William E.Becker,
Professor Emeritus,
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1973
Econometrics, Economic
Education, and Economics of Education
William Becker is a professor emeritus of economics at Indiana
University Bloomington, an adjunct professor of commerce at the
University of South Australia, where he typically has been in
residence a couple of months each year since 1995, a research fellow
of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn Germany), and a
research network member of the Center for Economic Studies and
Institute for Economic Research (CESifo, Munich Germany), where he
was last in residence in April-May 2009.
Professor
Becker's scholarly pursuits have been supported by the National
Science Foundation, Kazanjian Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation,
Helen Dwight Reid Foundation, and the Bush Foundation. His research
appears in the American Economic Review (refereed and proceedings),
American Statistician, American Journal of Agricultural Economics,
Econometric Theory, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Economic
Perspectives, Journal of Finance, Journal of Human Resources,
Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Risk and Insurance,
Monthly Labor Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Southern
Economics Journal, and numerous other journals. He is the
author of Statistics for Business and Economics (South-Western,
International Thomson Publishing) and Statistics for Business and
Economics Using Microsoft Excel (SRB Publishing), and is co-author
of Business and Economics Statistics (Addison-Wesley), and co-editor
of Academic Rewards in Higher Education (Ballinger), Econometric
Modeling in Economic Education Research (Kluwer-Nijhoff), The
Economics of American Higher Education (Kluwer), American Higher
Education and National Growth (Kluwer), Assessing Educational
Practices: The Contribution of Economics (MIT Press), Teaching
Economics to Undergraduates: Alternatives to Chalk and Talk (Edward
Elgar), Incentive Based Budgeting Systems in Public Universities
(Edward Elgar), The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education: Contributions of the Research Universities (Indiana
University Press), and Teaching Economics: More Alternatives to
Chalk and Talk (Edward Elgar).
Before
joining the faculty of Indiana University in 1979, Dr. Becker was a
tenured faculty member at the University of Minnesota, where he also
served as executive director of the Minnesota Council on Economic
Education and where he returned for the academic year of 1988 to
serve as acting director of the U of M Management Information
Division. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton
University and the universities of Adelaide, Melbourne, South
Australia and Western Australia. Through the 1990s he toured
Indonesia assessing university programs for the World Bank Midwest
Universities Consortium for International Activities, visited Spain
consulting for Universidad Carlos III, worked with the Soros
Foundation in St Petersburg Russia, and was in Abu Dhabi consulting
for the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research on the
role of education in the new millennium. In 2002 he made multiple
trips to Mexico to work with Centro de Investigacion y Docencia
Economicas. In 2003, he was in Portugal and Scotland working
respectively with the University of Evora and the Economic Centre of
the Learning and Teaching Support Network. In 2006, he was in
Singapore as a consultant to the newly formed Singapore Management
University and in 2007 at the University of Western Australia
consulting on the teaching of economics. In 2009, he was in The
Netherlands as a visiting scholar at the Erasmus School of Economics
and contributed to an OECD project on tuning in higher education.
For three months in 2010, he did a five-city lecture tour
(Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide) on behalf of the
Australian Business Deans Council. He has been a paid
consultant for the United States Department of Justice, United
States Department of Education, Ford Motor Company, Chrysler
Corporation, Nissan, and Westinghouse, as well as many smaller firms
and individuals, for whom he has given expert statistical and
econometrics testimony in Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana
courtrooms.
Dr. Becker
earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the College of St.
Thomas in 1967, a master's degree in economics from the University
of Wisconsin in 1970, and a doctorate in economics from the
University of Pittsburgh in 1973. He was editor of the Journal of
Economic Education for 20 years (1989-2009) and simultaneously
served on the editorial board of the Economics of Education Review.
Bill was 2005-06 president of the 450 member Midwest Economic
Association. He has received several teaching and research
awards and in 2003 he received the Council for Economic Education
Marvin Bower Award for leadership and service to economic education.
His career is featured in Who's Who in Economics (4th edition,
Edward Elgar), Who's Who in the World (28nd edition, Marquis Who's
Who in America (65nd edition, Marquis), and Who’s Who in Science and
Engineering (11th Anniversary Edition, Marquis).
Home Page:
http://mypage.iu.edu/~beckerw/
Curriculum Vitæ
Books,
Journal of Economic Education
