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MAKING CONNECTIONS April 2023
Connect Empower Inspire
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Dear Alumni and Friends, 
I am happy to report we are a vibrant economics community of distinguished scholars, talented students, and alumni whose achievements bring honor to the Department.
Over the past decade, the Department has been on a continuing upward trajectory:
- Research rankings advanced from 50th in 2011 to 13th in 2023 - just behind UPenn – with Econometrics ranked 5th worldwide.
- In the past five years, our tenured and tenure track faculty increased by 25% with 18 new hires joining us from our most prestigious peers.
- Undergraduate and graduate student populations burgeoned from 500 in 2011 to over 1,200 this year. Multiple new majors and study programs prepare them with analytical tools to solve future economic and policy issues.
Recently, we marked the Economics Leadership Council’s tenth anniversary and celebrated their involvement. Economics alumni and friends, leaders in their industries, generously contribute time, talent, and treasure to provide student mentorship, advocacy, and philanthropic support. Among the successful outcomes is our Women in Economics program which addresses gender disparity in the field with special programs to encourage young women to pursue economics degrees.
Alumni are among our greatest assets! Your contributions make an enormous difference and we are very grateful for your support. I look forward to your continued involvement as we plan even bigger goals for the future. Merci!
Amitiés,
Romain Ranciere
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An Evening Of Gratitude
The Department of Economics honored the Economics Leadership Council in February, marking its tenth anniversary and celebrating accomplishments made possible through alumni involvement. The Evening of Gratitude was held in the President’s Suite at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
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8th Annual Economics Career Networking Night
The eighth annual Networking Night sponsored by the Economics Leadership Council gave students an opportunity to explore career opportunities open to them with an economics degree. Alumni industry leaders from Banking, Consulting, Cyber Security, Data Science, Law, Real Estate, Risk Management, Wealth Management, and the Public Sector shared their expertise and experience with more than sixty undergraduates.
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Women in Economics Career Chat
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Congratulations to our Easterlin Fellows
Econometrics Game 2023 @ University of Chicago
From left to right: Hailey Chen, Jake Stemmons,
Prof. James J. Heckman (judge and Nobel Prize-winning economist),
Prof. Stephane Bonhomme (judge), Robert Huang, and Luna Liu
The Econometrics Game is a fast-paced competition where teams of one to four undergraduate students from universities across the US are given 13 hours with a dataset to devise and answer a question of economic importance. Our Easterlin Fellows made it to the final round (top 5). They placed 4th out of 41 teams for their paper titled, The Train to Success: An Analysis of the Relationship between Public Transportation and College Completion.
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Exploring the Power of Economics: Edition One
Professor Simon Quach
Professor Simon Quach started his Ph.D. program at Princeton University with the guiding question of identifying “what policies we can implement to help those that have not gained as much from the economy.” Professor Quach continues to use economics as a tool to discover how to better help people.
A Pandora’s Box or a Compliment? Identifying the Effects of AI and ChatGPT on Labor Market Outcomes
Mentioning that AI could “open up a new pandora’s box of jobs being replaced,” Professor Quach said:
There is concern that robots are replacing medium-skilled labor, such as people in factories with routine jobs, because robots are good at repeating an action over and over. As a result, economists thought non-routine jobs, like computer programming and research, were safe. Non-routine jobs that are lower-paid, such as service-sector jobs that require interactions with people, tend to be non-routine. However, with the advancement of AI, some of those jobs could be replaced. Sometimes if you have a complaint, you chat with a robot — which is not that great all the time — instead of a person. Now, with the launch of ChatGPT, you could have a decent conversation, so I imagine some potential for disruption in this sector of the service economy.
As to high-skilled labor, Professor Quach used his job as an economist to lay out two different possibilities. Noting that “ChatGPT could take my job,” Dr. Quach said, on the other hand, it could augment high-skilled labor. He explained that economists invest considerable time writing code for their research but that there is potential for ChatGPT to lower this. A colleague told him that after giving ChatGPT their code, it returned a faster copy. Therefore, ChatGPT could complement economic research by making the process more efficient and productive.
Thank you to Professor Quach for being the first subject of our new interview series.
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ECONOMICS OPPORTUNITY FUND
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Your gift matters!
Regardless of size, it is a shared commitment to excellence!
The Fund provides discretionary dollars that underwrite student enrichment programs, support alumni outreach activities, and enable the Chair to seize unique opportunities that elevate the academic mission.
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Alice Holzman
Executive Director of Development
(213) 359-7092
afholzma@usc.edu
Karina Chicas, MEd
Student Programs Advisor II
Tel: (213) 740-5403
kchicas@usc.edu
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