January 15, 2004
Etc.
SOCIAL SCIENCE STARS: It’s not uncommon for UW professors to become officers in their academic fields, but recently there seems to have been quite a crop of them in the social sciences. Among them are: Margaret Levi, president-elect of the American Political Science Association; Victoria Lawson, vice president of the Association of American Geographers; Barbara Reskin, president of the American Sociological Association in 2001–02; and Charles Hirschman, president-elect of the Population Association of America.
“It’s very unusual for a university to have so many people in such positions,” said Susan Jeffords, former Arts and Sciences divisional dean for the social sciences.
RESOLVING A DILEMMA: Richard O. Zerbe Jr., professor in the Evans School of Public Affairs, has a new book out called Economic Efficiency in Law and Economics. The book, which has been called “pathbreaking,” is described this way:
“Economists are themselves not in agreement about the definition of economic efficiency. For normative economics the starting place for a definition is that an action or decision is efficient when the sum of the amounts people are willing to pay for an action exceeds the amount those who would lose from the action are willing to accept to allow the action. Willingness to pay for an action or a good will generally be less than the willingness to accept payment to forego the action so that the measure of value depends on whether or not one has a right to the good or to the action.
“Among the issues unspecified or unresolved are the treatment of the transaction’s costs associated with the action, the relation of gains and losses to legal rights and whether or not moral sentiments attached to concern for others should be included in the calculation. The book shows how these issues can be resolved in a way that enhances the power of economic analysis.”
THE WHAT BOWL? A correction that appeared in a Texas newspaper should provoke a chuckle from folks around the University. The item in the Austin American-Statesman read as follows: “An article on Washington State’s football team on Page C5 of Monday’s Sports section incorrectly referred to the university’s annual game against the University of Washington as the Egg Bowl. The game is the Apple Cup.” Guess those Texas cowboys can’t tell fruit from dairy products (and they don’t know their crockery, either).
KUDOS: Peter Guttorp, chair of Statistics, will be heading to Lund Institute of Technology and Linköping University as the Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers’ Environmental Professor during 2004–05. This professorship is awarded to an internationally known researcher in order to stimulate and catalyze Swedish environmental research . . . Economics Professor Charles Nelson was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society, an honor given to those who have made significant contributions to Economics Science . . . College of Forest Resources Dean Bruce Bare was recently elected chair of the Western National Association of Professional Forestry Schools and Colleges (NAPFSC) and a Society of American Foresters Fellow.
Do you know someone who deserves kudos? If so, send his or her name and achievement to uweek@u.washingon.edu.
