The Wall Street Journal posted an article about average salaries for 2011 graduates in various majors. Read more here.
Alumni
Parag Waknis defends, heads to UMass-Dartmouth
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
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.
Lei Chen publishes in New York Times
Below is Lei Chen’s opinion piece on manufacturing in the U.S.
Lei Chen in Hartford Courant
PhD graduate Lei Chen published an article in the Hartford Courant outlining Connecticut’s benefits to the manufacturing industry.
Paramita Dhar defends, heads to CCSU
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
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
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!
Alumna Yanna Wu reports on life after UConn
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke could unfortunately not make it to the “Life after UConn” event organized by the Association of Graduate Students in Economics last Friday. Instead, Yanna Wu spoke.
Dr. Wu graduated with a Ph.D. in economics from UConn in 2004, under the supervision of Prof. Ray. Right after that, she joined PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. in their New York office. She currently is a manager in the transfer-pricing group, which is a part of the tax practice, providing tax and economic consulting services for multinational enterprises on their inter-company pricing arrangements. Transfer pricing is a multidisciplinary field that encompasses accounting, tax, economics, finance, and law. Her main responsibilities include project solicitation and management.
Dr. Wu covered the following topics: (i) the current job market for new Ph.D. graduates in economics; (ii) potential job opportunities; (iii) differences between working in academia and in industry; (iv) how graduate students can prepare for the job market; and (v) her experience. After the lecture, Dr. Wu answered questions from graduate students.
Recent graduate stars in reality show
Tristan Couvares, a 2008 Economics B.A., was recently the main subject of a new reality show, ControlTV. He is followed all day, as usual for a reality show, but viewers can influence what he is to do during the day through online votes.
ControlTV is created by Seth Green and Matt Senreich, who are also involved in other ventures such as Robot Chicken.