One of my undergraduate econometrics students from last fall, Paul Dorasil, won the undergraduate paper of the year award from the Department of Economics at UTA.

Last night we attended the annual awards meeting of the Dallas chapter of the National Association of Business Economists where a shortened version of Paul's paper investigating Texas Lotteries won first place amongst five finalists from eleven North Texas universities in the DABE's Arther A. Smith Outstanding Student Award. ( Longer (co-authored) working paper here)

Shameless plug: Paul has a blog called Writing in the Margins

The guest speaker at the DABE meeting was Carol Anderson-Guthrie of the Government Accountability Office. Her discussion focused on the long-term fiscal position of the United States and had two general conclusions:

1. The long-term fiscal stance of the Federal Government is much worse than advertised.
2. One way to have a reasoned debate about the problems and possible solutions is to tackle fiscal illiteracy amongst the U.S. population.

The majority of the PP presentation is available here. The unfunded liabilities of medicare, medicaid, and social security are absolutely staggering. GAO simulates that without significant reform the unfunded liabilities can be covered if federal taxes increase 250%. Ouch.