UC Alum Hoffman, One of Nation's Top Economists, Returns for Kautz Lecture

One of the University of Cincinnati economics department’s most prominent alums, who is also one of the nation’s most high-profile economic authorities, will be returning to campus for a public presentation on Oct. 26.

Stuart Hoffman, senior vice president and chief economist for the PNC Financial Services Group and a graduate of both the master’s and doctoral programs in economics at UC, will by the 2006 James C. Kautz Speaker on Political Economy. He will speak on "The Economic Prospects for the U.S. and Cincinnati" at 5:30 p.m. in Room 112 of Lindner Hall.

His talk will be free and open to the public.

Hoffman has risen from his roots at UC to become one of the nation’s most respected and widely quoted economic forecasters. He is the immediate past president of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), which is the most prestigious professional organization for business economic analysts. Also, last year he was named by "Business Week" magazine as the No. 1 most accurate economic and interest-rate forecaster among a group of the top 60 national forecasting specialists for 2004, with his economic predictions for the year coming closer to what actually happened statistically than any other economists’ projections.

For the longer term, he was honored by NABE as the second-most accurate forecaster for the time frame covering 1998 to 2003, and, in the shorter term, he was just named on Oct. 10 as "Forecaster of the Month" by MarketWatch, an award he also received in January of 2005.

Hoffman earned his undergraduate degree from Penn State, then came to UC as a Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fellow and earned his master’s degree in 1973 and then finished his doctoral work in 1975. In 2004, he was honored by UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences as a Distinguished Alumnus.

Hoffman’s Kautz lecture will also take place against a backdrop of interesting timing. He will be speaking the day after the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that makes interest rate decisions for the Federal Reserve, so those in attendance will be able to get his readings on the latest moves and statements released by the Fed.

The Kautz Speakers Program is supported by the Hewett-Kautz Fund, which was started by a gift from UC alum James C. Kautz to honor the legacy of UC economics professor and department head William W. Hewett. Currently, the fund sponsors five undergraduate scholarships, faculty research, external speakers, various student activities, and an Economics Tutoring Center.

For more information on the lecture, call the departmental office at 513-556-2600 or visit the economics department Web site at http://www.artisci.uc.edu/economics/ and click on "News" and then "Public Lecture."

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