Harry Jansen Kraemer ‘77

Lawrence Scholars Secrets to Success panel discussions in:

Business…..10:30 – 11:45 a.m. Steitz Hall, Room 102
International Careers…..10:30 – 11:45 a.m. Steitz Hall, Room 202
Law…..1:00 – 2:15 p.m. Steitz Hall, Room 102
Athletics…..1:00 – 2:15 p.m. Steitz Hall, Room 202
Arts & Entertainment…..2:30 – 3:45 p.m. Steitz Hall, Room 102
Medicine…..2:30 – 3:45 p.m. Steitz Hall, Room 202

You can also attend a Networking Lunch at Andrew Commons at 12:00 noon, giving you an opportunity to lunch with alumni.

Finally, there is the Japan’s Ministry of Education’s Japan English Teaching (J.E.T.) Info Session – Career Center 4:15 – 5:00 p.m., where Michael Van Krey ’94, Japanese teacher with Evanston Township High School and former JET teacher will discuss the application process as well as his experiences with the J.E.T. program. Michael will be joined by Joette Bump, President – JET Alumni Association, Wisconsin Subchapter.

Who Says Symmetry is No Graphing Matter?

Professor Scott Corry from upstairs in the math department will give a Science Hall Colloquium, “Symmetry: An Example from Graph Theory,” on Tuesday, November 1 at 11:10. The Colloquium is intended for a general audience, and according to usually reliable sources, Professor Corry will be speaking at a level the general public like me can understand. Here are the particulars:

Abstract: Professor Corry will provide a glimpse of how mathematicians ask and investigate questions in pure mathematics. Rather than speaking in broad generalities, he will describe one of his recent theorems about symmetries of finite graphs. No specific mathematical knowledge will be presumed, so all interested parties are heartily encouraged to attend.

Regular readers of this blog might remember Professor Corry as the winner of the 2011 Young Teacher Award right here at LU, so you can expect a clear, engaging talk.

Tuesday, November 1