50 Years of the Great Journal Networks and a Video

 In 2021, we are marking the 50th anniversary of the great journal - Networks, which is truly a landmark anniversary! In order to celebrate this anniversary appropriately, the Co-Editors Bruce Golden and Doug Shier took the great initiative of editing a special issue of the journal, in Parts 1 and 2.

I am thrilled and absolutely delighted that Part 1 has now been published and is the first issue of the January 2021 volume.  In it, I am greatly honored to have my paper, which was written following an invitation from the Co-Editors that I could not refuse.

My paper, "Networks in economics and finance in Networks and beyond: A half century retrospective," traces and synthesizes the significant contributions to this area in papers published in this journal and in other journals and books. Yes, I pored through all the papers in the journal since its inception and to emphasize the "beyond" part - I went as far back as 1758! It was also important to incorporate relevant more recent contributions from the Network Science community.

A preprint of my paper can be downloaded here. 

Also, the Co-Editors organizes a special session at the recent INFORMS Annual Meeting this year, which was virtual because of the pandemic and several of the contributors to the special volume spoke.

Below is a photo of us!

The slide deck of my INFORMS presentation can be downloaded here.

The video of my presentation can be viewed here.

Congratulations to Networks on its 50th Anniversary and thanks to all the Editors over the years and to the authors as well as to the reviewers of many articles! Wishing the journal and researchers on networks many more successful years and research discoveries!

Once Part 2 of the special issue of Networks dedicated to the 50th Anniversary is posted online by the publisher Wiley, I will be providing a link to it on this blogpost.

Marking the Retirement of a Great Isenberg School Finance Colleague - Professor Ben Branch

Last evening we had the honor of taking part in the retirement party of my Isenberg School of Management Finance colleague, Professor Ben Branch. The reception and dinner took place at the Marriott Center at the UMass Amherst Campus Center.

Professor Ben Branch, who received his PhD from the U. of Michigan in 1970,  has been on the Isenberg School faculty since 1975 and he is still teaching a class this semester. He is renowned for his work on investments and bankruptcy. In 2007, I had nominated him for the UMass Amherst Faculty Distinguished Lectureship, which he received. He and I were one of the very few Isenberg School faculty recognized in this wonderful way.

The evening was a fitting tribute to a true "gentleman-scholar," one who arrived at his office at 6:30AM, sometimes with his dog, and whose kindness helped to support multiple faculty and not only in his Finance Department. Professor Branch I had met when I was interviewed at UMass and he was one of about 20 faculty that attended my interview at the Lord Jeffery Inn in Amherst. 
When my daughter was born, he and his wife were among the first to come visit us in our hone to celebrate. He is always very dapper, and, in his wardrobe, he has about 40 bowties, so yesterday, as a tribute, my husband also wore one in his honor.

When I joined the faculty at the Isenberg School, our department was the Department of General Business and Finance, so my Finance colleagues were always there for me. The department has gone through various renamings and now we are two departments; Finance Department and the Operations and Information Management Department. Several present and former chairs of these departments also came to pay tribute including: Professors Iqbal Ali, Sanjay Nawalkha, and Nelson Lacey, who was a terrific Master of Ceremonies.

In the above photos are: Professor Ali, my husband and I, Finance colleagues: Professors Fousseni Chabi-Yo, Mila Sherman (the first female Full Professor in Finance, who acknowledged Ben's support, and Nikos Artavanis, who traveled from Virginia Tech for the retirement party, where he is now a Visiting Professor. We saw him last week in Blacksburg!

Joining the bowties in the above photo is Professor Hossein Kazemi, the Director of CISDM.

Several retired faculty (including Professors Charlie Schewe and Tony Butterfield) showed up to honor Ben as well as faculty and staff from other departments, including Professors Easwar Iyer and  Jennifer Merton, which was wonderful. Our Interim Dean, Tom Moliterno spoke, as did Professor Hossein Kazemi, who gave a hysterical rendition of how he was interviewed by Ben and got the job (and we had a walk down memory lane with both Dr. Alex Barges and Dr. Craig Moore mentioned). Several of his former doctoral students also came, including one who traveled all the way from California to honor his dissertation advisor. Professor Branch shared with us how proud he is of his former doctoral students. I enjoyed Professor Larry Zacharias' tribute very much. He noted not only Professor Branch's intellect and his interests in politics, but also how he studied astronomy and very early in the morning (about 3AM) he would go to observe and visit the beavers close to his home.

Professor Nelson Lacey presented the honoree with a gift.

Professor Branch wanted to have the last words and they were very touching, emphasizing the long way that our business school has come since his arrival over four decades ago. In the 1970s there was even a typing pool and computing was done with the use of punch cards.

Ben loves my borshcht, so in honor of him I have a huge pot on now and he and his family are welcome any time.

Thank you, Professor Ben Branch, for being such a special colleague of so many of us over so many years! You will always be a part of the Isenberg School of Management.

Great Academic Experiences in London

I returned from London, which was extra busy in preparation for the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations this weekend,  to Oxford via train in the late afternoon today.

We had left for London on Wednesday afternoon since I was to give the presentation: Supply Chain Networks Against Time: From Food to Pharma, at the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College on Thursday afternoon. I was invited to speak by Dr Panagiotis Angeloudis, Senior Lecturer in Engineering Systems and Logistics and the Director, Port Operations Research & Technology Centre. Professor Angeloudis has done fascinating work on critical infrastructure resilience, construction logistics, as well as maritime transport, including a recent game theory model which was just published in Transportation Research B. He is supervising 9 PhD students and has 3 postdocs working for him - very impressive - and is a computer geek with a lot of skills in data visualization.

When I arrived in London, I checked my email messages, and found a message from a reporter from Waterloo, Canada, Jeff Outhit, requesting an interview with me on ransomware and cyberattacks. He needed a response quickly and we managed to correspond and the great article that he wrote was published. The title is: "Cyber ransoms are ‘fastest-growing threat,’ expert warns." Outhit had seen that I gave a keynote talk at the University of Waterloo on cybercrime and cybersecurity on April 15, 2016 on Analytics Day. That great conference was organized by my INFORMS colleague, Dr. Fatma Gzara, whom I thank in my presentation, which Outhit even linked to in his article.

Since the hotel I was staying at was close to Hyde Park the morning of my presentation I had to take a walk there since I just love the green spaces.

I was treated to a delicious lunch in a beautiful building before my talk with both Professor Angeloudis and Professor Washington Y. Ochieng, the Head of the Centre for Transport Studies, who is very dynamic and a great intellectual force and leader, whom I enjoyed speaking with very much. 

The audience for my talk, which was on June 9, 2016, consisted of students, postdocs, and also representatives from industry, including from data science, which was very neat. 

I also had a great surprise: Professor Ben Heydecker, a transportation professor from the University of College London, whom I had not seen for a long time, but with whom I have very pleasant memories, which included even conversations with my dissertation advisor at Brown University, Professor Stella Dafermos, at various conferences, came to my talk. 

Of course, we had to talk about the book by such dear colleagues as Professors David E, Boyce and Huw Williams,  Forecasting Urban Travel, whose book launch I was a panelist at last Fall at Northwestern University.

I enjoyed giving my presentation very much since the audience was very attentive and afterwards they also asked great questions. We continued the discussions for about an hour after my presentation, which was delightful.

The conversations with Professor Panagiotis Angeloudis were also much too short - from drones for disaster relief and delivery of medicines to ancient Roman supply chains - this is a must to explore  research and tools by an archeologist at Stanford, which I could very much relate to because, as a Visiting Fellow now at All Souls College at Oxford University, I interact not only with economists, mathematicians, and scientists but also with humanists and archeologists!

And, yesterday evening, after a very pleasant seminar and discussions - Professor Panagiotis' group reminds me of the United Nations - with students from different countries working so well together - my family and I were hosted by Dr. Stavros Siokos, a former doctoral student of mine, with whom I wrote the Financial Networks book. Dr. Siokos is a financier based in London and has a PhD in Industrial Engineering from UMass Amherst and I was his dissertation advisor. He is also a Center Associate of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management, which I founded almost 15 years ago!

Stavros took us to an exclusive club for dinner - the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), where the ambience was extraordinary as was the food and service, but, best of all, were the conversations with a former student of mine, who has achieved great success in industry. We discussed even the possibility of Brexit, that is, England leaving the European Union, with the vote taking place on June 23, 2016. This would be disastrous for numerous reasons, including for research and science, which is not even much written about.  The possibility of Brexit as well as Trump are major topics of conversation among the Fellows at All Souls College at Oxford University.

It is quite the experience living in England during this very historic time.

Below are some photos, including several of the desserts eaten at the exquisite dinner, last night.

Thanks to both Professor Panagiotis Andeloudis and to Dr. Stavros Siokos for such fabulous experiences in London!

We ended the evening with a walk to Stavros' office which had been Eisenhower's office when he planned D-Day, got to see the home of the richest man in England, and saw St. James Park, as well.

Just Some of the Very Cool Accomplishments of Isenberg Faculty This Summer

One of the best aspects of the Isenberg School of Management in addition to, of course, our great students, is the faculty, who are my colleagues.

This summer there have been so many accomplishments at a time when the public think that we are just "on vacation" that I thought they would merit a blogspot. Besides being intellectual leaders, my colleagues are terrific educators and also genuinely nice and very interesting people.

My readers know that in late June and July I was in Greece co-organizing the Dynamics of Disasters conference with Professor Pardalos of the University of Florida and Professor Kotsireas of Wilfrid University in Canada.

We were in Kalamata, Greece on June 29, 2015 (the first day of our conference) when the banks closed due to the Greek financial crisis and the lines at the ATM machines (which had financial funds left) were growing.

My Isenberg colleague, Professor Nikos Artavanis of the Finance Department, meanwhile,  had been researching the crisis and what to do about it. His study, co-authored with two colleagues from the Booth School at the University of Chicago,  "Tax Evasion Across Industries: Soft Credit Evidence from Greece," revealed  that tax evasion was most prevalent among Greece's highly educated professionals, that is, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, and even journalists. Hence, what was needed, was a good tax collector in Greece! Nikos's paper received international attention and a writeup from CBS News can be found here. 

Professor Artavanis, by the way, is Greek, and he often brings me back some Greek coffee from his travels there, which I very much appreciate.

And, another Finance professor at Isenberg, Dr. Mila Getmansky Sherman, with whom last September, along with my Operations and Information Management colleague, Professor Senay Solak, and Engineering colleague, Professor Wayne Burleson, we organized a great (I am biased but it was terrific) cybersecurity workshop at the Sloan School of MIT, also had great media coverage of her latest research. It was conducted with Professor Andrew Lo of MIT (who was a keynote speaker at our workshop). The paper, "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," was also co-authored with Peter Lee. According to the study, "due to inherent biases in the way hedge-fund databases compile results, the industry's returns have been about half as strong as they appear," as reported by Bloomberg News. The interview and report can be accessed here. 

My Marketing Department colleagues, Professors Charles Schewe and George Milne (who is also Isenberg's PhD Program Director), completed, along with two of our doctoral students and a colleague from Australia,  a fascinating study on baby boomers and aging. Their findings, according to the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia:

• They found that what counts isn’t how many birthdays you’ve had but social, mental and biological factors.
• With the help of the subjective age index, you may be able to correct any of those factors so you can ‘manage’ your age.

My Sports Management colleague, Professor Todd Crosset, earlier this summer, delivered an invited talk in Geneva on racism in sports. He was invited by the United Nations to speak on his work. 

My Accounting Department colleague, Professor David Piercey, shook up the auditing world this summer with his paper, which, through behavioral experiments, showed that forcing companies to periodically change their auditing firms can prove counterproductive. His paper was published this summer in The Accounting Review.  This research received extensive coverage in the accounting press.

And, Professor Bradley Bennett, also of Accounting, recently, received a big honor, the Wildman Medal Award, for his co-authored paper, with Professor Hatfield of the University of Alabama, "The Effect of the Social Mismatch Between Staff Auditors and Client Management on the Collection of Audit Evidence."

There are many other achievements but the above, I believe, provide a wonderful snapshot of the kind of research and activities that faculty at a business school, and, especially the Isenberg School of Management, engage in.

Having such successful and very active faculty keeps one constantly striving and achieving but, then again, we certainly love what we do!

Optimization Workshop in Majestic Edinburgh, Scotland

I am spending 3 weeks in Europe engaged in some very serious conference" chaining." I have been blogging from different countries, beginning with Greece, where the Dynamics of Disasters conference that I co-organized with Professors Pardalos and Kotsireas took place in Kalamata.

Today we will be taking the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow, where the EURO 2015 conference will begin tomorrow.

While in majestic Edinburgh, which is breathtakig with its architecture (including the Edinburgh Castle), greenery of the Meadows,  stunning shops, multiple modes of transport (we arrived from London via Virgin Trains), and the conviviality of the people of Scotland. The food, I might add, has also been so delicious!

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the great writers from this area, including for all the Harry Potter fans out there, J.K. Rowlings, and the cafe in which she did much of her writing of the first books. Also, Sir Artur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes books, also write in Edinburgh.

The photo above was taken in front of the cathedral prior to a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica.

I was in Edinburgh to attend the EUROPT Workshop on Continuous Optimization.

It was great to see Panos Pardalos again who is also en route to EURO Glasgow.

I got a chance to enjoy some excellent talks, including a talk on closed loop supply chains in which several of my publications and my Network Economics book were noted. The finance risk sessions was also very good and the energy talks also very interesting. I could relate to these since my supernetwork team has done a lot of work on risk and supply chains and also electric power supply chains, even with data for all of New England!

Below are some photos taken at the great workshop. Special thanks to professor Julian Hall at the University of Edinburgh for being so responsive to my questions!

I will miss Edinburgh!

Saying Goodbye to an Outstanding Visiting Professor Program

Tomorrow is my last full day here in Gothenburg and it also marks the end of my tenure over 4 years as a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. I was part of its outstanding Visiting Professor Program, which I found out about in The Economist and applied.
 
I have made 10 visits to this great school and university and today my colleagues hosted a delicious cake "fika" party in my honor. The cake was a layered one of passion fruit cream and chocolate bottom - yummy! My colleagues gave me stunning gifts of a book on Sweden, an elegant navy scarf with the university emblem patterned on it, and a beautiful blue crystal apple of Swedish glass. They also gave me a lovely card and note and the administrative assistant here who has been so accommodating and helpful in always finding me a comfortable office brought me a red glass heart.


How do you say goodbye to doctoral students, who have now received their PhDs, some have gotten married, over the time period that I have been coming and some, including colleagues,  have had children that I have met? I have laughed many times with my colleagues, both in Finance and in Transportation and Logistics here, since I collaborate with both, and we have shared many wonderful experiences.My research has benefited greatly through numerous discussions and papers, I might add, with Professor Jonas Floden, whose expertise in freight transport I truly value and have come to rely upon. I have gone to transport and logistics conferences here and a finance conference and have always felt so much at home here.


Their friendship, humanity, and civility, and stories I will always treasure. I am now writing another book and in the acknowledgments I am thanking my colleagues and staff here at the University of Gothenburg. They say I am always smiling - it is because of the community that they have built in one of the greatest countries on our planet - Sweden.


Thank you to the School of Business, Economics and Law and the University of Gothenburg for being such exceptional hosts. You will always be a part of me and I wish you all the best. As for future Visiting Professors, enjoy!


And several of my colleagues said to me today - when are you coming?!

Bank Stability and Regulation Conference in Sweden and Small Academic World

Today and tomorrow I am taking part in a Finance conference here at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden on Bank Stability and Regulation.

One of my finance colleagues here in Gothenburg, Professor Ted Lindblom, invited me and I have been enjoying the talks and meeting people very much. Below he is standing with another Finance colleague of mine here in Gothenburg, Professor Stefan Sjogren.

The academic world is so small - even though Finance is not my primary discipline (but I have co-authored the Financial Networks book and quite a few papers on multitiered financial networks and even the integration of financial and social networks),  I still find it very easy to talk to people and there is only "one ddegree of separation."

For example, Professor Deborah Lucas of MIT, with me below, knows my Isenberg School colleague, Professor Mila Sherman, very well, And Professor Manju Puri of Duke, who is also here, went to grad school at NYU with my colleague at Isenberg, Professor Nikunj Kapadia.

Plus, the first speaker today, Dr. Jiao Santos of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who gave a fabulous talk, has as his co-author on the paper, Matthew Plosser, whose father, Charles Plosser, is the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He is stepping down and Pat Harker, the President of the University of Delaware, an INFORMS Fellow, and former Editor of the journal, Operations Research, and whom I know, is becoming the next President and CEO of this institution.

Below I have posted some photos of the speakers and discussants and some of the papers have been made available and are accessible from the conference website:
 
Papers available:
Joao A.C. Santos, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Nova School of Business and Economics; "Banks' Incentives and the Quality of Internal Risk Models"
Giorgia Piacentino, Washington University in St Louis; "Bank Capital, Bank Credit, and Unemployment"
Piero Gottardi, European University Institute and University of Venice; "Capital Structure, Investment, and Fire Sales"
Nittai K. Bergman, MIT; "Financial Accelerator at Work: Evidence from Corn Fields"
Paolo Fulghieri, University of North Carolina; "Uncertainty Aversion and Systemic Risk"

 I have enjoyed the diversity of topics and approaches, from empirical studies to theoretical general equilibrium models.  The presentations and discussions have been excellent and it would be interesting to apply such ideas as aggregate risk and aversion to uncertainty that I heard about today to supply chain networks.

The full program for the conference can be accessed here.

And, although I see many New York Yankees caps on  residents of Gothenburg, Professor Nittal Bergman of MIT brought his Red Sox cap, so I had to photograph it below. Nice to see folks from Massachusetts here in Sweden!

 Many thanks to the organizers of this great conference.