Message from the Chair
Greetings from the KU Department of Economics, and welcome to the Fall 2026 issue of the KU Economist! While I am busy this fall semester settling into my new role as the Chair, one of my priorities was to revive this publication to keep all stakeholders informed of the happenings in and around the Department. As you may have seen from the news recently, KU has again set record enrollments across all of our campuses (more than 31,400 students), a happy development in that the institution is continuing to grow (with record retention of 88.1% of last year’s first year undergraduate class blunting the impact of an expectedly smaller new first year class)– unlike others in our state and nation – even as everyone continues to navigate many of the ever-changing challenges facing Higher Education.
Although I just became Chair over the summer, I have been with the Department since 2014 and served in multiple capacities. In a life comes full circle moment, we were pleased in September to have my Ph.D. advisor from my days at Princeton, Dr. Janet Currie (now at Yale), appeared here at KU as part of our prestigious Guest Speaker series.
One of our Department’s strong suits has been the ability of our award-winning faculty to successfully encourage and mentor students about the importance of developing good quantitative skills. A special colloquium put together last semester outlined how critical economic research is for policy development. And the Economics Club (need link to that article) also provides stimulating research opportunities for our undergraduates here at Snow Hall, whether or not they end up moving on to graduate school.
Given that my own research focuses largely on health care access, health disparities, and social safety net issues (I also serve as Executive Director of the American Society of Health Economists), I have also been fascinated by developments over the years across the 50-state map regarding marijuana legalization. One of last year’s postdoctoral scholars continues to explore the extent to which such legalization ends up impacting illegal markets that had previously existed – information that could be critically important to Kansas and other states who remain on the fence about how to proceed with any policy changes.
The Department of course remains very proud of the accomplishments all of our many thousands of alumni around the world. One of our most recent placements, Dr. Naowar Mohiuddin (need link to her Alumni Profile), received her Ph.D. here at KU earlier this year and is now working in the South African Reserve Bank conducting important research on how adoption of foreign-pegged digital currencies affects monetary policy transmission in that nation. Please drop us an email and let us know what you are up to and how your time in the Department here at KU may have influenced your career path. We would love to feature you in your own Alumni Update in future issues of the KU Economist.
Please also consider dropping by our office next time you are on or around campus. You could consider sitting in on one of our Guest Speaker seminars or just come in to say hello. It has been over two decades now since the Department left our former location at Summerfield Hall that many of you may recall, and we remain delighted about our current location here in Snow right at the heart of our beautiful campus.
Rock Chalk!
David Slusky