Fred V Carstensen

Professor of Finance and Economics
Director, Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis

Finance

Fred V. Carstensen, Professor of Finance and Economics

Director, Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, University of Connecticut

Prof. Carstensen graduated with Honors from the University of Wisconsin in 1966 and completed his doctorate in a joint economics and history doctoral program at Yale University in 1976.  After teaching at the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia, he came to the Department of Economics at the University of Connecticut in 1982; in 2012 he moved to the Department of Finance in the School of Business. He served three times as visiting Shelby Cullum Davis Professor of American Institutions and Values at Trinity College. He served as the Senior Editor for biographies of leading American business leaders for the Dictionary of American Biography.  His primary research has focused on transnational enterprise, entrepreneurship, and the political economy of capitalism; his scholarship has contributed to work on Russian, British, Mexican, and American economic and business history.

In 1998, he assumed the Directorship of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis (CCEA). Under his leadership, CCEA has provided a wide array of economic analyses and policy studies for a host of clients, including the University itself, executive and legislative agencies of Connecticut, development authorities, foundations, and businesses. The studies, now numbering more than 175, have ranged from sophisticated, long-term economic impact studies of proposed developments to assessments of the state business tax environment to comprehensive build-out scenarios to assess the long term impact of regional development to projecting the value of social programs, including child care and provision of diapers to low income households.  Among the most impactful studies have been the follwing: an analysis that facilitate a change in the classification of biofuels and the state’s first biorefinery; work with OPM to modify the tax code to persuade ESPN to expand in Bristol, not out of state, helping keep ESPN in Connecticut to this day; a study done with then Dean Cato Laurecin that was the basis for Governor Malloy’s $850 million initiative to strengthen UConn health; an analysis of how to permit corporate use of stranded tax credits that converted them into major capital investments that framed the successful initiative to keep Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut until at least 2030; helping develop the legal framework to make the state competitive in hosting hyperscale data centers.

He also helped resurrect the State Data Center (the U.S. Census liaison office), for which he served as Director of three years, during which the SDC completed a comprehensive projection of Connecticut’s evolving demographic future.

Prof. Carstensen has provided legislative testimony on a variety of economic issues facing the state, its regions, and municipalities. He has done a wide variety of interviews with the media (television, radio, and print) to comment on the contemporary economic, business, and policy issues.