A View of USC's New "Village"

The USC fall semester starts in about 4 weeks.  Our football team is ranked #4 in the pre-season and the economics department is ranked #22 (on USA REPEC).    The University is investing to upgrade the building capital stock. Here is the new University Village.   I took this photo today and I like what I see.  I walked past the new McCarthy Honors College and I hope my son considering living there in two years when he goes off to college.

My colleagues in the USC Economics Department hope that we will be “next on line” to receive an upgrade of our office conditions.  I’m in talks now for fresh paint and carpet.

USC Economics is unfortunately located on the Western most part of the University close to a Taco Bell on Vermont Avenue.  Our building (located in the same building as Math, Anthropology and Civil Engineering) is over .5 miles away from the other economists on campus.  I have been trying to argue that USC will be even more productive as an economics research community if the economists at Econ + Marshall + CESR + Schaeffer + Price were all sitting close to each other.  Proximity matters for face to face interactions!   USC as a research community actually has quite a good global ranking on REPEC.  We will be an even more productive research community if we can move into one of these shiny new buildings like the ones you can see above.