We congratulate Michael DiNardi on his recent successful final defense of his dissertation entitled ‘Three Essays in Health and Labor Economics”. Mike will move on after graduation to join the Economics Department at the University of Rhode Island in the Fall of 2018 in a tenure track faculty position. His dissertation examined three different topics, two dealing with public health insurance. In one chapter, Mike looked at the impact of health insurance expansions on work behavior of individuals who gain coverage. In another, he explores the impact of expansions of health insurance coverage on staffing of nurses in hospitals. The third topic examined was the impact of internet expansions on individual health. Mike’s dissertation committee consisted of Ken Couch, David Simon, and Melanie Guldi.
Alumni
Econ Alum Awarded “Professor of the Year” at Simmons College
Zinnia Mukherjee, an ’09 PhD graduate of the Department of Economics, received the Professor of the Year award at the Simmons College Senior Faculty Banquet in April.
This award, voted upon each year by the entire graduating class of Simmons College, recognizes outstanding work “in teaching, advising, and providing support and guidance to students.”
PhD Student Dominic Albino Published in Cognitive Science
Dominic Albino, a fourth-year graduate student in the department, and co-authors Seth Frey and Paul Williams have had their paper, “Synergistic Information Processing Encrypts Strategic Reasoning in Poker,” accepted for publication in the journal Cognitive Science.
To win at poker, players must exploit public signals from opponents, but using those signals usually makes the player’s own strategy vulnerable. The paper uses 1.75 million hands of online poker data to show that winning players successfully encrypt their strategy, using their own cards like the private key in public key cryptography. By doing so, they are able to solve the problem of exploiting others while remaining protected themselves and turn uncertainty, usually considered a liability, into an advantage.
A copy of the paper may be found on Dominic Albino’s ResearchGate page.
2018 Spring Awards Banquet
On March 29, the department convened for an awards banquet that recognized the best among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty. This year’s award recipients are:
Omicron Delta Epsilon inductees:
Ryan Christopher Dodd
Liam Dorris
Matthew Gorman
Rebecca Hill
Shannon Lozier
Madeline Memoli
Alexander Rojas
Ryan Verano
Mingrui Zhou
Undergraduate Awards
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
John Cizeski
Tyler DiBrino
Rebecca Hill
Zachary Lobman
Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Steven Hashemi
Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Matthew Edson
Harry Godfrey-Fogg
Colin Mortimer
Magda Soto-Enciso
Ross Mayer Scholarship
Matthew DeLeon
Julia & Harold Fenton and Yolanda & Augustine Sineti Scholarship
Alexander Rojas
Economics Department General Scholarship
Michelle Grieco
Kathryn A. Cassidy Economics Scholarship
Adam Vancisin
Mary F. Vlamis
Zihan Wang
Charles Triano Scholarship
Jenifer Repaci
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Timothy Brown
Graduate Awards
W. Harrison Carter Award
Michael DiNardi
Patralekha Ukil
Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Kevin Wood
Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Huarui Jing
Chuang Li
Wensu Li
Shilpa Sethia
Rui Sun
Jinning Wang
Economics Department General Scholarship
Samantha Minieri
Best Third Year Paper Award
Mark McInerney
Zhonghui Zhang
Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Employee Appreciation Awards
Rosanne Fitzgerald – 20 years
Olivier Morand – 20 years
C. Paul Hallwood – 30 years
Congratulations to everyone!
Econ Undergraduate Students Present at the Boston Fed Challenge
Congratulations to the undergraduate students from the Storrs campus who took part in the College Fed Challenge!
Tyler DiBrino, Gabriel Hack, Max Karsanow, Ari Nishimura-Gasparian, John Roberts, Alexander Rojas, Joaquin Sanchez, and Timothy Sullivan all participated on behalf of the University of Connecticut – Storrs in the 2017 Fed Challenge held at the Boston Fed on Friday, November 3rd. The students, and their faculty advisors Derek Johnson and Owen Svalestad, are shown at left in Boston.
Sponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the “College Fed Challenge is a team competition for undergraduate students. Teams analyze economic and financial conditions and formulate a monetary policy recommendation, modeling the Federal Open Market Committee.”
Graduate Students Presenting Their Work at Conferences
Graduate students working on immigration issues with Professor Delia Furtado have been traveling quite a bit in the past few months. Samantha Minieri was in Chicago presenting her paper, “Norms and Parental Leave: Do Home Country Policies Affect Immigrants,” at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA).
Tao Song has presented his job market paper, “Honey, Robots Shrunk My Wage! Native-Immigrant Wage Gaps and Skill Biased Technological Change,” at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW)’s Workshop on Spatial Dimensions of the Labour Market in Mannheim, Germany; the Society of Labor Economists’ annual meeting in Raleigh, NC; and the Western Economics Association International (WEAI) Annual meeting in San Diego, CA.
Also at the Western meetings, Tian Lou presented her paper, “Ethnic Segregation, Education, and Immigrants’ Labor Market Outcomes,” and Haiyang Kong presented his paper, “What is the Impact of Industrial Structure on Immigrants’ English Language Fluency?”
Econ Alumnus promoted to Full Professor at the University of Reading
Anupam Nanda, an ’06 PhD graduate of the Department of Economics, is being promoted to full professor at the University of Reading.
Here is his current biography:
Dr. Anupam Nanda is Associate Professor in Real Estate Economics and Academic Director of the Centre for intelligent Places at the Henley Business School, University of Reading, UK. He is also a Research Associate at the Walker Institute for Climate System Research. Previously, Anupam worked with the Market Intelligence group of Deloitte & Touche in Mumbai (Apr. 2008-Nov. 2009), where his focus area covered real estate and private equity sectors. He was at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) in Washington DC (Apr. 2006-Apr. 2008), as Senior Research Economist, where his responsibilities included developing and implementing housing market research studies and was a member of the team forecasting state and metro area housing markets in US. Anupam has also taught undergraduate Economics and Public Finance at the University of Connecticut.
2017 Spring Awards Banquet
On April 13, the department convened for an awards banquet that recognized the best among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty. This year’s award recipients are:
Omicron Delta Epsilon inductees:
Matthew Braccio
Zachary Console
Matthew DeLeon
Jennafer Fugal
Benjamin Hamel
Henry Hooper
Daniel Rodrigues
Claudia Rodriguez
Nandhana Sajeev
Akwasi Sarpong
Michael Scalise
Austin Song
Connor Todd
Alexandra Torchigana
Undergraduate Awards
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
Patrick Adams
Andrew Carroll
Joshua Essick
Kayla Joyce
Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Matthew DeLeon
Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
William Johnston
Claudia Rodriguez
Alexander Rojas
Zihan Wang
Ross Mayer Scholarship
Tasneem Ahmed
Julia & Harold Fenton and Yolanda & Augustine Sineti Scholarship
Yiting Jiang
Kathryn A. Cassidy Economics Scholarship
Tianyi Li
Roy Masha
Di Wu
Charles Triano Scholarship
Jennafer Fugal
Graduate Awards
W. Harrison Carter Award
Tian Lou
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Andrew Ju
Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Mark McInerney
Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Aaron Cooke
Michael DiNardi
Jingwei Huang
Samantha Minieri
Tao Song
Kevin Wood
Wei Zheng
Economics Department General Scholarship
Huarui Jing
Wensu Li
Xizi Li
Shilpa Sethia
Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Nishith Prakash
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Employee Appreciation Awards
Delia Furtado 10 years
Vicki Knoblauch 15 years
Kathleen Segerson 30 years
Congratulations to everyone!
HCEO Research Spotlight on Racial Profiling Research
Professor Stephen Ross and his coauthors, Jesse Kalinowski at Quinnipiac University and Matthew Ross at Ohio State University (both former Ph.D. students at UConn), have recently released on new working paper on racial discrimination in police traffic stops in Connecticut.
This research was selected by the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group at the University of Chicago to be featured in their research spotlight series. The spotlight article can be found at:
Two Economics Undergraduate Students Selected as 2017 University Scholars
Congratulations to Economics students Rebecca Hill and Lucas Silva Lopes, who are among the twenty-three University of Connecticut undergraduates who have been selected as the 2017 University Scholars:
Rebecca Hill
Major: English/Economics
Project Title: The Western Madwoman: A Feminist History and Economic Study in Novel Form
Committee: Ellen Litman, English (chair), Veronica Makowsky, English & Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Delia Furtado, Economics
Lucas Silva Lopes
Major: Political Science/Economics
Project Title: Presidential Interruptions and Interim Presidents: How Do Latin American Countries Re-Equilibrate Both Politically and Macroeconomically After a Presidential Interruption?
Committee: Matthew Singer, Political Science (chair), Veronica Herrera, Political Science, Derek Johnson, Economics
“The University Scholar Program is one of the most prestigious programs for undergraduates at the University of Connecticut. Available to students from all of the University’s schools and colleges, the University Scholar Program allows students to design and pursue an in-depth research or creative project and to craft an individualized plan of study that supports their intellectual interests during their final three semesters. Each student is mentored by an advisory committee of three faculty.
No more than 30 University Scholars are selected each year. Admission is based on an application submitted during the first semester of a student’s junior year. Applications are reviewed by an interdisciplinary faculty committee that looks for innovative projects and academically rigorous course selection. Graduation as a University Scholar recognizes a student’s exceptional engagement in research and/or creative endeavors.”