Professor Nishith Prakash has been named an Associate Editor with the Journal of Development Economics, which publishes “original research papers relating to all aspects of economic development – from immediate policy concerns to structural problems of underdevelopment.”
Information about the Journal, and about the Editorial Board, may be found online at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-development-economics/about
Third-year PhD student Anastassiya Karaban has received funding in support of her research. Her project, done in collaboration with Professor Jorge Agüero, is entitled “Female Education, Empowerment and Bargaining over Babies in Sub-Saharan Africa”.
The funding is through the Collaborative to Advance Equity through Research on Women and Girls of Color through Africana Studies at UConn:
“In November 2015, the White House Council on Women and Girls announced a new initiative on women and girls of color – the Collaborative to Advance Equity through Research on Women and Girls of Color—during a summit co-hosted by the Anna Julia Cooper Center at Wake Forest University. The Collaborative to Advance Equity through Research on Women and Girls of Color, which the University of Connecticut joined in 2015, consists of more than fifty colleges, universities and non-profit organizations committed to studying and addressing the educational, health and social services disparities faced by women and girls of color. Housed within the Africana Studies Institute, UConn’s Collaborative aligns with Africana’s goals to prioritize research and collaboration that target health disparities and injustice and the health and well-being of populations both racialized and gendered.”
https://africana.uconn.edu/collaborative-call-for-proposals-2022/
Professor Zhao’s paper “The Evolution of Health over the Life Cycle” has been published in the Review of Economic Dynamics.
In this paper, Professor Zhao and his coauthors construct a unified objective measure of health status: the frailty index. Using this index, they propose and estimate a stochastic process for health dynamics over the life cycle accounting for mortality bias. Their health measure and dynamic process can be used to study the evolution of health over the life cycle and its economic implications.
Building on this work, Professor Zhao and his coauthors are currently working on a project that explores the evolution of health inequality over the life cycle and its implication for lifetime earnings inequality.
Huanan Xu, Ph.D. ’16, was awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Economics at Indiana University South Bend’s Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics. Her main research interests are in the areas of labor and demographic economics, immigration, and the economics of education, but she has several recent papers examining the labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since defending her dissertation and leaving UConn, she has maintained close connections to our department, coauthoring with Professor Ken Couch (Journal of Public Economics 2020 and Economic Inquiry 2022), Professor Delia Furtado (Labour Economics 2019), and Tao Song, Ph.D. ‘17 (Southern Economic Journal 2020).
Congratulations, Huanan!
Professor Jorge Agüero’s paper “COVID-19 and The Rise of Intimate Partner Violence” is now a Top 10 most cited paper in World Development, considering all publications since 2018.
The paper may be found online at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105217
The abstract is below:
Title: COVID-19 and The Rise of Intimate Partner Violence
Abstract: Stay-at-home policies have been implemented worldwide to reduce the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, there is a growing concern that such policies could increase violence against women. We find evidence in support of this critical concern. We focus on Peru, a country that imposed a strict nationwide lockdown starting in mid-March and where nearly 60% of women already experienced violence before COVID-19. Using administrative data on phone calls to the helpline for domestic violence (Línea 100), we find that the incidence rate of the calls increased by 48 percent between April and July 2020, with effects increasing over time. The rise in calls is found across all states and it is not driven by baseline characteristics, including previous prevalence of violence against women. These findings create the need to identify policies to mitigate the negative impact of stay-at-home orders on women’s safety.
During the 2019-2021 academic year, the College undertook a collaborative strategic planning process. Among other things, the resulting plan articulated four overarching goals for the College to work toward in the coming years. The Strategic Goal Awards recognize recognize the efforts of faculty members in these areas:
Dr. Smirnova has received the 2022 Broader Impacts, Service, and Visibility Award.
This award is granted for “outstanding initiatives that visibly impact the welfare of Connecticut and beyond, including but not limited to facilitating community engagement, developing strong connections to government or nonprofit agencies, and/or leveraging alumni networks”.
As a faculty liaison of the Early College Experience – Economics program, Dr. Smirnova oversees course comparability, academic programming, and professional development and evaluation of the UConn ECE instructors teaching ECON 1000, ECON 1201, ECON 1202 in high schools. The ECE Economics program is an important component of department’s academic outreach to the community, a part of the department’s recruitment strategy, and an important way to connect our colleagues in high schools with the University. The ECE Economics program is the largest at UConn. It serves on average 55 instructors who offer 66 ECE economics courses annually.
The impact on students who take ECE Economics courses is many-fold. They get acquainted with the academic rigor of CLAS, gain familiarity with the University as a whole, and publicize the prominence of UConn across the nation and around the world when gaining acceptance to institutions of higher education.
The community impact of the ECE Economics program is immense. Our partner schools serve urban and rural communities, inner-city pupils, immigrant populations, and first generation students. As Dr. Smirnova helps the ECE instructors build their courses with rigor and innovation, all these groups have the opportunity to learn economics concepts, develop economics way of thinking, and get their first exposure to the college-level curriculum. This opportunity has a profound positive impact on learners and their communities.
Starting at the local community, the visibility of the University grows in the national and international arenas. After high school graduation, some students attend the University of Connecticut. They contribute to UConn’s diversity and bring knowledge gained in high school to UConn. Other students go to colleges and universities around the country and around the world. They contribute to the visibility of UConn by transferring UConn credits earned through the ECE program, by bringing the knowledge they gained, and by spreading the word about the ECE experience they have had. International students who attend ECE-partner private boarding schools bring the knowledge about the University of Connecticut to their home countries.
Congratulations, Dr. Smirnova!
Congratulations to Professor Kathleen Segerson, who has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences!
“Members are elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive. Current NAS membership totals approximately 2,400 members and 500 international members, of which approximately 190 have received Nobel prizes.”
“The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Approximately 500 current and deceased members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research.”
Information about the National Academy of Science and the newly elected 2022 members may be found online at: http://www.nasonline.org/
The Center for Career Development features Professor Natalia Smirnova with their Career Champion Spotlight:
“The Career Champion Spotlight for May 2022 is Dr. Natalia V. Smirnova. Dr. Smirnova is an assistant professor in residence at the Stamford campus of UConn. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from UConn in 2004 and now teaches in the field of Economics, including courses like Principles of Microeconomics, Principles of Macroeconomics, and Financial Economics. She also teaches upper-level field courses in Economics. Her teaching approach is to focus on how economics is relevant to everyday decisions and to engage students in real-world applications and data-driven explorations.”
Read the full post online at:
https://career.uconn.edu/blog/2022/04/28/career-champion-may-spotlight-blog-natalia-smirnova/
While the department is not able to celebrate with an awards banquet this year, we still are able to recognize the best among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty!
This year’s award recipients are:
Undergraduate Awards
Economics Department General Scholarship
Shuo Han
Samuel Jackson
Tamara Shelley
Grace Smith
Khoa Tran
Yinuo Xiang
Ziyun Zhou
Kathryn A. Cassidy Economics Scholarship
Nidhi Nair
SeSe Nguyen
Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Nadine Fernando
Prasad Gosavi
Pin Lyi
Choyang Wang
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
Adem Aksoy
Allen Cazeau
Jeremy Salyer
Benjamin Scudder
Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Erin McKeehan
Julia & Harold Fenton and Yolanda & Augustine Sineti Scholarship
Shuyi Bian
Charles Triano Scholarship
John Doran
Beatrix Jordan
Dr. Joseph W. McAnneny Jr. Scholarship
Erik Choi
Ryan Durrel
Gregory Elmokian
Kevin Gabree
Prabhas KC
Joshua Waxman
Justin Wu
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Annaliesa Wood
Ross Mayer Scholarship
Cole Ensinger
Jordan Leonardi
Graduate Awards
W. Harrison Carter Award
Ruohan Huang
Ziyun Wu
Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Lindsey Buck
Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Matthew Brown
Shangyue Jiang
Keuncheol Lee
Kunze Li
Lulin Li
Ghania Shuaib
Sirui Qiu
Zhengxuan Wu
Economics Department General Scholarship
Anastassiya Karaban
Best Third Year Paper Award
Jiaqi Wang
Graduate School Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
Sirui Qiu
Zhengxuan Wu
Heshan Zhang
CLAS Summer Fellowship
Erdal Asker
Matthew Brown
Jingyun Chen
Jinsoon Cho
Zhenhao Gong
Shangyue Jiang
Keuncheol Lee
Lulin Li
Yizhi Zhu
Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Congratulations to everyone!
Lauren Munyard, Academic Advisor in the Department of Economics, has received an Outstanding Undergraduate Professional Staff Advisor Award.
“The goal of these awards is to recognize the extraordinary contributions of undergraduate academic advisors in supporting academic success and student development at the University of Connecticut.
Nominees have been evaluated on the basis of qualities and practices that distinguish them as an outstanding academic advisor. Award winners will have demonstrated sustained excellence in undergraduate advising and will have made a significant impact on their undergraduate advisees’ intellectual development through sustained academic advising relationships.”
https://advising.uconn.edu/outstanding-undergraduate-advisor-awards/
Information about the 2022 Undergraduate Advising Awards can be found here, along with Lauren’s bio:
Lauren Munyard
Academic Advisor, Department of Economics, CLAS
Lauren has been an advisor for 18 years, including at Boston University’s College of Communication and at UConn for 15 years as an advisor at the School of Business, Departments of Communication, Sociology, and Economics and at the CLAS Academic Services Center which serves as CLAS’ central advising office. She specializes in working with a large population of students, using techniques and tools she has learned through advising in different areas along with innovation to best serve the needs of many students while making them feel like an individual. Currently she advises in Economics, one of the largest majors in CLAS. She started the Uconnomist undergraduate e-newsletter, has been working on developing a peer advising system in her department and has helped to create and put into place many new systems and processes to help make a large advising office run. In her past, Lauren developed an advising center from the ground up and hired and led its student workers, graduate assistants and advisors as the department doubled in size in majors. She has supervised many graduate assistants who were learning the advising profession. She has also worked with majors at the Regional campuses and works extensively with many international students who have unique needs given the pandemic and travel restrictions. She supervises student workers and manages the free tutoring program, manages the enrollment and permission number process, and is on the Undergraduate Programs Committee and the committee for the Economics Department Undergraduate Awards.
She also manages the Program Plan Change program for CLAS and processes major and advisor changes for the school, manages the ECE and non-degree courses for CLAS and their application to the students’ degrees, serves as the university contact for final plans of study issues and workflow and is on the University’s Nexus Steering Committee that works to help evolve the Nexus program to suit the needs of UConn academic advisors. Lauren has offered many workshops to the advising community, including instructional trainings on Student Admin, Nexus, Excel tips, and how to advise large majors and serves as an advisor resource for Nexus questions and troubleshooting.
Lauren studied Communication at Houghton College and Boston University as well as earned minors in Writing and Business. Lauren attended the State University of New York at Oswego before transferring to Houghton College her sophomore year. As she understands the complexities transfer students face from changing colleges, she especially enjoys working with the transfer student population to help make their transition to their new school as seamless as possible. Throughout her advising career, she has been a student group advisor for multiple groups that do volunteer activities. Lauren’s passion is for animals and she volunteers her time working with animal rescues.