Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Degree in Economics

The Department participates in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program.  The central feature of the Interdisciplinary Program is that students will have a major discipline, called the coordinating discipline, and a minor discipline, called the co-discipline.  Students who want to emphasis economics in their Ph.D. will take economics as their coordinating discipline; and then choose a co-discipline from a number of different academic areas, including history, mathematics, political science, psychology, education, urban leadership and policy studies in education, public affairs and administration, sociology, and the social science consortium.

The Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in economics spans traditional boundaries among disciplines.  The goal of the Department is to help students develop knowledge and skills for independent research on the fundamental questions of the present and the future.  The world of the future will require scholars with a global approach to problem solving.  The program is designed to provide self-directed students with academic training at the highest level, while allowing their participation as colleagues in research of fundamental importance.  The Department’s tradition of Institutional, Post Keynesian, and other heterodox scholarship is particularly well-suited to such an interdisciplinary approach.

Research Centers, Seminars, and Other Activities

Center for Full-Employment and Price Stability, Mathew Forstater, Director

The Center for Full Employment and Price Stability (CFEPS) is a national policy center, producing original research and sponsoring national workshops on the use of full employment policies to achieve both stable economic growth and price stability.  The CFEPS has a staff including a director, an associate director, research associates, graduate student assistants, and support staff.  In its’ first year of operation at UMKC the CFEPS conducted two national workshops involving internationally known scholars and has initiated a pilot community service program for interdisciplinary doctoral students and some undergraduate students. The CFEPS funds several doctoral assistantships in the department and provides funds for faculty and doctoral students at other universities to conduct research for the CPEPS.  The CFEPS fully participates in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, providing interdisciplinary research links between the economics faculty, other social science faculty at UMKC, and an international community of scholars concerned with issues of full-employment and prices stability.  The CFEPS is currently planning a major workshop/summer school for summer, 2001, which will bring doctoral students from around the world for several days of study directed by a group of international scholars.

Center for Economic Information, Peter Eaton, Director

The research of the Center for Economic Information is typically oriented toward the public sector, and regularly involves the use of economic statistics, econometrics, environmental economics, database development and geographic information systems.  Recent public policy projects include:
-participation in the Kansas City Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Partners include the City of Kansas City, Missouri, the Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance, and the UMKC Neighborhood Resource Center;
- a contract with the City of Kansas City, MO for conducting a 100% survey of housing conditions in the urban core and a 5% stratified census tract level sample outside of the urban core; a long-term tax revenue forecast for the City of Kansas City, MO;
- two waste management projects funded by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources;
- an employment survey of the West Side neighborhood, done in partnership  with the Missouri Department of Labor, the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation, and COPC;
- partnership with the Kansas City, MO Police Department in a crime mapping project as part of COPC;
- participation thorough the Missouri Department of State in the Missouri State Census Data Center (MSCDC) programs.  The CEI is a core agency together with OSEDA, and other university and state agencies;
-an address geo-coding project (of the geographic incidence of trauma experienced by children under 15) and  GIS consulting services for the Emergency Medicine Department of Children’s Mercy Hospital.

The CEI has a Director a staff of three, and the participation of a number of graduate students.  The CEI is self-funded.   CEI affiliated faculty are drawn from the various social science departments, the School of Education, the Bloch School of Business and Public Administration, and the School of Law.  The primary goals of the CEI are to become the major data research center for western Missouri, to provide a training ground in urban policy analysis for interdisciplinary doctoral students and to support the research efforts of other centers and faculty participating in the urban mission of the university.

Seminars and Other Activities

The Department has a number of ongoing seminars on economic philosophy, methodology, and research methodology.  In addition, throughout the year it brings several for lectures and seminars.  We hosted the Association for Evolutionary Economics Summer School in 2001 and will host the Post Keynesian Economics Workshop in 2002.

Economics Club and Omicron Delta Epsilon

The Department sponsors The Economics Club which consists of graduate and undergraduate students and faculty.  All M. A. students are welcome and encouraged to join and participate in the many activities the Club sponsors each year.  The club has its own officers and faculty sponsor.  Contact the Department Office, any faculty member or club officer for further information on the activities or membership.
The Department also sponsor Omicron Delta Epsilon, the Economics Honorary Society.  Graduate students are eligible if they have a 3.0 or more grade point average.  Contact the ODE Faculty Advisor for application materials.

Faculty

Stephanie Bell, Assistant Professor, Ph.D., New School for Social Research
Office:  Manheim Hall, 203 B
Phone:  816-235-5700
Email:  bellsa@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  monetary theory, employment policy, history of
economic monetary thought, social security, and European monetary integration
Recent Publications:
“Financial Aspects of the Social Security Problem,” (with L. R. Wray) Journal of Economic Issues 34.2 (2000).
“Do Taxes and Bonds Finance Government Spending?”  Journal of Economic Issues 34.3 (2000).

W. Robert Brazelton, Professor Emeritus, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma
Office:  Manheim Hall, 202 E
Phone:  816-235-2831
Email:  brazeltonw@umkc.edu

Research Interests:  macroeconomic theory and policy, Post Keynesian and Evolutionist synthesis, and European economic systems
Recent Publications:
“A Selection of Early Soviet Economic Reforms:  The Khrushchev Era,” The Journal of Economics 22.1 (1996).
“The Economics of Leon Hirsch Keyserling.”  Journal of Economic Perspectives 11 (1997).

Cathy Carroll, Assistant Professor, Ph.D., University of Kansas
Office:  Manheim Hall, 203D
Phone:  816-235-5734
Email:  carrollc@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  nursing and pharmacy labor, pharmaceutical pricing, Medicare and Medicaid prescription drug health policy analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis
Recent Publications:
“The Clinical and Economic Implications of Pharmaceutical Care in ESRD Patients” with H. J. Manley, Seminars in Dialysis, forthcoming.
“An Economic Assessment of Reductions in Hospitalization Rates Secondary ro Ramipril Therapy in High Risk Cardiovascular Patients” with Hope Investigators, JAMA, awaiting submission.

Peter Eaton, Associate Professor, Ph.D., University of Florida, Director, Center for Economic Information
Office:  Haag Hall, 210
Phone:  816-235-2832
Email:  eatonp@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  econometrics, public finance forecasting, spatial relations in economics, and human resources economics
Recent Publications:
“Health Insurance Coverage in Missouri, 1995-97”, Center for Economic
Information, Economic Report Series, No 9901, July 1999.
“Welfare Reform in Missouri,” Missouri State Census Data Center, MSCDC Report Series, No 9803, June 1998.

Mathew Forstater, Assistant Professor, Director, Center for Full-Employment and Price Stability, Ph.D., New School for Social Research
Office:  Royall Hall, 410 B
Phone:  816-235-5862
Email:  forstaterm@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  history of economic thought and methodology,
environmental economics, labor economics and discrimination, macroeconomic policy, and political economy
Recent Publications:
“Adolph Lowe on Freedom, Education, and Socialization,” Review of Social
Economy, (58), 2000.
 “Savings-Recycling Public Employment:  An Assets-Based Approach to Full Employment and Price Stability,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics (22), 2000.

L. Kenneth Hubbell, Professor Emeritus, Ph.D., University of Nebraska
Office:  Manheim Hall, 202 F
Phone:  816-235-2835
Email: hubbelll@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  state and local finance

Jan Kregel, Distinguished Research Professor, Ph.D. Rutgers University
Office:
Phone
Email:
Research Interests:  financial macroeconomics and international development
Recent Publications:
“Derivatives and Global Capital Flows:  Applications to Asia,” Cambridge Journal of Economics (22), 1998.
“Aspects of a Post Keynesian Theory of Finance,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics (21), 1998.

Frederic Lee, Professor, Ph.D., Rutgers University
Office:  Manheim Hall, 202 D
Phone:  816-235-2543
Email:  leefs@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  Post Keynesian microeconomics, industrial organization and market governance, history of heterodox economics since 1945, and Post Keynesian production and price models
Recent Publications:
“The Organizational History of Post Keynesian Economics in America, 1971-1995,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 23 (2000).
Post Keynesian Price Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

A. Ross Shepherd, Professor Emeritus, Ph.D., Syracuse University
Office:  Manheim Hall, 203 B
Phone:  816-235-5700
Email: shepherdr@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  microeconomics and international economics
Recent Publications:
“Minimum Wages and the Card-Krueger Paradox,” Southern Economic Journal, 67 (2), 2000.

James Sturgeon, Professor, Graduate Advisor, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma
Office:  Manheim Hall, 202 B
Phone:  816-235-2832
Email: sturgeonj@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  Institutional Economics and Industrial Organization
Recent Publications:
"Relatively Adequate Global Social Theory" with Douglas Bowles, et al., Journal of Socio-economics, Winter 1999.
"What's In a Name?  Production Technology and the New Car" Journal of Economic Issues, June 1993

Karen Vorst, Professor, Ph.D., Principal Undergraduate Advisor,  Indiana University
Office:  Manheim Hall, 203 B
Phone:  816-235-2838
Email:  vorstk@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  monetary theory and policy, money and banking, and financial systems in transitioning economies
Recent Publications:
Financial Market Restructuring in Selected Central European Countries (edited with W. Wehmeyer), Ashgate Publishing, 1998.
“The Economic Progress of Selected Transitioning Economies” and “The Emerging Market Economy in the Slovak Republic” in The Return to Mitteleuropa:  Socio-Economic Transition in Post-Communist Central Europe (edited by S. Abizadeh and A. Mills), Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1999.

F. Eugene Wagner, Professor, Ph.D., Syracuse University
Office:  Manheim Hall, 202C
Phone:  816-235-2840
Email:  wagnerf@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  economics of development and labor economics

John O. Ward, Professor, Department Chair, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma
Office:  Haag Hall, 211 B
Phone:  816-235-5699
Email:  wardj@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  law and economics, human resources, economic of
development, and microeconomics
Recent Publications:
  “Evaluating Child Loss in Child Injuries and Fatalities” with Tom Ireland, in Children and Accidents, Joe Frost, Lawyers and Judges Publishing, 2001.
“Whole Time Loss Evaluations,” Journal of Forensic Economics,  (14) 2001.

L. Randall Wray, Professor, Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis
Office:  Manheim Hall, 203 C
Phone:  816-235-5687
Email:  wrayr@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  Post Keynesian and Institutionalist economics, monetary theory and policy, and employment policy
Recent Publications:
Understanding Modern Money, Edward Elgar, 1998.
“A New Economic Reality:  Penal Keynesianism,” Challenge (September-October 2000).

Ben Young, Lecturer, Economics Club Sponsor, Undergraduate Advisor, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma
Office:  Manheim Hall, 203 E
Phone:  816-235-5699
Email:  youndb@umkc.edu
Research Interests:  Institutional theory and economic development

For further information, contact the UMKC Department of Economics, (816) 235-1314. Or e-mail us, Economics Department.

Graduate Faculty Advisors
James Sturgeon

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Department of Economics
211 Haag Hall
University of Missouri-Kansas City
5100 Rockhill Road
Kansas City, Missouri 64110
Send e-mail to economics@umkc.edu
todorovazd@umkc.edu