As you are aware, we are living in challenging times, both internationally (tariffs, political uncertainty) and locally (university budgets). We hope that economists can help both policymakers and the public understand the issues involved, and I am grateful to my colleagues who are willing to talk to reporters to help put current affairs into context; I’ll call out Lars Osberg, Talan İşcan, James McNeil, Dozie Okoye, and Casey Warman for volunteering their time to patiently explain the economics behind recent policies and events.
The Winter 2025 issue of EconMatters includes a profile of one of our newest faculty members, Professor Álvaro Parra. We also bring you a retrospective of our China Programs, written by Professor Barry Lesser, who will soon step down as Program Director. We have profiles of two alumni, Hieu Nguyen (BSc (Honours) 2003) and Sarah Miller (PhD 2013). Our Research Spotlight shines a light on the work of Professor Nicholas Lawson and Professor Talan İşcan.
The Department of Economics has two thrilling announcements. Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel has been awarded a Faculty of Science Killam Professorship effective July 1, 2025 and continuing until June 30, 2030; this is the first Killam Professorship ever awarded to a faculty member in the Department of Economics. James McNeil has been awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor effective July 1, 2025. Huge congratulations to Mev and James!!
We are happy to recognize our outstanding graduate students who have been granted scholarships or bursaries. Fuli Gao was awarded the Mildred and John Young Post-Graduate Scholarship. The Robert L. Comeau Scholarship went to Ernest Owusu-Ansah and Jiefeng Wang. The Zella Crowe Spencer Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Xiaoyan Chang and Alexa Mucyo Kayonga. Reshma Joseph was the recipient of the Professor George A.B. Kartsaklis Memorial Scholarship. The Christian Marfels Memorial Graduate Bursary went to Rodolfo del Aguila Andrade, and the Dr. Alasdair M. Sinclar Memorial Bursary was awarded to Temilola Adegbite and Afeez Salami.
We very much appreciate the alumni, families, and friends who have donated to our scholarship and bursary funds (through giving.dal.ca) to help us support student excellence as well as financial need. We are currently using some of the annual giving fund to renovate our basement study spaces in response to student feedback, so our students are grateful for your support!
If you had asked my younger self what I wanted to be, I would have confidently answered: a historian. Despite my natural talent for math, I was captivated by the study of history and understanding how our past shaped who we have become. Asking for advice from my high school history teacher on a career as a historian, he told me: "Álvaro, you don't know it yet, but you are an economist." I respected his opinion so much that I decided to pursue both. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. (...)
In June of this year, Barry Lesser, Professor Emeritus in the Department, will end his time as the Director of the China Program for the Department and for the Faculty of Science. The China Program in Economics was the first such Program in the Faculty of Science at Dalhousie and the first for the Department. The principal partner on the China side has been Shandong University of Finance and Economics in Jinan, China. But (...)
In my first year at Dalhousie, I was majoring in International Development Studies (IDS) as I knew I wanted to help people, ensure basic necessities were available to everyone, and level the playing field for people in disadvantaged situations, but IDS on its own didn’t quite hit what I wanted to do. I met with the faculty advisor, and she suggested (...)
For the past two years, I have been the Regional Director at the Bank of Canada’s Regional Office for the Atlantic Provinces. In this role, I help oversee some of the Bank’s surveys of firms and consumers including the Business Outlook Survey and the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations. I direct and conduct analysis on (...)
Nicholas Lawson, Claire Lelarge, and Grigorios Spanos (2024): "The Minimum Wage in Firms' Organizations: Productivity Implications," CEPR Discussion Paper No. 18425.
In our paper, we study the effect of the minimum wage on firms' incentives to adopt different organizational structures and technologies. We start with an empirical analysis of French data from 2003 to 2006, a unique empirical setting in which different minimum wages coexisted for different firms due to (...)
We are what we eat, the familiar phrase, garners a new perspective when we pause to think about our food systems: We eat what we subsidize. My research shows how agricultural subsidies end up either on our plates here in Canada, or elsewhere through our exports, and identifies the extent to which Canada’s agricultural production policies are not always consistent with our health and environmental goals. (...)
Dalhousie University EconMatters is distributed twice a year to faculty, staff, students and alumni. Suggestions for future issues? Contact economic@dal.ca.
