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Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706

Telephone: 608.262.3581
Fax: 608.265.3233

Last updated:
August 18, 2011

Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes: Fall 2005

Faculty news

Menzie Chinn presented research on the U.S. trade deficit in June and July. He was a visiting fellow with the Congressional Budget Office in the Macroeconomic Analysis Division. At a National Bureau of Economic Research conference on current account sustainability in June, Chinn and Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard University presented a paper on whether the euro will overtake the dollar as a currency held by central banks. Their work received attention in the Indian and Italian press and in blogs.

La Follette School professors win grants

Menzie Chinn, Charles Engel and Clark Miller of the La Follette School have received grants from the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Each project will bring visitors to campus, hold conferences, train students, develop resources, advance research and share expertise with business, government and the public. Each project receives $125,000 for three years.

Chinn and Engel are exploring the determinants of current account sustainability, the ability of countries to run large and persistent current account deficits. Their focus is on the world’s major economies.

With other UW faculty, Miller is examining new insecurities the process of globalization has created for states and societies, with emphasis on the globalization of violence and ecological risk.

New program opens in neuroscience, policy

The La Follette School and the Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison announce a dual-degree program. The only one of its kind in the United States, the program offers a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a master’s degree in public affairs.

“Our program will train scientists and policy officials who can work hand-in-hand to bring neuroscience research to bear on public policy and to shape medical policies regarding the human brain and mental health,” says Clark Miller, La Follette School assistant professor and program co-director.

The program is accepting applications for fall 2006. For information, contact Miller, (608) 265-6017, miller@lafollette.wisc.edu.

Bob Haveman spent a week in July at the Center for Economic Studies in Munich, Germany. He worked with researchers there to develop a method with which to estimate the level and utilization of human capital, to be included in the national income accounts of that country. The work is based upon a method presented in his 2003 co-authored book, Human Capital in the United States from 1975 to 2000: Patterns of Growth and Utilization.

Carolyn Heinrich traveled to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to participate in a seminar on evaluating the impact of Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program, “Seminário: Pesquisa de Avaliação do Impacto do Programa Bolsa Familia.” The poverty reduction/human capital development program serves 28 million poor people and is expected to enroll more than 50 million as it advances.

Karen Holden made several presentations, one of a paper authored with Bob Havemanand Barbara Wolfe, in July at the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in Tours, France. In June, Holden presented at Edgewood College’s Summer Financial Institution on Social Security and Economic Security and gave a paper authored with Haveman and Wolfe at a workshop organized by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, Copenhagen, on “pension reform.” Holden was one of two keynote presenters at a panel in May on Social Security reform organized by the Women’s Task Force of the Chicago Bar Association. In May she appeared on a Madison television station to talk about United Airlines pensions and implications for retirement security. Between professional gigs, her Cajun Band played Wheatland Traditional Arts Festival, Oshkosh Sawdust Days and several spots around Madison.

Melanie Manion has a Chiang Ching-kuo Scholar Grant and a Fulbright Research Award that she will use to research electoral losses by candidates who are vetted and pre-selected by communist party committees for leadership positions in mainland China. She focuses on lower levels of state organization, where change in the past decade has been substantial and implications for governance are of broad significance.

Dennis Dresang published the fifth edition of his co-authored Politics and Policy in American States and Communities. He helped coordinate the 11th Bowhay Institute for Legislative Leadership Development for Midwestern legislators. He taught an online course for students completing internship programs and researched succession planning for the pending wave of baby boomer retirements in public agencies. Dresang also went bicycling in Nova Scotia.

Jonathan Zeitlin published a chapter in EU Law and the Welfare State: In Search of Solidarity. He gave presentations and papers at St. Antony’s College, Oxford; the London School of Economics; the European University Institute, Florence; the European Center for Local and Regional Development, University of Florence; the Research Unit on European Governance, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin; the Graduate School in Social, Economic, and Political Sciences, University of Milan; and the Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.

Index to La Follette Notes fall 2005