PhD student Zhonghui Zhang has had his paper “Mahalanobis Metric Based Clustering for Fixed Effects Model” accepted for publication in Sankhya B: The Indian Journal of Statistics, a statistics journal considered similar in rank to The Econometrics Journal.
Current students
Stamford “Money and Banking” Class Visits the Gold Vault
On Thursday, October 3, 2019, a group of students from Dr. Smirnova’s “Money and Banking” class at Stamford visited the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The program included a visit to the Money Museum as well as to the Gold Vault.
In the Museum, students learned about the history of New York Fed, and saw old-time photographs and film footage of how the Fed looked and operated during the first half of the 20th century. The exhibit also includes the original trading board, the money cart that is used to transport currency, and the scale that is used to weigh the gold bars.
The highlight of the trip was the visit to the Gold Vault. Students learned that New York Fed holds many tons of gold bricks belonging to foreign countries. The vault is located on the bedrock of Manhattan, several hundred feet below subway level. The size of the vault is half of the American football field, and it goes on forever if you are standing at the entrance. We were able to see one compartment’s gold very close and almost touch it. The gold bricks are different shapes (trapezoid and rectangle) depending on where the brick was cast.
There was an opportunity to ask questions and discover more nuances about the Fed, about monetary policy implementation, and about the gold. Overall, a lot of learning and discovery occurred during the trip. We thank the Department of Economics for sponsoring it! The picture shows the group in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Taking pictures inside is prohibited, so we could not take a picture with the gold! 😊
Undergraduate, Mateen Karimi, Publishes Research
Mateen Karimi, a rising junior majoring in management, published his paper, “The Socioeconomic Integration of Second-Generation MENA Immigrants,” in the journal, Aisthesis, this past June. Each year, the journal publishes a compilation of scholarship completed by students in honors programs nationwide.
Supervised by Professor Furtado, Mateen conducted the analysis for the paper last summer as part of his Holster project.
The article shows that the native-born children of Middle Eastern North African (MENA) immigrants in the United States acquire more education and achieve higher salary incomes than both non-MENA whites and blacks, but falter on employment outcomes as a whole. Interestingly, second-generation Iranians and Yemenis acquire more education than both whites and blacks, but also have the highest unemployment rates.
Professors Harmon, Smirnova, and PhD Candidate Conant participate at Conference on Teaching and Research in Economic Education
Professors Harmon, Smirnova, and PhD Candidate Conant participated in the Ninth Annual AEA Conference on Teaching and Research in Economic Education (CTREE), in St. Louis, Missouri, May 2019.
Professors Oskar Harmon and Natalia Smirnova organized and moderated the panel “The College Fed Challenge: Discussion of Participating in an Existing Competition or Organizing a Competition in your Federal Reserve District”. The panelists were the faculty organizers of the regional Fed Challenge competitions in 4 of the 5 Fed Districts that sponsor a Fed Challenge competition, and the organizer of the finals round at the Fed Board of Governors in Washington DC. The discussion focused on two themes. One was a comparison of the similarities and differences in the structure of the competitions across regions and the effect on team outcomes in the national finals. Second was strategies to the geographic challenges and the difficulties facing the non-eastern states 8 reserve districts, only one of which competes (Chicago) relative to the 4 east coast districts, all of which compete.
Paul Conant and Oskar Harmon presented their paper “Teaching of Sports Economics by Reacting to the Past”. They presented a real-world scenario (RWS) assignment that is an adaptation of the “reacting to the past” teaching style. In this style students learn by taking on roles, informed by articles from the period of the event. They participate in a competitive game using the communication skills of speaking and writing, and analytical skills of critical thinking and problem solving. The specific RWS discussed in this paper will consist of students answering the historical event question: Should college athletes be allowed to unionize? The Case of Northwestern 2014. Students are assigned roles which can force them to combat their preconceived notion about the issue and help students consider different perspectives on the issue. We hope to merge the sociopolitical world with neoclassical economic learning in order to help students understand the nuance of pertinent world issues.
Natalia Smirnova also assumed an active role at the conference. She was a discussant of two papers. One paper presented the use of Excel for teaching students a Health Economics addiction model; and the second paper analyzed the reasons for female students’ attrition from the first Economics course they took and not becoming Economics majors at UC Berkley. Both papers were well received and generated debates among sessions’ participants.
Professor Smirnova extended her stay in St. Louis to explore Team-Based Learning (TBL) techniques. The TBL workshop was sponsored by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) initiative. Professor Smirnova is encouraged to bring new techniques into her classroom.
2019 Spring Awards Banquet
On April 18, 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:
Kader Akpinar
Gianna DeMasi
Ryan Gilland
Michelle Grieco
Andrew Hendrickson Jr.
Christopher Holden
Andrew Humphrey
Marisa Infante
Yuansun Jiang
Megan Llewellyn
Colin MacDougald
Adam Patterson
William Poundstone
James Rice
Jeffery Sanawong
David Stanco
Brianna Sullivan
Mollie Swanton
Mary Vlamis
Nicholas Wehrle
Undergraduate Awards
Economics Department General Scholarship
Michael Goccia
Mathilda Hill
James Rice
Sharon Spaulding
Qingya Yang
Kathryn A. Cassidy Economics Scholarship
Tiffany D’Andrea
Zichen Shu
Zian Zhang
Harrison Zraly
Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Arianna Dines
Sueing Ngov
Sheng Tian
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
Fizza Alam
Dea Ballij
Marisa Infante
Ajshe Zulfi
Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Harry Godfrey-Fogg
Julia & Harold Fenton and Yolanda & Augustine Sineti Scholarship
Michelle Grieco
Charles Triano Scholarship
Gianna DeMasi
Dr. Joseph W. McAnneny Jr. Scholarship
Elizabeth Miller
Alexander Mostaghami
John Peterson
Mary Vlamis
Ross Mayer Scholarship
John Cizeski
Tyler DiBrino
Graduate Awards
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Mark McInerney
W. Harrison Carter Award
Lindsey Buck
Huarui Jing
Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Wei Zheng
Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Dingxian Cao
Jingyun Chen
Zhenhao Gong
Chuang Li
Chun Li
Heli Zu
Jinning Wang
Economics Department General Scholarship
Treena Goswami
Shilpa Sethia
Rui Sun
Kevin Wood
Haoxiang Xu
Best Third Year Paper Award
Umesh Ghimire
Roklen Graduate Research Scholarship
Xizi Li
Eleanor Bloom Trust Fund
Eniola Fasola
Graduate School Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
Xuejian Gong
Miranda Mendiola Valdez
Ziyun Wu
Hao Cui
Anup Tiwari
Ruohan Huang
Yizhi Zhu
Abdulmohsen Almuhaisen
Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Employee Appreciation Awards
Steven Lanza – 25 years
Richard Langlois – 35 years
Subhash Ray – 35 years
Congratulations to everyone!
2019 Spring Awards Banquet
On April 18, 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:
Kader Akpinar
Gianna DeMasi
Ryan Gilland
Michelle Grieco
Andrew Hendrickson Jr.
Christopher Holden
Andrew Humphrey
Marisa Infante
Yuansun Jiang
Megan Llewellyn
Colin MacDougald
Adam Patterson
William Poundstone
James Rice
Jeffery Sanawong
David Stanco
Brianna Sullivan
Mollie Swanton
Mary Vlamis
Nicholas Wehrle
Undergraduate Awards
Economics Department General Scholarship
Michael Goccia
Mathilda Hill
James Rice
Sharon Spaulding
Qingya Yang
Kathryn A. Cassidy Economics Scholarship
Tiffany D’Andrea
Zichen Shu
Zian Zhang
Harrison Zraly
Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Arianna Dines
Sueing Ngov
Sheng Tian
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
Fizza Alam
Dea Ballij
Marisa Infante
Ajshe Zulfi
Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Harry Godfrey-Fogg
Julia & Harold Fenton and Yolanda & Augustine Sineti Scholarship
Michelle Grieco
Charles Triano Scholarship
Gianna DeMasi
Dr. Joseph W. McAnneny Jr. Scholarship
Elizabeth Miller
Alexander Mostaghami
John Peterson
Mary Vlamis
Ross Mayer Scholarship
John Cizeski
Tyler DiBrino
Graduate Awards
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Mark McInerney
W. Harrison Carter Award
Lindsey Buck
Huarui Jing
Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Wei Zheng
Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Dingxian Cao
Jingyun Chen
Zhenhao Gong
Chuang Li
Chun Li
Heli Zu
Jinning Wang
Economics Department General Scholarship
Treena Goswami
Shilpa Sethia
Rui Sun
Kevin Wood
Haoxiang Xu
Best Third Year Paper Award
Umesh Ghimire
Roklen Graduate Research Scholarship
Xizi Li
Eleanor Bloom Trust Fund
Eniola Fasola
Graduate School Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
Xuejian Gong
Miranda Mendiola Valdez
Ziyun Wu
Hao Cui
Anup Tiwari
Ruohan Huang
Yizhi Zhu
Abdulmohsen Almuhaisen
Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Employee Appreciation Awards
Steven Lanza – 25 years
Richard Langlois – 35 years
Subhash Ray – 35 years
Congratulations to everyone!
Rui Sun and Zhonghui Zhang at Econometric Society Meeting (2019 AMES)
PhD students Rui Sun and Zhonghui Zhang have had their papers accepted at the 2019 Asian Meeting of the Econometric Society (2019 AMES).
Zhonghui Zhang will be presenting his paper “Mahalanobis Metric Based Clustering for Fixed Effects Model”.
Rui Sun’s paper “Bias-Corrected Estimators in the Dynamic Panel Data Model” has been accepted for poster session.
The conference, June 14-16, 2019 at Xiamen University, is held by the Econometric Society, the international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation to statistics and mathematics.
Graduate Students in the Big Apple to Present New Work
Graduate students Shiyi Chen, Edlira Cocoli, Treena Goswami, Xin Liang, and Patralekha Ukil presented papers at the Annual Conference of the Eastern Economics Association in New York, Feb. 28–Mar. 3. Paper titles are listed below. If you see them in the hallways, be sure to ask them about their research.
Shiyi Chen: Affirmative Action and Interracial Marriage
Edlira Cocoli: The Impact of Promise Programs on Student Enrollment: A Nationwide Analysis of Enrollment Impact by Gender, Race and Program Type
Treena Goswami: High Skilled Immigrant Inflows and More Managerial Natives?
Xin Liang: Early Retirement, Pension System and the High Saving Rate in China, University of Connecticut
Patralekha Ukil: Parental Economic Shocks and Infant Health
Have a look at a tweet about Patralekha’s presentation here, and you can see the full EEA program here.
UConn-Stamford FED Challenge Team Earns Honorable Mention at Competition in NYC
The UConn-Stamford FED Challenge team earned honorable mention in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2018 College FED Challenge competition. This marked the third consecutive year of participation in the competition by the Stamford Campus team and the first time advancing to the semi-final round. The competition started with 39 teams in the initial round on October 24. The UCONN-Stamford team advanced to the semi-final round held on November 14 among only eight teams. Rutgers University-New Brunswick placed first and advanced to the final round held in Washington DC November 29. Columbia University placed second. UConn-Stamford earned Honorable Mention along with Fairfield University, Fordham University, Siena College, and SUNY-Oneonta.
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. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of four Federal Reserve Banks that host the College Fed Challenge Competition. The regional winners go to the final round at the Board of Governors in Washington D.C.
UCONN-Stamford team was comprised of 3 presenters: Ignacio Gonzalez, Jonathan Herrick, and Brendan Armburst-Mulcahey. The team coach was Di Yang, (Stamford Business School MBA). The researchers who helped prepare the team for the competition were Aditya Dadavai, Sijie Hu, Lingyi Zhu, and Roma Roma (all in the Stamford Business School BPMA Program). Faculty advisors were professors Natalia Smirnova, Steven Lanza, Kanda Naknoi, and Oskar Harmon. The team benefited from practice sessions of challenging questions with volunteer members of the Fairfield Business Community.
The team participants shown in the picture at the awards ceremony at the FRBNY are (from left to right): Brendan Armburst-Mulcahey, Di Yang, Natalia Smirnova, Jonathan Herrick, Ignacio Gonzalez, Oskar Harmon.
Undergraduate Mary Vlamis and Professor Agüero receive SHARE Award
Economics undergraduate student Mary Vlamis and Professor Jorge Agüero have been selected to receive a 2019 Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience (SHARE) award.
They will be working on a project exploring whether merit-based scholarships could reduce racial and gender discrimination in the labor markets of developing countries.
From the SHARE website:
“The SHARE program supports undergraduate research projects in the social sciences, humanities, and arts. SHARE is designed especially for students in the earlier stages of their college careers as a means of introducing students to research in their chosen field and of developing skills they will need for further research projects.
In this research apprenticeship, students spend 10 hours per week during the spring semester working on a faculty project. Ideally, a SHARE partnership will continue past the spring semester, allowing both faculty mentor and student apprentice to continue the project, potentially leading to a more independent role for the student…
During the Spring semester, student apprentices will receive a $1,500 stipend, and faculty mentors will receive a $500 professional development stipend.”
https://ugradresearch.uconn.edu/share/