Economics undergraduate student Yuriy Loukachev has been selected to receive a 2012 SHARE (Social Science, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience) Award for undergraduate research. Yuriy will be studying the economic theory of auctions with Professor Mike Shor in the Spring of 2012. He will receive a stipend from the Office of Undergraduate Research, and will present the results of his research at a poster exhibition to be held in the Spring of 2012.
Congratulations Yuriy!
On Wednesday, November 16, 2011, UConn Today featured an article about Professor Oskar Harmon’s innovations to traditional class methods. The article was written by one of the department’s MA students, Andrew Sparks.
Andrew’s article outlines Prof. Harmon’s efforts to makes his lectures and class discussions available online and on mobile devices. For example, Prof. Harmon has re-formatted his lectures so that they can be played on smart-phones, and has opened class discussion threads on Facebook so that his students can choose to learn and participate on mobile devices. Andrew notes the significance of this, as Prof. Harmon recognizes the need to give students several options for participation beyond email, HuskyCT forums, and in-class lectures. Prof. Harmon saw a new opportunity in mobile media (smart-phones, tablets, etc.) and rolled out the new formats this semester.
The link to the article is here: http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2011/11/smartphones-can-make-you-smarter-when-used-as-mobile-teaching-tools/
Be sure to check UConn Today for future articles on the Econ department faculty, also written by Andrew.
Jeff Jacobs cites Kathryn Parr’s research in the CCEA as part of his opinion piece about revamping the XL Center to bring economic changes to Hartford.
Read more here: http://www.courant.com/sports/hockey/hc-whale-xl-center-1116-20111115,0,3405456.column?page=1
The Wall Street Journal posted an article about average salaries for 2011 graduates in various majors. Read more here.
On Friday, September 9, 2011, Parag Waknis defended his dissertation titled “Essays on Economics of Leviathan Monetary and Fiscal Policies” under the supervision of Professor Christian Zimmermann.
Here is a short description of his dissertation:
Time and again situations arise in various countries where fiscal policy drives the monetary policy. This might happen as a result of unusual situations like the current financial crisis or because of lack of sufficient tax revenues. There is not much literature modeling such policy environment using a money search framework. This dissertation aims to bridge this gap by modifying a much often-used money search model to include a Leviathan or a utility maximizing central bank. The first essay studies the nature of optimal monetary policy of this monetary authority. The analysis suggests multiple outcomes with actual realization depending on context specific factors. For example, fiscal profligacy is associated with higher inflation- a fact borne out by many actual examples. The second essay evaluates a thought exercise in institutional design to control inflation in such a context. It extends the model in the first essay to create an environment with currency competition and then shows that doing so leads to a better inflation outcome under reputation concerns. The third essay looks at the political economy of fiscal policy. To account for a typical developing country setting a model with differentiated political platforms and credit-constrained voters is laid out. The credit-constrained voters depend on local public goods provision for smoothing consumption in the presence of shocks. The model’s implications are then tested with data on 17 Indian states for the period of 20 years. The data does lend substantive support to the contention that political cohesiveness affects the nature of spending. Put together, the three essays form a body of theoretical and empirical research shedding light on a monetary policy environment that features close connection with the fiscal policy.
Parag started his tenure track position on September 1, 2011, and relocated from New York City to New Bedford, MA. Congratulations, Parag!
In August 2011, Nicoleta Iliescu defended her dissertation entitled “Three Essays on Antidumping,” under the supervision of Professor Xenia Matschke. The unifying theme of the dissertation is the antidumping, currently the most intensively-used temporary trade instrument worldwide. In the first chapter of the dissertation, Nicoleta investigates the impact of the political lobbying on the antidumping practices in the US. This is an empirical paper in which a newly-constructed lobbying dataset is used. In the second chapter, in a theoretical model, Nicoleta explores the link between the existing national antidumping laws and the amount of the R&D undertaken by industries that can use antidumping as a protectionist tool. The third chapter analyzes the welfare effects of the Byrd Amendment, a law passed in the US in 2001, which had profound implications on how the collected antidumping duties were distributed.
Starting Fall 2011, Nicoleta is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Iona College in New York.
Below is Lei Chen’s opinion piece on manufacturing in the U.S.
PhD graduate Lei Chen published an article in the Hartford Courant outlining Connecticut’s benefits to the manufacturing industry.
On 17th June, 2011, Paramita Dhar defended her dissertation entitled “Essays on the Economics of Housing” under the supervision of Prof. Stephen L. Ross. Paramita’s dissertation examined two different questions about housing and location choice. In her first essay, she analyzed the impact of school quality on property values using a differences-in-differences strategy. In the other two essays of her dissertation, she focused on the issue of discrimination against minority homebuyers that might lead to the segregation of neighborhoods. In both of these essays she used fair housing audit data from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study on three large minority groups in Los Angeles to examine the causes of spatial variation of the nature of discrimination.
This fall, Paramita will be heading to Central Connecticut State University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Economics.
On June 21, 2011, Catalina Granda-Carvajal defended her dissertation, “Essays on the Macroeconomic Effects of the Unofficial Sector.” Under the valuable supervision and support of her advisor, Prof. Christian Zimmermann, Catalina’s thesis focuses on how the unofficial sector and its intrinsic characteristics are related to aggregate fluctuations. At an empirical level, she determines how business cycle stylized facts vary across countries with the extent of the shadow economy and compares the resulting patterns with predictions from existing models featuring underground activities. Also, she incorporates an irregular sector into a real business cycle model to challenge the notion that fluctuations in the official and unofficial sectors are negatively correlated. Using a similar theoretical framework, she finally addresses how informal firms’ limited access to credit affects macroeconomic and firm volatility.
Pieces of Catalina’s dissertation have been presented in a couple of international conferences and a section was selected for publication at the International Economic Journal last December. In addition to her thesis, she has taken part in an interdisciplinary project on options for brownfields revitalization in Connecticut under the supervision of Prof. Kathleen Segerson. She currently holds a tenure-track position at Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín (Colombia).