Economics

Economics majors start by taking the principles sequence ECO 105 and 206. Next, students will take courses at the intermediate level in both microeconomics and macroeconomics. This will allow a major to take a variety of upper-division specialty courses. By the student’s junior year, they will have completed a series of courses in quantitative methods. In the student’s senior year, research is undertaken and presented at the Student Research Forum. The department offers two possible concentrations: finance and political economy and government.

The department is led by Dr. Malcolm Robinson, who graduated from Rutgers College in 1981 with a B.A. in Economics and received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1992. He was honored as Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year in 2007 and an “Outstanding Educator” in Cincinnati in 2012. He entered graduate school believing that economics is a problem solving, policy-oriented social science and that globalization has made social policymaking more difficult. In order to write his dissertation on policymaking in a global setting, he taught himself a branch of mathematics called Game Theory. Game Theory deals with how choices are made when my choice matters to you and your choice matters to me. His primary teaching and research interests include macroeconomic theory and policy and international monetary economics. However, he has also introduced courses on Game Theory, Microeconomics for Managers with Calculus, International Economics, Environmental Economics, Law and Economics, Applied Linear Modeling with R, Money and Banking and Advanced Microeconomic Theory to the Economics curriculum.

Recent alumni are working as accountants while some are in law school. One alumni recently received a Masters in Applied Economics from The University of Cincinnati.

According to a report issued by Georgetown University, students majoring in economics as a social science (similar to Thomas More’s BA) had lower rates of unemployment and higher entry-level and experienced worker salaries than students in most other college majors. The report goes on to say that workers holding graduate degrees in economics see an even greater return on their investment. Kiplinger’s online magazine ranks Economics at No. 4 in the Best College Majors for your career. Some examples of careers open to economists are: lawyer, personal financial adviser, actuary, financial analyst, statistician, credit analyst, pricing analyst, budget analyst, securities trader, business economist, environmental economist, government economist, business journalist, management consultant, and college professor. Economics is a fine major to pair with accounting if you are interested in accounting as a career.

It is suggested that students majoring in economics serve as college tutors. Economics majors will have developed statistical tools by their junior year to be able to assist with research at local companies.

There are no special requirements for admission to the economics major; however, successful economics majors must be willing to work on and improve their critical thinking skills. Learning how to solve problems will be an important part of your training. It helps to be willing to read in order to be up to date. It helps to be curious. Reading news articles on topics of interest will make it easier to discover  the relevance of good theory for good practice and help to become a successful economics major.