Author: McConnel, Mark

Andrew Ju and Sungoh Kwon Receive ‘Best Third-Year Paper’ Awards

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Graduate students Andrew Ju and Sungoh Kwon have received the Department of Economics’ ‘Best Third-Year Paper’ awards for 2015-2016.

From the abstract of Andrew’s paper State Collective Bargaining Laws and Public-Private Sector Wage Differentials:

In recent years states across the country have considered restricting or eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees, thus sparking a national debate over the compensation of public sector workers. In this paper I contribute evidence to this debate by examining the effects of state collective bargaining laws on public-private sector wage differentials. Using data from the 2000 to 2014 CPS Merged Outgoing Rotation Group (MORG) and a variety of identification strategies, I  find that in states without mandatory collective bargaining laws state and local government workers earn approximately 7 percent less than their private sector counterparts. In contrast, in states with mandatory collective bargaining laws, state and local government workers earn approximately the same as their private sector counterparts.

I also find that state collective bargaining laws play an important role in determining the level of fringe benefits: local government employees in mandatory collective bargaining states have significantly higher probabilities of obtaining an employer-sponsored health insurance or pension plan.

From the abstract of Sungoh’s paper Does Public School Spending Raise Intergenerational Mobility?: Evidence from U.S. School Finance Reforms:

This study provSungoh Kwonides the first quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between public school spending and intergenerational mobility (IGM). Using a plausibly exogenous variation in school spending induced by U.S. court-mandated school finance reforms and county-by-cohort level measures of IGM, I found no evidence that the increase in public school spending raises future income rank of disadvantaged children in the national distribution, while there is evidence of a slight increase in the rank of advantaged children. When it comes to college attendance, I found that children similarly benefit from additional school spending regardless of family backgrounds. I discuss some possible explanations on the results.

Congratulations, Andrew and Sungoh!

Economics Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching

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The Provost’s office at the University of Connecticut regularly recognizes faculty members with excellent teaching evaluations commending them as achieving “excellence in teaching”.

A number of faculty members in the economics department have received this recognition in the past year:  Professors Talia Bar, Ken Couch, Delia Furtado, Paul Hallwood, Olivier Morand, Susan Randolph, Kathy Segerson, Mikhael Shor, Owen Svalestad, and Jackie Zhao.

Congratulations to these economics faculty for their important contributions to the educational mission of UConn!

Prof. Ross’s work with Pat Bayer and Fernando Ferreira featured in the Atlantic and the Pacific Standard

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rossProfessor Ross’s work with Pat Bayer and Fernando Ferreira has been featured in The Atlantic and the Pacific Standard

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/blacks-hispanics-mortgages/471024/

https://psmag.com/predatory-lending-is-another-form-of-american-housing-discrimination

This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in high cost mortgage lending in seven diverse metropolitan areas from 2004-2007. Even after controlling for credit score and other key risk factors, African-American and Hispanic home buyers are 105 and 78 percent more likely to have high cost mortgages for home purchases.

The increased incidence of high cost mortgages is attributable both to sorting across lenders (60-65 percent) and to differential treatment of equally qualified borrowers by lenders (35-40 percent). The vast majority of the racial and ethnic differences across lenders can be explained by a single measure of the lender’s foreclosure risk, and most of the within-lender differences are concentrated at high-risk lenders.

Thus, differential exposure to high-risk lenders combined with the differential treatment by these lenders explains almost all of the racial and ethnic differences in high cost mortgage borrowing.

Professors Harmon and Lanza at the Eastern Economic Association Conference

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Professors Oskar Harmon and Steven Lanza presented a paper “Factors Contributing to Differences in State Economic Outcomes over the Great Recession” at the 42nd Annual Conference of the Eastern Economic Association in Washington DC, Feb 26, 2016.

Eastern Economic Association BannerThe paper employs a Cox Proportional Hazard model to analyze duration of state recession and recovery spells during the Great Recession.

60th Anniversary of the Early College Experience Program

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This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Early College Experience (ECE) program at the University of Connecticut.

ECE is a concurrent enrollment program that allows motivated high school students to take UConn courses at their high schools for both high school and college credit. Every course taken through UConn ECE is equivalent to the same course at the University of Connecticut. High school instructors who have been certified through the University of Connecticut serve as adjunct faculty members and teach UConn ECE courses.

Since about 29% of UConn ECE students continue on to the University of Connecticut, the Research & Development team is able to track their progress. UConn ECE students are more likely to graduate on time and to hold higher first and second semester GPA’s than those students who did not participate in the program.

The Department of Economics has participated in the ECE program since the early 1990s with a small number of instructors (two in 2006). Today that number has grown to 35 certified Economics instructors offering all of the principals classes to students in 25 high schools across the state. The Economics ECE coordinator is Professor William Alpert.

Huanan Xu Accepts Position at Indiana University South Bend

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Huanan Xu, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics, has accepted a tenure track faculty position in the Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics at Indiana University South Bend.

The Leighton School offers M.B.A. degrees as well as other Masters level programs. IU South Bend has an enrollment of roughly 7,000 undergraduate and 550 graduate students.

Huanan’s thesis committee consists of Ken Couch (Chair), Delia Furtado, and Rob Fairlie (Cal-Santa Cruz).

Matthew Ross Accepts Post-Doc Position at Ohio State University

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Matthew Ross, an Economics graduate student at UConn, has just accepted a three-year post-doctoral position at Ohio State University.

The position is part of a project jointly funded by the NSF and the NIH. Principal Investigators for the project include Joshua Hawley (John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State), Julia Lane (Wagner School of Public Affairs at NYU), Jason Owen-Smith (Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan) and Bruce Weinberg (Department of Economics, Ohio State University).   Ross’s thesis committee consists of Ken Couch (Chair), Delia Furtado, and Subhash Ray.

Professor Ross’s Research Featured in Washington Post Blog

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rossProfessor Ross’s research has been featured in a Washington Post blog post: “How segregated schools turn kids into criminals“.

The research, with coauthors Dave Deming and Steve Billings, examines youth crime in Charlotte, NC, and finds that having more kids of similar age, gender and race nearby raises the likelihood of arrest, but only if those kids attend the same school.  Further, these kids are more likely to be arrested together as criminal partners if they live very nearby and attend the same school.

These effects are largest when these youth have been in the same neighborhood for a longer time and if they attended the same elementary school. These findings suggest that neighborhood spillovers in criminal activity are likely caused by social interactions that arise within schools, and that school level interventions may be effective in mitigating neighborhood level clusters of crime.

 

“Agents of Change” Film Screening at Stamford and Storrs

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Professor Oskar Harmon has arranged for the screening of the film “Agents of Change” at the Stamford Campus (2/24 at 6:15 pm) and at the Konover Auditorium on the Storrs Campus (2/25 at 4:30 pm).

Admission is free, open to the public and will have a reception and post screening discussion with the co-producer Abby Ginzberg and writer Ibram Kendi. Also on 2/25 at the Storrs Campus, Abby will present a seminar on documentary film making, and Ibram will present a seminar on racism and diversity.

The film premiered Feb 11 at The 24th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival in Los Angeles, and won The Best Documentary Award

http://www.agentsofchangefilm.com

The event is co-sponsored by 12 UConn groups: Institute for African American Studies, Human Rights Institute, American Studies, Dodd Center, AAUP, Humanities Institute, El Instituto: The Institute of Latino, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, Digital Media Center, UCONN Stamford, UCONN Student Government Association, The Connecticut Information Technology Institute and School of Business, and the UConn Stamford Economics Club.

Poster for the film Agents of Change

Professor Ross Has Lead Article in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

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rossProfessor Steve Ross’s paper “The Vulnerability of Minority Homeowners in the Housing Boom and Bust” with Patrick Bayer and Fernando Ferreira was the lead article in the February issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

In this paper, they find that African-American and Hispanic borrowers have substantially higher delinquency and foreclosure rates during the financial crisis even after controlling for detailed borrower and loan risk factors.  These differences are concentrated heavily among homebuyers who purchased their home very near the peak of the market, even after controlling for negative equity associated with the timing of the purchase.  For refinance mortgages, they find a similar pattern linked to when the home was purchased, rather than the date of the refinance mortgage.

They argue that the findings are consistent with higher risk borrowers, especially higher risk minority borrowers, being drawn into the market during the housing market expansion.