Organized by Colby, Bowdoin and �ֲ���ý Colleges.

8:15 – 9:00 a.m., Pettengill Hall, Room G65
“Breakfast as conference participants arrive.

9:00 – 9:45 a.m., Pettengill Hall, Room G65
“Effects and Role of Macroprudential Policy: Evidence from Reserve Requirements Based on a Narrative Approach”

• �ʰ������Գٱ��:�� Guillermo Vulletin (Colby College); co-authors: Pablo Federico (BlackRock), and Carlos Vegh (University of Maryland and NBER)
• Discussant:�� Daniel Riera-Crichton (�ֲ���ý College)

9:45 – 10:30 a.m., Pettengill Hall, Room G65
“Housing and Endogenous Default”

• Presenter: Paul Shea (�ֲ���ý College); co-author: Emily Marshall (University of Kentucky)
• Discussant:�� TBA

10:30 – 10:45 a.m.
Coffee break

10:45 – 11:45 a.m., Pettengill Hall, Perry Atrium
Student Poster Session

• Thomas Abe (Colby College). “Can the Stock Market Predict Approval Designations for New Drug Applications by the FDA?”
• Joe Durgin (Bowdoin College). “The Role of Competition and Patient Travel in
  Hospital Profits: Why Insurers Should Subsidize Patient Travel.”
• Danny Garin (Colby College). “The Effects of Political Signaling on the Federal Reserve.”
• Henry Geng (�ֲ���ý College). “Willingness to Pay for Anadromous Fisheries Restoration: Split Sample Survey of Kennebec and Androscoggin River Watershed Residents.”
• Chelsea Graves (�ֲ���ý College). “The Eurozone Debt Crisis: Determinants of Sovereign Credit Spreads.”
• Meagan Hennessey (Colby College). “The Economics of Rockweed Harvesting:
  Tomorrow’s Promise or a Crisis in the Making?”
• Marcus Josefsson (Colby College). “The Dissolution of Currency Unions: Evidence from the Narrative.”
• Qasim Mahmood (�ֲ���ý College). “Estimating the Equity Premium.”
• Aung Phone Myint (�ֲ���ý College).�� “Growth, Trade, and the Environment: Water
  Pollution from Industrial Sources.”
• Becky Newman (Colby College). “The Relevance of Inflation Targeting.”
• Qi Sun (Colby College) and Siyang Xu (Colby College). “How Independent Are Central
  Banks-Evidence Based on Narrative Approach.”

11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., New Commons Room 221
Lunch

1:00 – 1:45 p.m., Pettengill Hall, Room G65
“Health and Cognition at Work Labor Market Performance in a Low Income Setting“

• �ʰ������Գٱ��:�� Dan LaFave (Colby College); co-author: Duncan Thomas (Duke University)
• Discussant:�� John Fitzgerald (Bowdoin College)

1:45 – 2:30 p.m., Pettengill Hall, Room G65
“Will Offshore Energy Face ‘Fair Winds and Following Seas’?: Understanding the Factors Influencing Support”

• �ʰ������Գٱ��:�� Mario Teisl (University of Maine, Orono); co-authors: Shannon McCoy (University of Maine, Orono), Sarah Marrinan (EPA), Caroline L. Noblet (University of Maine, Orono),^��Teresa Johnson (University of Maine, Orono), Robert Roper (University of Maine, Augusta), Sharon Klein (University of Maine, Orono), and Megan Wibberly (Island Institute).
• Discussant:�� Lynne Lewis (�ֲ���ý College)

2:30 – 2:45 p.m.
Coffee break

3:00 – 3:45 p.m., Pettengill Hall, Room G65
“An Analysis of the Economic Impacts of Big-Box Stores on Maine’s Retail Sector”

• �ʰ������Գٱ��:�� James McConnon (University of Maine, Orono); co-authors: Emily Freedman (University of Maine, Orono), Todd M. Gabe (University of Maine, Orono), and Gary L. Hunt (University of Maine, Orono)
• Discussant:�� Daniel Stone (Bowdoin College)

3:45 – 4:30 p.m., Pettengill Hall, Room G65
“American Renters: Declining Incomes, Touch Choices”

• �ʰ������Գٱ��:�� Michael Murray (�ֲ���ý College)
• Discussant: Andreas Waldkirch (Colby College)

4:30 – 5:00 p.m., New Commons Room 221
Happy Half Hour

5:00 p.m., New Commons Room 221
Dinner

PDF: Maine Economics Conference Schedule

Noémi Shoënberger Ban is an award winning teacher and public speaker, respected and beloved mother, grandmother and synagogue senior who has lived in Bellingham since 1982. A native of Szeged, Hungary, Noémi Ban was 21 when the Nazis marched into Debrecen, Hungary on March 19, 1944. Ultimately her father was sent to a forced labor camp and she and her family (grandmother- Nina, Mother- Juliska, sister- Erzsebet, and baby brother- Gabor) were sent on a transport to Auschwitz arriving on July 1, 1944. Immediately separated from her family (where they became victims of the Nazi genocide) Noémi spent nearly four months in Auschwitz before being picked by Dr. Joseph Mengele to be transferred to a sub-camp of Buchenwald to work at a bomb factory. Escaping during the forced march to Bergen Belsen in April of 1945, Noémi and eleven of her campmates were found by a soldier from Patton’s army who informed them of their freedom. Finally arriving in Budapest in September of 1945, Noémi reunited with her father who also survived. Noémi was marred to Earnest Ban in October and they settled in Budapest where Earnest was a teacher.

The Soviets came into power in 1948. While living under Communist rule and control, Noémi herself became a seventh and eighth grade teacher. Reaching the point were she could no longer live under the dictates of the Communist regime Noémi, her husband, and two sons tried to escape via train to Austria. Thwarted at the border Noémi did not give up or give in. With a friend’s help she and her family, less than a month after the first attempt, finally made it to freedom in Austria by hiding in giant balls of yarn being shipped by truck from Budapest to Sopron on December 29, 1956.

Noémi and her family arrived in the United States in February of 1957 and were relocated to St .Louis, Missouri. Both she and Earnest went back to school to learn English and then pursued American college degree-Earnest teaching math, Noémi becoming a sixth grade teacher. Upon Earnest’s retirement (he was ten years older than Noémi) they came to Bellingham, Washington to be close to their son, Steven, a pediatrician. Earnest developed Alzheimer’s and passed away in 1994.

Shortly thereafter Noémi began to speak publicly about her Holocaust experience and now speaks throughout Washington state as well as traveling nationally and internationally- on her most recent trip back to Hungary she gave her talk, in Hungarian, in Debrecen where she had been taken in 1944. Noémi received an honorary Doctorate of Law in 1999 from Gonzaga University.

In the summer of 2006 Noémi returned to Hungary and Poland with 30 Washington State teachers to share with them, firsthand, her story of survival. In May of 2007 she was able to return to Poland and Hungary with her youngest son, George. Now both sons have shared with their mother by seeing first-hand where she had been imprisoned.

Noémi is also the author of Sharing is Healing written with Dr. Ray Wolpow. Autobiographical, the short book covers her camp experiences. Noémi was recently featured on Evening Magazine, a Seattle television program.

Copies of her book,��Sharing is Healing, are available through her website,��.

• Poster:��Sharing is Healing: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story