Spring 2009

Lecture 1 of 3

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 -- 5:15Ð6:45 P.M.
Martin Luther King Library, Room 225
"New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America"
Dr. Burton Folsom, Professor of History and Management, Hillsdale College

On January 12, 2009 President Obama declared that economists from across the political spectrum agreed on the need for massive government spending to stimulate the economy. Within two weeks of that announcement hundreds of professional economists publicly disagreed with the President. Is it possible for the government to spend the economy out of this recession? The question is open for debate. Examination of historical events provides one means of answering the question. Dr. Burton Folsom has examined government economic intervention and its consequences by studying the policies and results of the greatest U.S. peacetime government intervention:
FDR's New Deal. Join students, faculty, and friends to learn from history as we hear Dr. Folsom's evaluation of FDR's policies. Burton Folsom is the Charles Kline professor of history and management at HillsdaleCollege in Michigan. He is also senior historian at the Foundation for Economic Education, in Irvington, N.Y. Dr. Folsom received his Ph.D. in history from the University ofPittsburgh and has taught at the University of Nebraska, Murray State University, and Northwood University before joining Hillsdale College
in 2003. He has also been a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan. Professor Folsom has written six books, including The Myth of the Robber Barons, published by Young America's Foundation, now in its fifth edition. His latest book is New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America (Simon & Schuster, 2008). He has written articles for the Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, Policy Review, and the Christian Science Monitor. He is a columnist on economic history for The Freeman.

Lecture 2 of 3

April 16, 2009 -- 5:15 - 6:45 p.m.
Martin Luther King Library room 225.
"Do you have free will when it comes to money?"
Kay-Yut Chen, Caltech Ph.D., runs the experimental lab at Hewlett Packard.

Laboratory methods make it possible for economists to study issues that are difficult to observe such as trust and cooperation. In the growing field of experimental economics, researchers use controlled experiments to test the validity of existing economic theories and to test the impact of proposed public regulations and business policies. Experiments can be laboratory or field based and often use a cash payoff or other benefit that mirrors real-life incentives to understand why participants react the way they do in various exchanges. The results of these experiments are of interest not only to economists, but also to researchers in psychology, sociology, political science, and business.

Dr. Kay Yut Chen, Principle Scientist at Hewlett-Packard, leads the first experimental economics program in any private company. He established the experimental economics lab in 1994 immediately after earning his PhD from Caltech. Kay-Yut has pioneered the application of experimental economics to businesses in areas such as supply chain contracting, risk management, and human-based forecasting. Kay-Yut has broad research interests and publishes in multiple scientific disciplines including economics, management science, computer science, and even physics. Scientific American, Risk Magazine, Newsweek, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal have featured his work. Kay-Yut will be sharing his experiences, discussing some of his findings, and answering questions. He will provide a unique opportunity to see how experimental economics can illuminate our understanding of individual choice.

Lecture 3 of 3

May 5, 2009, 4:45 p.m.
Morris Daley Auditorium
“What goes up, comes down, and then up again: Pricing in the Gasoline Industry”
Andy Morriss, Ph.D. (Economics) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.law. uiuc.edu/ faculty/director y/AndrewMorriss).

Andrew Morriss will be speaking about the oil industry--why gasoline prices go up
and down and up again.