Despite the small size
of the social sciences, four of the departments
offer doctoral programs: Anthropology, Economics,
Political Science, and Psychology. Although
it does not have a graduate program, Sociology
does have a post-doc program.
Each department strives for
excellence, usually by concentrating on a discrete
number of fields of study.
If you are interested in earning a doctorate, you
are encouraged to learn about our programs by browsing
the department's website and by contacting faculty.
Every department strives to make sure that there
is a good "fit" between a student's interests
and the strengths of the department.
Get to Know...
George
Zodrow Professor
of
Economics
George Zodrow's
research focuses on tax policy in the United States
and developing countries, and state and local public
finance. This work is conducted as part of the Tax
and Expenditure Policy Program at the Baker Institute.
His work on tax reform in the US includes analyses
of the effects of fundamental tax reform--replacing
the income tax with a consumption-based tax system--especially
transitional effects including reform-induced changes
in a asset and housing prices.
Much of this work has been done with John Diamond
of Rice's Baker Institute and Charles McLure of
Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Zodrow
and Diamond have constructed a large-scale computer
model that can be used to analyze the short- and
long-run allocational and distributional effects
of fundamental tax reform as well as incremental
reforms of the existing income tax system.
Prof. Zodrow also worked on tax reform projects
in many developing countries often focusing on business
taxation including the taxation of foreign multinationals.
Finally, he has investigated a wide variety of issues
in state and local public finance, including the
incidence and economic effects of property tax,
including the capitalization of local property taxes,
the effects of state sales and income taxes including
state sales taxation of electronic commerce, the
effects of state and local tax competition, the
use of state and local tax incentives designed to
attract business, and, in conjunction with the Texas
Joint Select Committee on Public School Finance,
an analysis of alternative state revenue sources
for public school finance..
Did You Know?...that
the graduate students ended an eight-year
losing streak by beating the Political
Science faculty, 11-5, in the department's
annual softball game.
