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.
PhD
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!
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
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Employee Appreciation Awards
Delia Furtado 10 years
Vicki Knoblauch 15 years
Kathleen Segerson 30 years
Congratulations to everyone!
Harmon, Svalestad and Tomolonis present at CTREE 2016 Conference
P
rofessors Oskar Harmon and Owen Svalestad, and Paul Tomolonis (PhD Candidate) participated in the Sixth Annual Conference on Teaching & Research in Economic Education, June 1 – 3, sponsored by the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education.
Oskar Harmon moderated the panel session “The Experience of Managing a Team in the FED Challenge Competition: Pointers and Pitfalls”, and Owen Svalestad presented “The First Timer Experience”.
Oskar Harmon and Paul Tomolonis presented the paper “Can Social Media be an Effective Tool for Discussion in the Online Classroom?”. The paper makes a comparison between the use of social media and traditional Course Management System (CMS) discussion groups in a fully online (Microeconomic Principles) course. Using the experimental design of a randomized trial, the paper tests the popular hypothesis that students using social media (Facebook discussion group here) have greater engagement with the class and higher learning outcomes relative to students not using that platform for coursework (the CMS control group here) because of the ease of use and student familiarity with social media. Our findings were contrary to this popular hypothesis with lower levels of engagement and learning outcomes for the Facebook groups compared to the CMS discussion groups. We attribute this to the more casual and less formal environment of social media compared to the CMS since students postings were shorter via the social media discussions.
2016 Economics Graduate Reunion and Forum
On Thursday, May 5, 2016, the Department held an all-day Economics Graduate Reunion and Forum. Our Graduate Alumni gathered to reconnect with classmates and professors, and to establish new connections with current graduate students and newer members of the faculty.
Our alumni shared their current research, their thoughts about the graduate experience, and their experiences since leaving the University of Connecticut. We look forward to continuing to make this a regular event, scheduled every three or four years. The program for this year’s event is included below.
Special thanks to Andreas Karapatakis (PhD, 1992) for his generous support of the 2016 Economics Graduate Reunion and Forum.
| 2016 Economics Graduate Reunion and Forum | |||||||||
| 8:30 AM | Coffee & Greet | ||||||||
| 9:00 AM | Welcome | ||||||||
| Stephen Ross, Department Head Subhash Ray, Director of Graduate Studies |
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| 9:30 AM | Alumni Research Papers | ||||||||
| Moderator: Chuck Martie, Education Consultant, CT Dept. of Education | |||||||||
| Gulgun Bayaz, New York City College of Technology “Intertemporal Poverty Among Older Americans” |
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| Juan-Pedro Garces-Voisenat, Siena College “The Role of Virtue in Economic Development” |
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| Monika Lopez-Anuarbe, Connecticut College “Intergenerational Transfers and Caring for Families in the United States and Abroad” |
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| 10:30 AM | Coffee & Chat | ||||||||
| 11:00 AM | Alumni Academic Experience | ||||||||
| Moderator: William Pace, Anthem, University of Connecticut | |||||||||
| Paramita Dhar, Central Connecticut State University | |||||||||
| Monika Lopez-Anuarbe, Connecticut College | |||||||||
| Juan-Pedro Garces-Voisenat, Siena College | |||||||||
| Paul Kozlowski, University of Toledo | |||||||||
| 12:00 PM | Lunch & Emeritus Panel (Immanuel Wexler, Steve Sacks, Arthur Wright, Dennis Heffley) | ||||||||
| 1:30 PM | Alumni Research Papers | ||||||||
| Moderator: Nandika Prakash, CT Dept. of Economic & Community Development | |||||||||
| Leshui He, Bates College “Adverse Classroom Peer Effects in Students’ Achievements: Evidence from a Quasi-Random Assignment” |
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| Parag Waknis, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth “Competitive Money Supply in a New Monetarist Model” |
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| Stanley McMillen, CT Dept. of Economic & Community Development (retired) “Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Connecticut’s 2015 Bill to Recoup a Portion of Its Public Assistance Costs” |
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| 2:30 PM | Coffee & More Chat |
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| 1:30 PM | Alumni Professional Experience | ||||||||
| Moderator: Natalia Smirnova, American Institute of Economic Research | |||||||||
| Jieling Chen, Merck Research Laboratories | |||||||||
| Ravinder Dhawan, Merck & Co. | |||||||||
| Nandika Prakash, Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) | |||||||||
| 4:15 PM | Closing Remarks |
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2016 Spring Awards Banquet
On April 14, 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:
Odrine Belot
Isaac Blyakher
Justin Chan
Sadie Colcord
Cathleen Cormier
Raychel Decker
Geoffrey Donovan
Kelsey Duran
Peter Jiang
Kayla Joyce
Steven Joyce
Patrick Meucci
Kimberley Pepper
Kristina Petruff
Corrin Powell
Fariha Rashid
Matthew Regan
John Shea
Ryan Sherman
Chifan Shi
Josh Spadaro
Leo Villari
Makayla Wall
Undergraduate Awards
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
Patrick Adams
Brendan Costello
Kayla Joyce
Kimberly Roland
Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Katherine Harrington
Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Chris Cunningham
William Johnston
Blazej Pulawski
Claudia Rodriguez
Ross Mayer Scholarship
Kimberley Pepper
Economics Department General Scholarship
Caitlin Delaney
Matthew DeLeon
Julia & Harold Fenton and Yolanda & Augustine Sineti Scholarship
Tasneem Ahmed
Kathryn A. Cassidy Economics Scholarship
Andrew Carroll
Fariha Rashid
Joseph Roessler
Charles Triano Scholarship
Di Wu
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Ehi Osagie
Hao Ying
Economics Research Award Program
Professor Jorge Aguero & Juan Campanario
Graduate Awards
W. Harrison Carter Award
Tao Song
Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Aaron Cooke
Mike Dinardi
Economics Department Graduate Scholarship
Samantha Minieri
Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Wensu Li
Xizi Li
Tian Lou
Shilpa Sethia
Tao Song
Best 3rd-year Paper Award
Andrew Ju
Sungoh Kwon
Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Employee Appreciation Awards
Derek Johnson 10 years
Kenneth Couch 20 years
Susan Randolph 30 years
Francis Ahking 35 years
Congratulations to everyone!