The article cited Congressman David Loebsack, former Cornell professor of politics and an honorary alumnus, as a positive in the fight to keep health reform proceedings open and smart.

“On June 9, 2nd District Congressman Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, attended a congressional briefing that has the potential to help Congress pass both the hearing test and the IQ test on health reform,” wrote the authors. “He opened the House of Representatives’ doors to experts on the topic of medication therapy management (MTM).

“For that he gets credit for listening, and for highlighting an opportunity to help make health care work better for less.”

Anderson co-authored the article with Bruce Roberts, executive vice president and CEO of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and Thomas Temple, executive vice president and CEO of the Iowa Pharmacy Association.

Anderson is a Cornell trustee, a regular supporter of the Cornell Fellows program, and a member of the Berry Center Advisory Board.

The full article was not yet available online.

Seven seniors and 10 juniors were inducted into the inaugural class of the Cornell chapter, also known as the Iota Chapter of Iowa. Members of the honors society will provide tutoring support for courses in economics.

“We are really proud of the academic achievement of these students and delighted that they’ll be helping younger students through our tutoring program,” said Santhi Hejeebu, associate professor of economics and business, and faculty advisor to the Cornell chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon.

Among those elected to the society were juniors Jamie Bernthal, Emily Burnham, Nick Light, Joanna Loewen, Mara Oda, Kevin Pickhard, and Nick Tripp, and seniors Vincent Anderson, Jeff Curran, Griffin LaDew, Yuri Mitchell, Audrey Saunders, and Ben Sebers.

Omicron Delta Epsilon is one of the world’s largest academic honor societies. Omicron Delta Epsilon recognizes scholastic achievement in economics and seeks the establishment of closer ties on campus and between campuses. Currently, Omicron Delta Epsilon has 578 chapters located in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Egypt, France, and United Arab Emirates.

The lecture, titled “Nudging our Way Through the Financial Crisis,” is free and open to the public.

Thaler is a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business where he is a pioneer in the fields of behavioral economics and finance. He is a prolific author and has penned numerous works, including Nudge (with Cass Sunstein), The Winner’s Curse, and Quasi Rational Economics and was the editor of Advances in Behavioral Finance, Volumes 1 and 2. He also wrote a series of articles in the Journal of Economics Perspectives called “Anomalies.”

Thaler is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics, and Director of the Center for Decision Research, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago. He previously taught at Cornell University and MIT.

This is the economist’s second interaction with Cornell students. He previously met with Cornellians in a Nudge book group sponsored by The Berry Center for Economics, Business and Public Policy during a visit to the University of Chicago.

This is the fourth in the Roe Howard Freedom Lecture Series, after Amity Shlaes, Mark Steyn, and Dinesh D’Souza. Howard was a Mount Vernon native, 1917 Cornell graduate and recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross in World War I. He was killed in action in France in 1918. The lecture series is funded through the generosity of the Riesen Foundation and Cornell trustee and alumnus Dean Riesen and alumna Barbara Hull Riesen.

Jane Fortson, Ph.D., (above, left) will discuss “The Economic Consequences of HIV/AIDS” at 3 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room, The Commons. Erica Field, Ph.D., (above, right) will then deliver the lecture “Power of a Pill: Iodine Deficiency, Schooling Attainment, and Economic Development” in Ringer Recital Studio, Armstrong Hall.

The symposium is sponsored by The Berry Center for Economics, Business, and Public Policy.

Fortson is a Becker Center Fellow in Price Theory at the University of Chicago. She has previously presented at the XVII International AIDS Conference and the World Bank.

Field is an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University and has studied development economics, labor economics, economic demography, and health.

The Berry Center for Economics, Business, and Public Policy is the centerpiece of a distinctive academic program that provides students with exceptional training in applied economics and public policy, with a special emphasis on experiential learning. It seeks to teach students how economic analysis is applied to decision-making in business and the public sector. The objective is to enhance the ability of Cornell students to bridge the gap between theory and practice in their academic program. In doing so, Cornell produces first-rate liberal arts graduates who are well-prepared for graduate study or the workplace, ultimately embarking on successful careers in business and public policy. The Berry Center has previously hosted Nobel Laureate Robert Solow, Jesse Shapiro, Emily Oster, and Kevin Murphy, among others.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Roemer served as congressman from the third district of Indiana from 1991-2003, and was a key sponsor of the legislation that created the 9/11 Commission.

Since leaving Congress in 2003, Roemer worked for the Center for National Policy, a non-partisan public policy organization concerned with global security. He has promoted ideas on national security issues on NBC Nightly News, CNN, FOX, NPR and in the pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and others.

Roemer holds a Ph.D. in American Government from the University of Notre Dame. Roemer also earned his M.A. from Notre Dame and received his B.A. from the University of California, San Diego.

The Berry Center for Economics, Business, and Public Policy is the centerpiece of a distinctive academic program that provides students with exceptional training in applied economics and public policy, with a special emphasis on experiential learning. It seeks to teach students how economic analysis is applied to decision-making in business and the public sector. The objective is to enhance the ability of Cornell students to bridge the gap between theory and practice in their academic program. In doing so, Cornell produces first-rate liberal arts graduates who are well-prepared to enter the workplace, and embark on successful careers in business and public policy. The Berry Center has previously hosted Nobel Laureate Robert Solow, Jesse Shapiro, Emily Oster, and Kevin Murphy, among others.

National security experts who will visit Cornell include:

Monday, Sept. 15: Dr. James Ludes is the executive director of the American Security Project. He was formerly a legislative assistant for defense and foreign policy for Senator John Kerry from 2002-2006. Prior to that he was editor-in-chief of National Security Studies Quarterly and has co-edited two books, Attacking Terrorism and Twenty-First Century Weapons Proliferation.

Monday, Oct. 6: Has been changed to Roger Cressey. Cressey is the former director for transnational threats at the National Security Council and current president of Good Harbor Consulting.

Monday, Oct. 27: Joshua Casteel was a member of the interrogation units sent to overhaul the prison after abuse at Abu Ghraib had become public.  In 2005, at the age of 25, Mr. Casteel was honorably discharged from Active Duty as a conscientious objector. He is the author of Letters from Abu Ghraib, in which he recounts his experience as an interrogator and a Christian. 

All events are held in Hedges Conference Room in The Commons on the Cornell College campus at 3:30 p.m.

The speaker series is being sponsored at Cornell by The Berry Center for Economics, Business, and Public Policy, and will also be presented at the University of Iowa, Grinnell College, and Drake University.

Murphy is the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, and the Graduate School of Business, at The University of Chicago. He will speak on “The Value of Improvements in Health and Longevity.”

He has done path-breaking research in the areas of inequality, unemployment, and relative wages. He is a prolific researcher with major contributions in fields ranging from the economics of growth and development, to the economic value of improvements in health and longevity.

In 2005 he became the first professor at a business school to be chosen as a MacArthur Fellow, the internationally-recognized “genius awards”. He was cited for “revealing economic forces shaping vital social phenomena such as wage inequality, unemployment, addiction, medical research, and economic growth.”

He is the recipient of the 1997 John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the most outstanding American economist under the age of forty. Some of the most prominent economists of the postwar period were recipients of the Bates Medal, and subsequently went on to win the Nobel Prize.

“He’s brilliant, very brilliant, and I don’t use that term often,” according to colleague Gary Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. “He’s technically very good, catches on quickly, has a good imagination. He’s innovative and he has a good nose for ideas. He is at the top ranks in economics. Among those his age, nobody is better.”

“Kevin is far and away the smartest guy in the field,” says Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, also of the University of Chicago. “Often, the better you get to know these guys, the less ingenious they seem. It’s just the opposite with Kevin. Not only is he widely regarded as the smartest economist on earth, but he can also fix your refrigerator.”

Professor Murphy is the recipient of numerous other awards and fellowships, including a Sloan Foundation Fellowship and an Earhart Foundation Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Professor Murphy received a B.A. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1981, and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1986. He has been a member of the Chicago faculty since 1983.

The Berry Center provides distinctive academic enrichment programs for undergraduates in economics, business, and public policy. Students extend theory into practice through internships, visiting speakers, undergraduate research, and off-campus study, thereby learning how economic analysis is applied to decision-making in business and the public sector.

Cornell officially launches the Berry Center for Economics, Business, and Public Policy with an 11 a.m. lecture today by Robert Solow, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in economics. The Berry Center is the centerpiece of an academic program that provides students training in applied economics and public policy, with an emphasis on experiential learning through opportunities including internships, off-campus study and summer research.

The center is named for Lester Berry, founder of Berry Bearing Co. in Chicago, which was the largest privately held industrial bearings distributor in the world when the family sold it in 1993.

“The story of my grandfather is the classic tale of a poor, uneducated kid from New York City with a vision and a dream,” says his grandson, James McWethy of Downers Grove, Ill., a 1965 Cornell graduate who was actively involved in the leadership of Berry Bearing Co. for 23 years.

“My grandfather was a smart man who really understood what it took to succeed in business and in life,” McWethy said. “At the time we sold, Berry Bearing had well over 1,000 employees and it was still a family business. He provided a level of service that nobody could match.”

McWethy graduated from Cornell with a bachelor’s degree in economics and business and mathematics. He earned a master’s degree in economics from Indiana University and taught economics there for three years, later teaching part time for several years at community colleges.

For more than a decade now, McWethy has been involved in agriculture, golf courses, charity, real estate development and local politics. He was a Cornell trustee from 1995 to 2004. He and his family pledged the lead gift of $2 million toward the $5.3 million renovation of McWethy Hall for the art department, which reopened in 2002. Additional McWethy gifts funded The Berry Lobby in Youngker Hall (2002), home of Cornell’s new theater, and the renovation of Law Hall Technology Center (2000).

“Jim McWethy generously credits his success in part to his Cornell education and professors who served as his mentors. With this gift endowing the Berry Center for Economics, Business, and Public Policy, he is providing an extraordinary opportunity for a new generation of Cornell students preparing to embark on their own careers in business,” said President Les Garner.

McWethy was part of a 14-member planning committee of alumni, faculty and administrators who met over the past two years. He will chair an advisory committee including alumni and business executives who will provide broad oversight and high-level strategic direction for the Berry Center.

McWethy’s gift is part of Cornell College’s comprehensive campaign “Extraordinary Opportunities: The Campaign for Cornell College” which concludes in December 2009. The campaign seeks to enhance the Cornell experience by increasing the college’s endowment, upgrading its facilities, and enhancing the academic program.

For more information about the campaign or making a gift, please visit www.cornellcollege.edu/campaign