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June 2023
CONNECT. INSPIRE. EMPOWER
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Dear Alumni and Friends,
 Connecting with so many of you personally at our Economics Happy Hour last month was a joy. I am looking forward to many more opportunities in the future. This newsletter is another vehicle for creating connections.
As this semester ends, we are focused on planning 2023-2024. Building on our success over the past decade, we want to expand our student engagement programs, increase outreach to alumni wherever they are located, and grow our donor base to support these programs and other academic priorities. We need your involvement to continue our upward trajectory!
I welcome your ideas and suggestions! Please use this Alumni Involvement Form to tell us about your interests. For now, my warmest thanks to all of you for your support and friendship – particularly to the leaders of Women in Economics and the Economics Leadership Council. It has been a wonderful year and I am most grateful.
Amitiés,
Romain Ranciere
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Economics Community Happy Hour
The Women in Economics alumnae group hosted a Community Happy Hour at a private rooftop in the LA Arts District on Tuesday, May 23, 2023. Many alumni, friends, and faculty enjoyed an opportunity to connect or re-connect. To participate in future networking opportunities, complete the Alumni Involvement Form.
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Congratulations Class of 2023
The Department of Economics is excited to welcome the Class of 2023 into its alumni community. On May 12, 2023, over three-hundred baccalaureate students, one-hundred-and-fifty Master students, and twenty PhD candidates received their respective degrees in Economics. Among the baccalaureates, fifty students graduated with Phi Beta Kappa distinction and one-hundred and fifty students with university honors.
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SPOTLIGHT:
Academic Awards
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Michele Fioretti, PhD ’19, has been awarded the prestigious Malinvaud Prize by the French Economic Association for his paper, Caring or Pretending to Care? Social Impact, Firms’ Objectives, and Welfare, published in the Journal of Political Economy. The jury wanted to shed light on the topic of firms’ social responsibility and expressed special appreciation for his development of new structural models to disentangle drivers of supply and demand. Assistant Professor of Economics at Sciences Po, Fioretti acquired his MPA at the London School of Economics and an MA in Economics at USC before pursuing his PhD.
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The Communicator of the Year Award honors scholars who contribute significant time and effort to meaningfully improve the public’s understanding of issues, influence policy or raise the level of public discourse.
We are proud to congratulate Matthew Kahn, Provost Professor of Economics and Spatial Sciences, who shared his expertise with the public through news media, his own articles, and an active, engaging presence on social media, particularly Twitter.
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The General Education Teaching Award honors faculty who make extraordinary contributions to the educational experience of students. We are proud to congratulate Brijesh Pinto, Assistant Professor, for being recognized for his teaching in ECON 203: Principles of Microeconomics.
"Professor Pinto was one of the best professors I had at USC. He was exceptionally organized, always had a great attitude in class, and consistently clear in his lectures and expectations for the course. Thank you for all the effort you put in. It most certainly does not go unnoticed nor unappreciated!"
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Banking and the Tech in the Aftermath
of the SVB Collapse
By Romain Ranciere
The collapse of SVB in March 2023 is an almost perfect textbook case of a banking crisis. SVB had deposits (mostly uninsured) on its liabilities side, and loans and Treasury bonds (T-bonds) with long-term maturity on its assets side.
Due to the rise in interest rates associated with the tightening of monetary policy, SVB experienced large losses on its portfolio of T-bonds.
The losses were hidden for a while, as SVB managed – through an accounting gimmick – not marking its long-term securities to market value. When some worried depositors started to pull out their deposits, the losses on T-bonds became realized, triggering more deposit withdrawals, more posted losses, and so on and so forth, until the final collapse.
The run of depositors was perfectly rational. Knowing that the value of the bank’s asset portfolio and the equity buffer were not enough to cover the value of all deposits, depositors rushed to the door, and they rushed even faster knowing that large deposits were not insured. But not everyone was fast enough to get there on time and some large depositors were luckless at the time of collapse. Fortunately for them, the FDIC decided to extend the guarantee to all depositors at SVB (above the standard $250,000 amount per depositor per institution) making all depositors whole.
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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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