September 2026 Newsletter
Dear Alumni and Friends,
As we start the new school year, I am writing to share some of the exciting things happening with Economics at the University of Minnesota.
Undergraduate Program
We continue to grow! At the end of the spring 2026 semester, we had 160 more majors than the year before, building on the 200 additional majors we added the year before that. Our new Business Economics major, now entering its third year, has been a significant part of this growth and continues to be a great success. But there’s more. We continue to invest broadly in our curriculum, including by adding new upper-level courses. Here are a few examples:
- Perspectives on Political Economy: Professor Aldo Rustichini and Dr. Ayça Özdoğan, our director of undergraduate studies, have teamed up to create this new course, challenging students to grapple with difficult questions about economics, politics and public policy.
- Behavioral and Experimental Economics: Professor Rachel Croson, who has joined our faculty after previously serving as provost, will launch this new course in the spring, introducing students to a field that has pushed the boundaries of traditional economics.
- Real Estate and Urban Economics: I will be teaching this in the spring, revamping an earlier Urban Economics course with a new Real Estate and Business Economics focus.
- Programming with AI in Economics: A new one-credit required course preparing our majors for their capstone research projects.
Graduate Program
We are delighted to welcome 16 new Ph.D. students (pictured above) to our program this fall. A major development this year is that our entire first-year class will be supported by full fellowships in the spring, following a fall semester with a mix of fellowship and teaching assistant support. This is the first time in the history of the department that we have been able to provide full fellowship support to all our first-year students for the spring semester.
I am so excited that we are able to do this. First and most importantly, it allows our students to focus entirely on their studies during the crucial semester leading up to their preliminary exams. Second, it helps us compete for top students, as the programs we compete with already provide substantial first-year fellowship support. And third, speaking as department chair, it helps make the budget work! With university resources for teaching assistantships increasingly constrained, fellowship support is becoming essential to sustaining the size and strength of our Ph.D. program.
We have been able to make this investment entirely through the generosity of our alumni and friends. Their support has helped build our now 18 Faculty-Named Graduate Fellowship Funds in Economics, along with a number of other funds that are making all of this possible.
Faculty Updates
We congratulate Chris Phelan, who was confirmed by the Senate over the summer as Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Chris follows in the footsteps of Walter Heller, who also chaired the Council while on our faculty and is one of the namesakes of our Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute. The other, Nobel laureate Leo Hurwicz, was one of the great economic theorists of the 20th century. Chris' appointment exemplifies both sides of this Minnesota tradition: Chris is himself an economic theorist, bringing the tools of economic theory directly to public policy. I highly recommend reading Chris' opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing.
Professor Larry Jones became Professor Emeritus over the summer. Larry has had a tremendous impact on Minnesota Economics in so many ways — through his influential research, his extraordinary advising of students and his leadership of the department, including serving as chair when the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute was established. I am delighted to report that a new fellowship, the Larry E. Jones and Jolane M.D. Jones Fellowship, has become the 18th of our aforementioned Faculty-Named Graduate Fellowship Funds.
We also congratulate Jo Mullins on his promotion to associate professor with tenure, and Jan Werner on being awarded an honorary doctorate by the Warsaw School of Economics. And to return once more to Leo Hurwicz, Jan thanked Leo, his Minnesota mentor and friend, in accepting the honor; Leo received the same honorary doctorate in 1994.
We lost a giant in the discipline this past year with the passing of Nobel Laureate and former Minnesota faculty member Christopher Sims. For more on Chris and his influence on the field, read our remembrance of Chris and a reflection by Chris’ student, Nobel Laureate Lars Hansen.
Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute
Updates
The Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute serves as our bridge for ensuring that the research we produce has a real impact on economic policy. Here are some of the things happening at Heller-Hurwicz.
Fall Roundtable
Join us September 24 for "AI and the Labor Market: Productivity, Jobs, and the Future of Work," featuring our own Kyle Herkenhoff and Lawrence Schmidt of the University of California, San Diego, and moderated by Galin Jones, vice provost for artificial intelligence here at Minnesota. The event will be hybrid — in person and on Zoom. We hope to see you there.
In Case You Missed It
For a taste of our roundtables, you can watch our recent discussion of long-run U.S. fiscal sustainability, featuring our own Hannes Malmberg and University of Pennsylvania's Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (Minnesota Ph.D. 2001), moderated by Julie Bunn, executive director of the Minnesota Council on Economic Education, and member of the Heller-Hurwicz Advisory Board. And for more from Heller-Hurwicz, check out our Office Hours podcast series, featuring conversations with Minnesota faculty and other economists about their research and its implications for economic policy.
Support Minnesota Economics
Thank you for your ongoing interest and support of the Department of Economics and the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute. If you'd like to make an unrestricted gift, you can contribute to the Economics Annual Fund or the Heller-Hurwicz Program Fund. You can also search for your favorite named fund. Thanks to the generosity of our alumni and friends, we continue striving to be one of the best economics programs in the world. You can also stay connected by following the department on LinkedIn.
Best wishes from Minnesota!
Tom
Thomas J. Holmes
Professor and Chair
Department of Economics
[email protected]
