Student achievement

2016 Spring Awards Banquet

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Uconn sealOn 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

David Simon

Grillo Family Teaching Award

Nishith Prakash

Employee Appreciation Awards

Derek Johnson   10 years
Kenneth Couch   20 years
Susan Randolph   30 years
Francis Ahking   35 years

 
Congratulations to everyone!

Professor Jorge Agüero and Juan Campanario Receive 2016 ERAP Award

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Professor Jorge Agüero (faculty) and Juan Campanario (student) are the recipients of the 2016 Undergraduate Economics Research Award Program (ERAP).

Their work on their project “Can Growth and Redistribution Reduce the Influence of Colonial Institutions? The Case of Peru’s Mining Mita” will be supported through the ERAP program, which is designed to  assist research apprenticeships and research collaborations between undergraduate economics majors and economics faculty members.

The ERAP program enables the student to enhance research skills relevant to the field of economics, while the faculty member guides the project and provides mentorship. Only one award is given each academic year, with the student receiving a $1,500 fellowship and the faculty mentor receiving a $1,000 grant added to their departmental research accounts.

Congratulations to the award winning team!

Andrew Ju and Sungoh Kwon Receive ‘Best Third-Year Paper’ Awards

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Graduate students Andrew Ju and Sungoh Kwon have received the Department of Economics’ ‘Best Third-Year Paper’ awards for 2015-2016.

From the abstract of Andrew’s paper State Collective Bargaining Laws and Public-Private Sector Wage Differentials:

In recent years states across the country have considered restricting or eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees, thus sparking a national debate over the compensation of public sector workers. In this paper I contribute evidence to this debate by examining the effects of state collective bargaining laws on public-private sector wage differentials. Using data from the 2000 to 2014 CPS Merged Outgoing Rotation Group (MORG) and a variety of identification strategies, I  find that in states without mandatory collective bargaining laws state and local government workers earn approximately 7 percent less than their private sector counterparts. In contrast, in states with mandatory collective bargaining laws, state and local government workers earn approximately the same as their private sector counterparts.

I also find that state collective bargaining laws play an important role in determining the level of fringe benefits: local government employees in mandatory collective bargaining states have significantly higher probabilities of obtaining an employer-sponsored health insurance or pension plan.

From the abstract of Sungoh’s paper Does Public School Spending Raise Intergenerational Mobility?: Evidence from U.S. School Finance Reforms:

This study provSungoh Kwonides the first quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between public school spending and intergenerational mobility (IGM). Using a plausibly exogenous variation in school spending induced by U.S. court-mandated school finance reforms and county-by-cohort level measures of IGM, I found no evidence that the increase in public school spending raises future income rank of disadvantaged children in the national distribution, while there is evidence of a slight increase in the rank of advantaged children. When it comes to college attendance, I found that children similarly benefit from additional school spending regardless of family backgrounds. I discuss some possible explanations on the results.

Congratulations, Andrew and Sungoh!

Yuriy Loukachev to Receive SHARE Award

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Economics undergraduate student Yuriy Loukachev has been selected to receive a 2012 SHARE (Social Science, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience) Award for undergraduate research. Yuriy will be studying the economic theory of auctions with Professor Mike Shor in the Spring of 2012. He will receive a stipend from the Office of Undergraduate Research, and will present the results of his research at a poster exhibition to be held in the Spring of 2012.

Congratulations Yuriy!

PhD student wins research prize

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Annually the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) holds a research paper competition. This year first-prize (making it a “Hirsh Prize Recipient”) was awarded to the paper “Calculating Return on Investment for US Department of Defense Modeling and Simulation,” authored by, among others, William E. Waite, a UConn 2nd year PhD student. The paper will be presented during the DAU Acquisition Community Symposium on Tuesday 12 April 2011, and published in April’s edition of Defense Acquisition Research Journal.

Within any complex organization there exists a need to measure and monitor the effectiveness of expenditures; that is, there is a ubiquitous necessity to monitor how well agents allocate limited resources between the many potential projects they are presented, within a specific institutional context. Such measurement is particularly challenging for institutions (or, in situations) where a market mechanism for pricing different outcomes is not available. The United States Department of Defense (US-DoD) is one such institution.

Each year, the US-DoD allocates billions of dollars to external contractors, as well as internal departments, to pursue modeling-and-simulation (M&S) projects. The benefits of these initiatives are generally not monetary – or easily convertible to a specific monetary value. Rather, the desired results are seen in measures of increased readiness of the country’s armed forces, better trained individuals, improvements in procedures or approaches that result in fewer human casualties during combat missions, and the like. Given the nature of these benefits, it is not surprising that measuring the “return-on-investment” (ROI) of a US-DoD M&S project presents government officials with a formidable challenge.

In “Calculating Return on Investment for US Department of Defense Modeling and Simulation,” the authors provide a systematic methodology to approach address this particular challenge. By utilizing a decision analysis framework based on the economic principle of utility maximization, the authors create a framework in which the US-DoD can obtain ROI-like results for ranking and evaluating projects, which can then be used in resource allocation decisions and analysis.

Senior featured on UConn Today

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Margaret McCarthy, a double Honors major in Economics and Political Science (plus a minor in Human Rights) has recently been featured on the university-wide blog, UConn Today. While on a Summer internship at the US Department of State, she was quickly promoted to fill on an interim basis the country desk for Nicaragua.

She is also a stellar citizen while on campus. In 2009, she received an Oaklawn Foundation Scholarship for academic excellence, honors involvement, and leadership; she is also a member of several honors societies, including Phi Beta Kappa. This year, she was a finalist for a Marshall Scholarship. She is UConn’s administrative director for the Model United Nations. She is also a member of the Global Leadership Commission, a small group of honors students that invites global leaders on campus to speak.

More at UConn Today.

Phi Beta Kappa Welcomes New Initiates

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Founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary, Phi Beta Kappa is an undergraduate honors society that celebrates excellence in the liberal arts. Its long list of distinguished members—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, President Theodore Roosevelt, etc.—just got a little longer. UConn’s Epsilon Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa recently added 8 senior Economic majors to its list of members: Joseph Antelmi, Michael Samuel Bokoff, Tyler David Gold, John R. Harry, Yixian Lai, Margaret Lynn McCarthy, Eric Burton Roy, and Alex Keller Upton. The Department of Economics congratulates this group of outstanding students.

Shadow economies under the volcano ash cloud

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PhD student Catalina Granda-Carvajal (advisor, prof. Zimmermann) has been invited to present last week in an international workshop in Germany, “Shadow Economy, Tax Policy and Labor Markets in International Comparison: Options for Economic Policy“. This workshop was held at the University of Potsdam, near Berlin, with the aim to demonstrate advances in the analysis of shadow economic activity and discuss how these can be used for better economic policies. Granda’s paper, entitled “The Unofficial Economy and the Business Cycle: A Test for Theories”, uses official data to establish a set of business cycle features and study how they vary across countries with the size of the unofficial sector, and compares these empirical regularities with the predictions of existing theories on macroeconomic fluctuations in economies featuring underground activities.

After having the chance to exchange ideas with young scholars and with some of the world experts in the field, Granda has been faced with the uncertainty imposed by the volcanic ash cloud in Iceland. Being stuck in Berlin has not been an easy situation; however, she reports “I have spent some time sightseeing, visiting museums and, overall, taking advantage of such a ‘forced tourism’. With plenty of history while trying to stand as a leader in arts and promoting Western values, now I understand why this city is one of the most exciting places in Europe. All in all, I cannot complain, but I cannot wait for the flight back to Storrs to share with my friends and colleagues how this experience has enriched my life and view of things.”

Undergraduate Mark Connolly chosen as University Scholar

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For the second time in recent months, the Economics Department has had one of its students, Mark Connolly, chosen for the prestigious designation of University Scholar. Mark’s selection follows on the heels of the selection in August of Philip Gorecki, a double major in economics and molecular and cell biology. Administered by the Honors Program, the highly-selective University Scholars program is designed to provide “the most academically elite students at UConn” an opportunity to advance their UConn education through this special program. A key part of the program is in-depth and focused research on a project of the student’s choice. Mark was one of only 24 students recently selected as 2010 University Scholars.

Mark is pursuing dual degrees in Accounting and Economics, and is working toward his CPA degree. He is particularly interested in auditing and in environmental economics and has thus chosen to focus his project on environmental auditing. He will be studying the role that accounting firms can and do play in environmental auditing, and the potential for auditing to provide valuable information both to the audited firms and to the public. He is particularly interested in the use of audits as third-party certification. Mark will be interning this summer with PricewaterhouseCoopers to gain a greater understanding of the audit process. His faculty advisors on this project will be Professor Lawrence Gramling in the School of Business, and Professors Kathleen Segerson and Olivier Morand, both in Economics.

One advantage of the Scholars’ program is the flexibility it offers students in designing their plans of study. Mark has structured his plan of study and remaining coursework to give him the background necessary for his project. In the course of doing this, he will also be preparing himself for his next goal, graduate study in environmental economics. One day he hopes to be a research professor bridging the gap between industry and environmental protection.

Economics Major Wins Outreach Award

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Joseph Antelmi, an Honors student majoring in Economics, is the 2009 student recipient of the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. Provost Peter Nicholls announced the winners of the awards at a reception on December 9.

A resident of Suffield, Joe is active in a wide variety of outreach and engagement. He is on the board of directors of the Hartford non-profit End Hunger CT!, and has been involved with numerous public-interest organizations both on and off campus. The son of Italian immigrants, Joe is especially interested in immigration issues, and worked as a research assistant for History Professor Mark Overmeyer-Velasquez in creating an Honors course on migrant workers in Connecticut.

Joe has received a number of other University awards, including the Spirer/Drucker Humanitarian Award and the Audrey Beck scholarship, the latter given by the Economics Department. He was also one 14 students chosen for the 2009 UConn Leadership Legacy Experience, an endowed program that identifies and mentors top student leaders on campus. (Another Economics major, Phil Gorecki, is also in the 2009 Legacy cohort, and junior major Rafael Perez-Segura has been chosen for the 2010 cohort.)

Joe is carrying a 3.9 grade-point average, and was a University nominee for the Rhodes, Marshall, Mitchell, and Truman scholarships. Next semester he will be studying abroad in Greece. And in what little spare time he has, he fronts a rock group called Exit 47.