Faculty

Graduate Assistant (GA) Training Workshop – Fall 2025

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The Department of Economics held its Fall 2025 Graduate Assistant (GA) Training Workshop on Monday, October 13. Offered each semester, the workshop brings together faculty and GAs to share practical guidance on effective teaching, classroom management, and student engagement.

This semester’s session featured presentations by Professor Chihwa Kao, Professor Jackie Kai Zhao, and Professor Tianxu Chen, who leads the GA training program and teaches Econ 6492: Teaching Economics. Professor Kao shared insights from his extensive teaching experience on creating engaging classroom environments and encouraging active student participation. Professor Zhao discussed strategies for fostering meaningful learning through constructive feedback and helping students reflect on their progress. Professor Chen highlighted approaches for promoting active learning and building supportive classroom communities, drawing on her experience teaching large undergraduate courses.

The workshop also provided GAs with an opportunity to exchange experiences and reflect on ways to enhance their teaching effectiveness. It continues to serve as an important platform for developing pedagogical skills, building community among graduate instructors, and reinforcing the department’s commitment to high-quality undergraduate teaching.

 

Stamford Public Economics Students Learn About Public Service

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The curriculum of the Public Economics class includes discussions about government finance. It was then appropriate for students at the Stamford campus in Dr. Smirnova’s class to meet a public official from Stamford. Mr. Gerald R. Bosak Jr. has served Stamford as a member of the Board of Finance, the Board of Education, and currently as a Zoning Board Commissioner. He is aspiring to become Town Clerk of the City of Stamford.

Mr. Bosak shared with students how the City’s finance plans are deliberated and how the University negotiated with the City for the new dormitories’ construction. The most heated discussion evolved around the affordable housing issue as well as the overdevelopment of the City’s beach front. Students had a lot of questions for Mr. Bosak regarding cost-benefit analysis’s role in the policy decisions by the Stamford government. All of these public policy issues connect closely with the course curriculum and with the project students are working on in this class.

Mr. Bosak encouraged students to participate in the local government by attending meetings, voicing their concerns and ideas, and volunteering. In the end, the visit not only related the economic concepts of costs and benefits, budgets, deficits and debt to the actual local government functioning. The visit also inspired students to be active citizens in their communities.

Mr. Jerry Bosak with several students from Dr. Smirnova’s Public Economics class on October 16, 2025, at the Stamford campus
Mr. Jerry Bosak, center, with several students from Dr. Smirnova’s Public Economics class on October 16, 2025, at the Stamford campus.

Professor Kai Zhao Elected to CES Board of Directors

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professional headshotProfessor Kai Zhao has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Chinese Economists Society.

Founded in 1985, the Chinese Economists Society (CES) is a U.S.-registered non-profit academic organization. It aims to promote scholarly exchange among economists and to advance and disseminate research in economics and management sciences, with a focus on China. In his new role, Professor Zhao will contribute to CES’s mission of fostering dialogue on key economic issues and supporting the development of young scholars.

Professor Kenneth Couch featured on “Where We Live”

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Professor Kenneth Couch is a featured guest on a recent Connecticut Public episode of “Where We Live”:

Thumbnail of the Where We Live broadcast

 

Social Security is one of the most widely-used government programs in the country, but how much does the average American know about how it works?

From eligibility and benefit amounts to how the trust fund is structured, this hour we’re offering a crash course on Social Security and how the federal program’s uncertain future is impacting the retirement plans of people here in Connecticut.

We’ll ask what’s driving concerns about the fund’s long-term solvency, and what Congress might do about it.

Guests:

 

https://www.ctpublic.org/show/where-we-live/2025-07-28/what-you-need-to-know-about-social-security-and-its-uncertain-future

 

 

Professor Sung Hoon Choi to be Published in the Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

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Professor Sung Hoon Choi’s recent article, “Matrix-based Prediction Approach for Intraday Instantaneous Volatility Vector”, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, one of the leading scholarly journals in econometrics.

Abstract:

In this paper, we introduce a novel method for predicting intraday instantaneous volatility based on Itô semimartingale models using high-frequency financial data. Several studies have highlighted stylized volatility time series features, such as interday auto-regressive dynamics and the intraday U-shaped pattern. To accommodate these volatility features, we propose an interday-by-intraday instantaneous volatility matrix process that can be decomposed into low-rank conditional expected instantaneous volatility and noise matrices. To predict the low-rank conditional expected instantaneous volatility matrix, we propose the Two-sIde Projected-PCA (TIP-PCA) procedure. We establish asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators and conduct a simulation study to assess the finite sample performance of the proposed prediction method. Finally, we apply the TIP-PCA method to an out-of-sample instantaneous volatility vector prediction study using high-frequency data from the S&P 500 index and 11 sector index funds.

Professor Coşgel in UConn Today: Reimagining Writing Courses in the Age of AI

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Portrait of Professor Metin Cosgel

Professor Metin Coşgel is featured in the most recent UConn Today:

Economist Reimagines Writing Courses in the Age of AI

Professor Metin Coşgel is piloting a new AI-integrated writing curriculum in economics, one of UConn’s largest majors, with the potential to shape how writing is taught across disciplines.

As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes classrooms and careers alike, UConn professor of economics Metin Coşgel is asking a deceptively simple question: Can generative AI help students become better writers?

The answer, Coşgel says, lies not just in what we ask students to produce, but in how we guide them through the writing process itself.

“AI can help with writing, but students need to be able to own their work and defend it along the way, not just generate a final paper at the end because the system allows it,” he says.

This fall, Coşgel will launch a redesigned version of ECON 2500W, a core writing-intensive course for UConn economics majors. Supported by a Teaching Enhancement Grant from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), the new curriculum integrates AI tools with traditional instruction to help students improve their writing, understand their learning process, and graduate with the skills needed for today’s workforce.

Read the full article at UConn Today:

Economist Reimagines Writing Courses in the Age of AI

Professor Tianxu Chen Recognized as a Distinguished Career Champion

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The Department of Economics is pleased to announce that Professor Tianxu Chen was recently honored as a Distinguished Career Champion at UConn’s 2024–2025 Career Everywhere End-of-Year Recognition and Celebration. This award, presented by the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills, recognizes faculty who demonstrate outstanding commitment to integrating career development into their teaching and student support.

As a Faculty Fellow with the Center, Professor Chen participated in the 2024 Summer Institute and implemented a series of career-focused assignments in her large-enrollment course, ECON 2441: Labor Economics, during both the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 semesters. Her efforts included curriculum development, guest lectures, and a suite of career competency-based assessments designed to connect labor market theory with students’ professional development. Grounded in the NACE Career Competencies framework, the initiative received highly positive student feedback, with many reporting increased confidence in applying key skills in career preparation.

This recognition also highlights Professor Chen’s broader contributions through the department’s GA Training Program, where she mentors and prepares graduate assistants for effective undergraduate instruction. She is honored by this award and grateful for the opportunity to support student growth across both academic and career dimensions.

Edward Elgar Publishes Handbook on Inequality and COVID-19 Edited by Professor Couch

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Book cover.In this comprehensive Handbook, Professor Kenneth Couch of the University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, brings together expert contributors to provide insights into the impact of COVID-19 on new and pre-existing inequalities in health, work, and education. While sharper impacts on pre-existing cross-group disparities were often resolved by vaccinations and the lifting of restrictions, this important work indicates that in many respects disadvantaged groups will endure lasting negative effects from the pandemic.

An interdisciplinary and international range of authors investigate disparities in mortality, healthcare spending, domestic violence, and mental health for people of different genders, ethnicities, immigration statuses, and age, providing novel contributions to post-pandemic scholarship and introducing innovative empirical research. They emphasize the effect of the pandemic on the labor market, including  the ramifications on minority and migrant employment and the gender-specific outcomes of working from home. The Handbook also underscores the negative and heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on school enrollment, student well-being, and academic performance across all school ages. Ultimately, this Handbook provides a detailed overview of contemporary post-pandemic research into inequality.

Professor Tianxu Chen Awarded AI Teaching Innovation Mini-Grant

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Professor Tianxu Chen has been awarded a 2025 AI Teaching Innovation Mini-Grant from UConn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The grant supports faculty in redesigning courses to help students engage directly with generative AI tools and concepts.

Professor Chen will integrate AI-focused activities into her undergraduate Labor Economics course, encouraging students to explore how technologies like generative AI are transforming labor markets and skill demands. The revised course will include hands-on assignments that build AI fluency, such as prompt engineering, critical evaluation of AI-generated content, and discussions on the ethical and economic implications of AI in the workplace.

The redesigned course will be implemented during the 2025–2026 academic year.