Econ Club: A sponge for learning

The Economics Club hosted some excellent speakers during the fall semester, and our events were well attended.

• Dr. Bob Lawson, Director of the Bridwell Institute at SMU, spoke to our students on "Economic Freedom and The Wealth of Nations."
• Randy Sims, retired chief legal counsel from Cerner, spoke about “Reflections and Lessons Learned by an Econ Grad in the Business/Legal Field,” and he hosted a fantastic networking opportunity for the students at Goolsby's after the talk. (See Randy Sims chatting with students.) 
• Dr. Jadrian Wooten, from Virginia Tech, presented his well-known research on "Why Taylor Swift Didn’t Add Billions to the Economy.”  
• We hosted our annual College Athletics Roundtable, which was incredibly timely as our expert panel correctly identified concerns about the alleged "salary cap" that the House settlement was expected to create in terms of NIL payments to college athletes.

Our students did a fantastic job calculating and promoting the Student Price Index, SPI (PDF), which showed a 3.6% inflation rate for the average K-State student. The SPI is the longest-running continuous price index dedicated to measuring student prices in the United States. The SPI was covered by the K-State Collegian, The Manhattan Mercury, the Topeka Capitol-Journal and KMAN Radio (see Dan Kuester and two economics students interviewed at KMAN).

The Econ Club is excited for the upcoming spring events, including:

• Speakers
  • Bryan Riley of the National Taxpayers Union  
  • Emily Thornton and Suzanne Roggenkamp from Koch Industries
  • Dr. Daria Bottan from the University of Rochester
• Visiting Washington, D.C., at the end of April and visiting the World Bank, Fannie Mae, National Taxpayers Union and meeting with our elected representatives.