Honorary Doctorate Awarded to Professor Ashenfelter ****************************************************************************************** * Honorary Doctorate Awarded to Professor Ashenfelter ****************************************************************************************** An academic who has conducted research on topics ranging from wages in McDonalds to the ef on wine was on the 15th of January awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Charles University i was not for his wine equation, as useful a discovery as it may be that Professor Orley Cla the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University, was awarded by Charles University. The Scientific Council of the Faculty of Social Science who put his proposed that he receive the award for his “indisputable scientific contribution” and “his support of economics education at Charles University”. How has an American economist come to contribute to the teaching of economics in Prague? P Ashenfelter has been involved for over 20 years with the CERGE-EI Institute, or “The Cente Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute”, a joint venture between Charles Un Center for Economic Research that offers American-style graduate degrees in Economics. Fou students from former Eastern bloc countries in mind, it teaches in English and attracts ac over the world both as students and teachers. I asked Professor Ashenfelter about his invo Institute: “I really got involved because two of my former graduate students were connected to it, Ja Randall Filer… and they got me interested, they introduced me to the place. It was 1992 I time I came, and it was a very exciting place, and a lot of interesting things were happen He went on to describe the purpose of the Institute and its graduate program, and why it w to be so important: “Under the Communists … economists really had difficulty because part of it (economics) is forecasting and its quite objective, and it was difficult because of the Communist use of Marx, it was difficult for them to have any sort of education. (You had) statisticians, ma not much in economics.  But when you try and go from a Communist to a Capitalist system it some economist – it’s one of the few times when they are useful!”  So, apart from his work in Prague, what has been his “indisputable scientific contributio study of economics? Aside from what has been mentioned already, Professor Ashenfelter is a labour economist who has made important contributions to empirical research methods within notoriously difficult to conduct research in. In an interview with the professor I had the to ask him about his research. He is widely credited with developing the use of so-called experiments’ in economics: “Most labour economists are pretty empirical; they don’t think you can solve problems with came to have several experiences which made me interested in trying to have very credible so it wouldn’t just be collecting numbers, and adding them up. It would be an attempt to f casual inference.” Unfamiliar with ‘casual inference’? A good example, I’m told, is the aforementioned wine e “It’s a very good example of causal influence, and the reason is because what we are predi price of wine, and what we are using to predict the price of wine is the weather. So since don’t think we can control the weather, the weather really is strictly exogenous, and must causing. If you see a correlation between the weather and the prices then it must somehow connection.” Professor Ashenfelter was a truly fascinating man to talk to, despite our disagreement ove of vowels in the Welsh language (which is my mother tongue).  And whether economists are u or not, Professor Ashenfelter’s undeniable contribution to the study of economics has been the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in ceremony in the historical Aula Ma University, with all the pomp and Latin due for such an achievement. Elan Grug Muse is in her second year studying for a BA Prague. She is interested in international politics, mu skills.