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UH-Manoa Economics
Celebrating our Graduates, Our Faculty, and Our Community
During the University of Hawaii's Centennial Year
The UH-Manoa Department of Economics is delighted to join in the celebration of the centennial of the University of Hawaii. In 1907, economics was an integral part of the University's curriculum. One hundred years later, the role of economics in the University has greatly diversified. The Department offers a wide array of courses and degree programs to undergraduate and graduate students; conducts research focused on the Asia-Pacific region; and provides valuable service to the University and the State of Hawaii.
Every organization starts somewhere, and the Department of Economics started "small." Dr. Romanzo Adams, one of the founders of the UH-Manoa Department of Sociology and Professor of Sociology and Economics, taught all of the economics courses and all of the sociology courses offered at the University of Hawaii in 1922! Viewed from this perspective, the course offerings for Spring 2007, which feature courses taught by twenty different faculty, look pretty good! As Professor Emeritus Robert Kamins observes in his essay, Early History of Economics at the University of Hawaii, the number of faculty teaching business and/or economics varied between 4 and 7 during the 1920s and 1930s. After World War II, interest in the field of economics grew as the territory's economy experienced crisis (e.g. declining population, sugar worker strikes, and dockworkers strikes) and change (e.g. rise of the tourism industry). During the early 1950s, the College of Business Administration added more economists to its faculty, but a decision by the UH-Manoa College of Arts & Sciences (A&S) in the late 1950s to establish its own Economics Department prompted a large-scale faculty migration. By 1962, the new A&S Department of Economics had become the locus of economics research and teaching at the University.
 Since its founding, the Department's fortunes have been closely tied to the fortunes of the state's boom-and-bust economy. As Sumner La Croix chronicles in his essay, UH-Manoa Economics: A Brief Modern History, 1962-2007, statehood and the economic boom of the 1960s allowed the Department to add new faculty and a new doctoral program. The excitement of the 1960s persisted through the mid-1970s, as the Department enjoyed a growing reputation for its research on Asia-Pacific economies. However, rollercoaster funding made it difficult for the Department to recruit and retain top faculty and to offer the research opportunities available to students at top programs. The boom of the late 1970s was followed by the bust of the early 1980s, by the boom of the mid-to-late 1980s, and by the "lost decade" of the 1990s. By 1998, the Department was in serious trouble; faculty were leaving for greener pastures; and candidates for faculty positions regularly declined offers. In 1998 a series of fortuitous events and decisions began that have slowly but surely revived the Department's fortunes. For the last nine years, the Hawaii economy has hummed, revenues have flowed to the University, and the Department has experienced new growth and vitality. It has hired excellent young faculty and has revamped its undergraduate and graduate programs to reflect the new global teaching and research environments in the field of economics. The economics department website, now just eight years old, provides an excellent introduction to our current faculty and students. We encourage you to browse through it and see for yourself the dynamic and exciting academic programs and research projects offered in the Department.
Our Centennial site is anchored by two essays chronicling the history of the Department, and is supported by three other documents.
- Doctorates from UH-Manoa Economics. We list each graduate's name, dissertation title, advisor, and, if the person has given permission, an e-mail address and personal web site address.
- Faculty in UH-Manoa Economics. We list faculty names by the date of their initial appointment to the UH-Manoa economics faculty and provide the start and end dates of their faculty appointment. When possible, we link the faculty member to a short bio written by the faculty member or a close friend, to an obituary, or to a newspaper story. We hope that the bios and photos help you recall a few good memories of your students, teachers, and colleagues!
- Department Chairs and Office Staff. We provide this listing and its links to faculty and staff bios as an acknowledgement of the hard work and genuine service they have provided to the Department since its inception.
 This site also provides an opportunity for our students--undergraduate majors and minors, masters students, and doctoral students--to add their stories and achievements to the site. We need your help! Send your student photos, your news, and your career achievements to us at econ-success@hawaii.edu. We'll post (edited versions of) them in the Economics Centennial Blog, which is linked to this page.
Finally, don't miss the site's photo gallery, a place where everyone seems younger and the world is fresh.
As we continue to develop the site over the next year, please send us your corrections, your photos, your interesting stories of faculty and classmates, and your observations on the state of economics, both then and now.
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