Williams is a highly selective coeducational liberal arts college located in northwestern Massachusetts in a town of 8,000 people. Founded in 1793, Williams now has about 2100 full-time undergraduates; 50 percent are men, 50 percent women. Williams is committed to excellence both in teaching and scholarship. Williams has consistently been named one of the top three liberal arts colleges in the country since the inception of the US News college and university rankings.
The Economics Department has 21 regular faculty. In a typical year, the group in residence numbers about 18.
In addition to a strong undergraduate Economics Department, the College has the Center for Development Economics, staffed by the Economics Department, which offers an M.A. program in Development Economics for economic officials from developing countries.
Department members present results of their ongoing research at weekly economics faculty seminars throughout the academic year. In addition, the department and CDE regularly bring in economists from other institutions to present work in progress. The department has three working paper series -- Research Memoranda on economic development topics, Discussion Papers from the Williams Project in Higher Education, and Research Papers on all other topics. These papers are distributed to a large number of individuals and institutions in the U.S. and other countries and we receive their working papers in exchange. The economics faculty publishes actively. A recent study (Hartley and Robinson) ranked Williams first among national liberal arts colleges in publishing in top economics journals. Another recent study of teaching and research included Williams in a small group among colleges and universities that successfully emphasize both teaching and scholarship (Astin and Chang, Change, September/October, 1995).
There are 86 seniors and 81 juniors majoring in economics this year. In addition, 25 seniors and 14 juniors are majoring in Political Economy, an inter-departmental major in economics and political science with a strong public policy focus.
The department offers a wide variety of courses. The offering of electives is flexible and designed to serve the teaching and scholarly interests of faculty members as well as the interests of students. Electives are offered at two levels: lower level courses with a Principles prerequisite, and upper level courses requiring intermediate theory. Department members are encouraged to develop new courses. The Winter Study Program offers an opportunity for faculty either to venture outside their specialties or to emphasize them. In addition to the M.A. program in Development Economics, a number of department members teach in the several interdepartmental programs in the College (Political Economy, Environmental Studies, Afro-American Studies, Women's Studies and several geographic Area Studies programs). Class sizes are generally small.
The library has an excellent collection of periodicals and books in economics, is a government documents depository, and is linked to Dialog, an on-line bibliographic search service with close to 200 data bases. It maintains subscriptions to all major journals in economics including those of virtually every sub-field. The Library also has an extensive collection of periodical indexes and data bases available on CD ROM. These include Econlit, PAIS, Pro Quest, The National Trade Data Bank, and the 1990 Census.
Economics