Most Lucrative Undergraduate Degrees

In terms of average starting salary, economics is a pretty good choice (from CNN Money):

The average starting offer for seniors majoring in:

Economics: $51,631
Finance: $47,905
Marketing: $41,323
Business Administration: $43,523
Mechanical engineering: $54,587
Chemical engineering: $60,054
Management information systems: $46,568
Civil engineering: $47,145
Electrical engineering: $54,599
Computer science: $51,070
Accounting: $46,508
Logistics/Materials management: $43,294
Liberal arts (including psychology, political science history, English): $30,502

OK, so maybe engineering is more lucrative, but then there is the compensating wage differential to consider.

Bruce McGough

Bruce will join us on Wednesday, Feb 13. He is a macro-economist, so be prepared to ask him about the macro-economy.

I'll look into Pizza...

-Patrick

President Ed Ray to Speak to the Economics Club April 2nd

Ed Ray, President of OSU, has accepted an invitation to speak to the Economics Club. He is scheduled to meet with the club at its regular meeting on April 2nd. We will meet with him in the 6th Floor Conference Room in Kerr Admin Building (Kerr 650). Please don't be late as Ed has only a hour to spend with us.

In the meantime, why did we ask President Ray to speak to us (other than the fact that he is the president)? He is a eminent trade economist who made some major contributions to the trade literature before he became a full time administrator. Here is a sample of his early work.

State Representative Sara Gelser to Speak on Jan 30th

Sara will join us at our regular meeting, so think about questions you have about legislating and economics.

From her bio:

Sara Gelser (Democrat, Corvallis) was sworn in as State Representative for House District 16 on December 2, 2005 after being appointed to fill a legislative vacancy. In 2006, she was elected to the position. Soon thereafter, she was elected as Assistant Majority Leader for Policy for the 2007 legislative session.

During the 2007 session, Sara served on the Revenue Committee, the Health Care Committee, and was Vice Chair of the Human Services and Women's Wellness Committee. She was also appointed to chair the House Guidelines Committee, which was created to oversee stringent ethics reform in the Oregon House of Representatives. In her first full term in office, Sara was able to pass several bills she introduced. Most significantly, she passed Karly's Law which will improve child abuse investigations statewide and a Mediciad waiver bill which will allow children with severe disabilities to grow up in their family homes rather than foster care or nursing facilities. She also saw successful passage of a bill to allow statewide electronic permitting for contractors. This was the largest regulatory streamlining initiative for the construction industry in the United States. Sara was also a founding member of the new Oregon Senior and Disability Caucus.

Link to Club Documents

I have added a link to the club documents page (to the right) and have posted there the slides from Ayca's presentation.

-Patrick

Field Trip to Rogue

Jack Joyce, owner of Rogue, has graciously invited the Econ Club to go to the brewery in Newport and chat about the beer business. We are now scheduled to visit on Friday, December 7th at 1:30pm. The economics department will cover the cost of a 12 passenger van and I will drive. We will plan on leaving at 12:30pm.

What is going on in the beer business you ask? Lots!

Professor Tekin-Koru to Present on Wednesday

Ayca Tekin-Koru will join us for the meeting on Wednesday where she will talk about the new class she has designed "Multinational Corporations" and will give a bit of a preview about the economics of MNCs.