Omicron Delta Epsilon

Omicron Delta Epsilon ( or ODE) is an international honor society in the field of economics, formed from the merger of Omicron Delta Gamma and Omicron Chi Epsilon, in 1963. Its board of trustees includes well-known economists such as Robert Lucas, Paul Romer, and Robert Solow. ODE is a member of the Association of College Honor Societies; the ACHS indicates that ODE inducts approximately 4,000 collegiate members each year and has more than 100,000 living lifetime members. There are approximately 700 active ODE chapters worldwide. New members consist of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as college and university faculty; the academic achievement required to obtain membership for students can be raised by individual chapters, as well as the ability to run for office or wear honors cords during graduation. It publishes an academic journal entitled The American Economist twice each year. History The first national honor society in economics, Omicron Delta Gamma (ODG), was formed on May 7, 1915, by the merger of Harvard University's Undergraduate Society of Economics with the University of Wisconsin's Order of Artus, an economics student society modeled on King Arthur's Knights of the Roundtable. Wisconsin's group was advised by Professor John R. Commons, and Professor Frank W. Taussig, president of the American Economic Association in 1904–1905, was faculty advisor for Harvard's society. The John R. Commons Award is given semi-annually to an outstanding economist for contributions to the profession and to ODE, while the Frank W. Taussig Research Paper Award is given annually to the winner of a national undergraduate student competition. Alan A. Brown was the founder and first President of Omicron Chi Epsilon (OCE) in 1955 while a student at City College of New York. Brown conceived the creation and the development of an international Honor Society in Economics. Friends and colleagues report that they were amazed watching this polite and deferring young person 'pestering' Nobel Prize winners and other giants of the economics profession to endorse, become involved in, and support this initiative. The first annual meeting of OCE was held at Fordham University in New York City in the spring of 1958. Brown subsequently learned of the existence of ODG, which, while older and formally larger with more campus chapters, was less active than the younger OCE.