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QC Economics Alumni Profile Archive

Fall 2009 QC Economics Alumni Profile

Although I'm one of the new faculty members in the Department of Economics here at Queens College, I know the campus well. Things were a little different when I walked on campus in 1996. As a scholar-athlete I knew the track well, but it was made of dirt - not the brilliant surface we have today. I was here long enough to have seen the New Science Building open and then become just the Science Building. Finally, I was known as Inas Rashad--until this last July 15th when I married Don Kelly.

I have many fond memories of my years as an undergraduate at Queens College, what with being an economics major, a Business and Liberal Arts (BALA) minor, a math minor, and a pre-med student. Moreover, I enjoyed being on the track team for my four years as an undergraduate. After graduating, I returned to Queens as an adjunct professor while working on my PhD. In many ways it feels as if I never left.

It's wonderful to have my former professors - Professors Hendrey, Nix, Dohan, Devereux, Edelstein, Feliciano, Gram, Riskin, Roistacher, and Thurston - as colleagues now. My foundation in economics was formed at Queens, and I couldn't ask for a better place or a better set of faculty to teach me the core principles I needed to go to graduate school and then subsequently join the faculty of the Department of Economics at Georgia State University.

As a Queens undergraduate I worked on a research project on workfare using data and econometric methods with Professor Anne Hill. Sadly, Professor Hill passed away. Though I had the privilege of speaking at her memorial gathering at Queens, she is sorely missed and I remember her very fondly.

After graduating from Queens College, I attended the City University of New York Graduate Center and was able to work with some of the very best health economists, including Michael Grossman. There I was also able to become a Research Analyst at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where I am now a Faculty Research Fellow.

In Atlanta, after completing grad school, I gained a lot of experience shaping the undergraduate curriculum, mentoring graduate students, and working on research projects in health economics, a field that very nicely combined my dual interests in health and economics. I had some wonderful colleagues at Georgia State and was exposed to groundbreaking research in various fields, such as public finance, experimental economics, and environmental economics.

There are so many resources and opportunities available at Queens College, and I would strongly encourage students to take advantage of what's available here. Seek things out. They won't automatically come to you. For example, my minor in BALA allowed me to do an internship at The New York Times Syndication Sales Corporation, an invaluable experience. I'm the product of a public school education, from elementary school in San Francisco to graduate school in New York, and I am glad not to have accrued the debt of a private university education. My experience here was invaluable. I strongly encourage all students to seriously consider graduate school.

I currently do research in demand-side health and labor economics, with a focus on our decisions surrounding nutrition and physical activity. I am now regularly at Queens College or the CUNY Graduate Center. I am more than happy to speak with students about academic life and my path from Queens to graduate school and after. You can reach me at Inas.Kelly@qc.cuny.edu.

Spring 2009 QC Economics Alumni Profile

Hi, fellow Queens College alumni and students. I'm Ken Heyer, and I attended Queens College during the mid-1970s. After graduating with a major in Economics, I headed west and attended graduate school at UCLA, where after many late hours in the library I eventually received my PhD in 1983. Since the early 1980s I have worked as an economist for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice, first as a staff economist, and since July 2001 as Economics Director, the highest position held by a career economist in the Division. In 1999 I was honored to receive from then Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein (a name that should sound familiar to fellow New Yorkers) the Antitrust Division's first William F. Baxter award for outstanding contributions in the area of economic analysis.

Not too bad for a QC graduate.

I work with the Division's Deputy for Economic Analysis to supervise the staff of the Division's Economic Analysis Group ("EAG"), a collection of some 50 + PhD economists who specialize in the economics of industrial organization. I also provide independent economic analysis and case recommendations to the Division's legal deputies and to the head of the Division, the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust.

The Deputy for Economic Analysis is a political appointee, typically a renowned economist on leave from academia, who holds the position of chief economist at the Division for perhaps one to three years. The current Deputy is Carl Shapiro from UC Berkeley. I have had the extreme good fortune to be able to work over the years with and for a succession of the profession's most illustrious economists, and I am proud to consider many of them now to be personal friends.

During my long career at DoJ I have worked on numerous interesting and challenging investigations implicating a wide variety of industries and covering virtually the entire range of economic issues implicated by competition policy. Categories include the analysis of proposed mergers, the investigation of monopolization claims, and competition advocacy to influence in a positive (i.e., efficient!) direction the regulatory policies of other federal agencies.

Among the more noteworthy matters I have had the opportunity to work on were the investigation of, and litigation against, the Microsoft Corporation for illegally maintaining its monopoly over PC operating systems, the (ultimately unsuccessful) litigation effort to block the acquisition of PeopleSoft by Oracle, the investigation of large mergers between Maytag and Whirlpool and XM and Sirius, and most recently our analysis of (and decision to challenge) a proposed joint venture between Yahoo and Google.

When not working on active investigations, I spend some of my time writing and publishing on issues relating to the economics of competition policy. I've published papers in both the Antitrust Law Journal and Competition Policy International on antitrust enforcement and policy issues, and regularly co-author an annual article in the Review of Industrial Organization on economic activities at the Antitrust Division. Most recently, I co-authored a Working Paper on merger analysis of firms in financial distress.

I have very fond memories of my time at Queens College, and was very pleased when I was invited back to speak several years ago at the Economics Honor Society's annual dinner and awards ceremony. I give Queens College, and especially the professors who taught me economics there, credit for sparking my interest in the subject and with motivating me to pursue what has been a very rewarding and satisfying career in the field. I was particularly thrilled to see at the awards ceremony that many of my former professors, including at least Professors Edelstein, Gramm, and Roistacher and Tabb, are still actively teaching and motivating the current generation of students.

Queens College is a very special institution (a judgment I make not simply because it happens to be where I went to school). The college plays an extremely important role in training and providing opportunities for an amazingly diverse collection of students from a wide set of backgrounds. What a treat it was to spend my college years in such an environment. Personally, I wouldn't have traded it for any of the Harvards or Stanfords that many of my DoJ colleagues claim as their alma maters.

Finally, if any of you are interested, I am happy to interact with current Queens College economics majors. I would encourage any who might have questions about graduate school, careers in economics, life at the Justice Department, or substantive economic issues (so long as they do NOT include "How in the world did we get into, and how do we easily and at low cost get out of, the current macroeconomic mess?") to contact me at ken.heyer@usdoj.gov. Also, I am always open to invitations to come and give presentations to QC economics classes.

(Editor's note: Professor Tabb has retired from teaching since Ken Heyer last visited campus, but Professor Tabb continues his extremely active professional life.)

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