News Economics are coming. 01-30-2013

Fans of economics rejoice. This Friday, Feb. 1 is Western Illinois University’s annual Economics Day, presented by the Economics Students Association (ESA). This year’s event will take place in Stipes Hall, room 121, and will have three entertaining one-hour sessions at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. This event is free and open to all Western students, faculty, staff and community members.

The 10 a.m. session will feature a clip from the 2010 documentary “Freakonomics,” which documents an experiment conducted in the Chicago suburbs to see if financial incentive was efficient at motivating students to get higher grades. After watching the clip there will be a debate about the topic.

The 11 a.m. session will include a discussion on “Economics in the News” with economics faculty Bill Polley and Thomas Sadler and political science professor Greg Baldi. Topics will range from the fiscal cliff, to elections, to the trillion-dollar coin. 

In addition to the suggested topics, the speakers will also take questions and comments from the audience.

The 2 p.m. session will be a keynote speech with Western alumna Linsey Ackerman, who graduated in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a Master of Economics in 2002. Since then she has worked for Caterpillar Financial, with a variety of roles from Pricing Analyst to Global Process Owner.

Ackerman will be speak about her time at Western, her experiences working at Caterpillar Financial and the current state of the global economic environment.

“Students interested in networking may find her talk particularly appealing,” Sadler said.

Economics Day is sponsored by the Western Department of Economics and Decision Sciences and is part of the Western visiting lecture series. The events and speakers were planned by the Center for Economic Education.

Students do not have to be familiar with economics to attend the sessions. Economics Day could give them a better understanding of the economy and how it works.

http://www.westerncourier.com/news/economics-are-coming/article_550a5384-6b1a-11e2-91e2-0019bb30f31a.html