Alumni

Oskar Harmon featured in article written by MA student Andrew Sparks

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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.

Parag Waknis defends, heads to UMass-Dartmouth

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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!

Nicoleta Iliescu defends, heads to IONA College

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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.

Paramita Dhar defends, heads to CCSU

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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.

Catalina Granda-Carvajal defends, heads to Universidad de Antioquia

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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).

Xiaoming Li defends dissertation and heads to Freddie Mac

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Xiaoming Li defended his PhD dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Ross on Monday, April 25, 2011.

Theoretical models and empirical analyses argue that mortgage underwriting is a dynamic process in which previous mortgage and housing market conditions affect current mortgage approvals. Neighborhoods likely differ in important ways and over important events or shocks that influence both housing prices and mortgage underwriting decisions. This potential endogeneity complicates the causal analyses and failure to control for neighborhood heterogeneity risks confounding spurious and true state dependence. Xiaoming’s dissertation attempts to examine the housing dynamics and distinguish between sources of time persistence on neighborhood mortgage underwriting. Specifically, Xiaoming extends traditional and recently developed dynamic panel data techniques for use of repeated, clustered cross-sectional individual mortgage applications linearly and nonlinearly, respectively.

Xiaoming now heads to Freddie Mac as a Credit & Prepayment Modeling, Senior. We wish him the best of luck!