In October 2012 the Department of Economics and the College of Arts and Sciences announced that the Elmus R. Wicker Professorship in Economics will be established through the endowed gift of Mr. E. Scott Thatcher who earned his BA in Economics in 1966 and is a native of Kokomo, Indiana. Mr. Thatcher dedicated this gift in honor of Professor Wicker whose classes he appreciated as a student.
In celebration of Mr. Thatcher’s generous gift, the Department hosted festivities which included a reception where Dean Larry Singell presented Mr. Thatcher with a memorial plaque, and two lectures in on financial and fiscal crises: “The Financial Crisis and Regulation Reform” presented by Professor Todd Walker and “Fiscal Challenges: Current and Future” presented by Professor Eric Leeper.
On October 25, 2014, the department is hosting a conference celebrating Prof. Wicker’s work, “Financial Crises Past and Present: Celebrating the Research Contributions of Elmus R. Wicker”.
Professor Emeritus Wicker is a renowned scholar of the US banking system and monetary policy. He has continued an active research and publication agenda after he retired in 1992. He states “The recent financial crisis came as a total surprise. I never expected to see a reoccurrence in my lifetime. I am however not unhappy to see what it has done to the contemporary relevance of that research!”
This article appeared in Trendline, Fall 2014, Vol. 26, College of Arts & Sciences, alumni newsletter for the IU Department of Economics.
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