Web cookies (also called HTTP cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small pieces of data that websites store on your device (computer, phone, etc.) through your web browser. They are used to remember information about you and your interactions with the site.
Purpose of Cookies:
Session Management:
Keeping you logged in
Remembering items in a shopping cart
Saving language or theme preferences
Personalization:
Tailoring content or ads based on your previous activity
Tracking & Analytics:
Monitoring browsing behavior for analytics or marketing purposes
Types of Cookies:
Session Cookies:
Temporary; deleted when you close your browser
Used for things like keeping you logged in during a single session
Persistent Cookies:
Stored on your device until they expire or are manually deleted
Used for remembering login credentials, settings, etc.
First-Party Cookies:
Set by the website you're visiting directly
Third-Party Cookies:
Set by other domains (usually advertisers) embedded in the website
Commonly used for tracking across multiple sites
Authentication cookies are a special type of web cookie used to identify and verify a user after they log in to a website or web application.
What They Do:
Once you log in to a site, the server creates an authentication cookie and sends it to your browser. This cookie:
Proves to the website that you're logged in
Prevents you from having to log in again on every page you visit
Can persist across sessions if you select "Remember me"
What's Inside an Authentication Cookie?
Typically, it contains:
A unique session ID (not your actual password)
Optional metadata (e.g., expiration time, security flags)
Analytics cookies are cookies used to collect data about how visitors interact with a website. Their primary purpose is to help website owners understand and improve user experience by analyzing things like:
How users navigate the site
Which pages are most/least visited
How long users stay on each page
What device, browser, or location the user is from
What They Track:
Some examples of data analytics cookies may collect:
Page views and time spent on pages
Click paths (how users move from page to page)
Bounce rate (users who leave without interacting)
User demographics (location, language, device)
Referring websites (how users arrived at the site)
Here’s how you can disable cookies in common browsers:
1. Google Chrome
Open Chrome and click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy and security > Cookies and other site data.
Choose your preferred option:
Block all cookies (not recommended, can break most websites).
Block third-party cookies (can block ads and tracking cookies).
2. Mozilla Firefox
Open Firefox and click the three horizontal lines in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy & Security.
Under the Enhanced Tracking Protection section, choose Strict to block most cookies or Custom to manually choose which cookies to block.
3. Safari
Open Safari and click Safari in the top-left corner of the screen.
Go to Preferences > Privacy.
Check Block all cookies to stop all cookies, or select options to block third-party cookies.
4. Microsoft Edge
Open Edge and click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy, search, and services > Cookies and site permissions.
Select your cookie settings from there, including blocking all cookies or blocking third-party cookies.
5. On Mobile (iOS/Android)
For Safari on iOS: Go to Settings > Safari > Privacy & Security > Block All Cookies.
For Chrome on Android: Open the app, tap the three dots, go to Settings > Privacy and security > Cookies.
Be Aware:
Disabling cookies can make your online experience more difficult. Some websites may not load properly, or you may be logged out frequently. Also, certain features may not work as expected.
Professor Kenneth Couch is a featured guest on a recent Connecticut Public episode of “Where We Live”:
Social Security is one of the most widely-used government programs in the country, but how much does the average American know about how it works?
From eligibility and benefit amounts to how the trust fund is structured, this hour we’re offering a crash course on Social Security and how the federal program’s uncertain future is impacting the retirement plans of people here in Connecticut.
We’ll ask what’s driving concerns about the fund’s long-term solvency, and what Congress might do about it.
In this paper, we introduce a novel method for predicting intraday instantaneous volatility based on Itô semimartingale models using high-frequency financial data. Several studies have highlighted stylized volatility time series features, such as interday auto-regressive dynamics and the intraday U-shaped pattern. To accommodate these volatility features, we propose an interday-by-intraday instantaneous volatility matrix process that can be decomposed into low-rank conditional expected instantaneous volatility and noise matrices. To predict the low-rank conditional expected instantaneous volatility matrix, we propose the Two-sIde Projected-PCA (TIP-PCA) procedure. We establish asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators and conduct a simulation study to assess the finite sample performance of the proposed prediction method. Finally, we apply the TIP-PCA method to an out-of-sample instantaneous volatility vector prediction study using high-frequency data from the S&P 500 index and 11 sector index funds.
Professor Metin Coşgel is featured in the most recent UConn Today:
Economist Reimagines Writing Courses in the Age of AI
Professor Metin Coşgel is piloting a new AI-integrated writing curriculum in economics, one of UConn’s largest majors, with the potential to shape how writing is taught across disciplines.
As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes classrooms and careers alike, UConn professor of economics Metin Coşgel is asking a deceptively simple question: Can generative AI help students become better writers?
The answer, Coşgel says, lies not just in what we ask students to produce, but in how we guide them through the writing process itself.
“AI can help with writing, but students need to be able to own their work and defend it along the way, not just generate a final paper at the end because the system allows it,” he says.
This fall, Coşgel will launch a redesigned version of ECON 2500W, a core writing-intensive course for UConn economics majors. Supported by a Teaching Enhancement Grant from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), the new curriculum integrates AI tools with traditional instruction to help students improve their writing, understand their learning process, and graduate with the skills needed for today’s workforce.
The Department of Economics is pleased to announce that Professor Tianxu Chen was recently honored as a Distinguished Career Champion at UConn’s 2024–2025 Career Everywhere End-of-Year Recognition and Celebration. This award, presented by the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills, recognizes faculty who demonstrate outstanding commitment to integrating career development into their teaching and student support.
As a Faculty Fellow with the Center, Professor Chen participated in the 2024 Summer Institute and implemented a series of career-focused assignments in her large-enrollment course, ECON 2441: Labor Economics, during both the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 semesters. Her efforts included curriculum development, guest lectures, and a suite of career competency-based assessments designed to connect labor market theory with students’ professional development. Grounded in the NACE Career Competencies framework, the initiative received highly positive student feedback, with many reporting increased confidence in applying key skills in career preparation.
This recognition also highlights Professor Chen’s broader contributions through the department’s GA Training Program, where she mentors and prepares graduate assistants for effective undergraduate instruction. She is honored by this award and grateful for the opportunity to support student growth across both academic and career dimensions.
In this comprehensive Handbook, Professor Kenneth Couch of the University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, brings together expert contributors to provide insights into the impact of COVID-19 on new and pre-existing inequalities in health, work, and education. While sharper impacts on pre-existing cross-group disparities were often resolved by vaccinations and the lifting of restrictions, this important work indicates that in many respects disadvantaged groups will endure lasting negative effects from the pandemic.
An interdisciplinary and international range of authors investigate disparities in mortality, healthcare spending, domestic violence, and mental health for people of different genders, ethnicities, immigration statuses, and age, providing novel contributions to post-pandemic scholarship and introducing innovative empirical research. They emphasize the effect of the pandemic on the labor market, including the ramifications on minority and migrant employment and the gender-specific outcomes of working from home. The Handbook also underscores the negative and heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on school enrollment, student well-being, and academic performance across all school ages. Ultimately, this Handbook provides a detailed overview of contemporary post-pandemic research into inequality.
Professor Tianxu Chen has been awarded a 2025 AI Teaching Innovation Mini-Grant from UConn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The grant supports faculty in redesigning courses to help students engage directly with generative AI tools and concepts.
Professor Chen will integrate AI-focused activities into her undergraduate Labor Economics course, encouraging students to explore how technologies like generative AI are transforming labor markets and skill demands. The revised course will include hands-on assignments that build AI fluency, such as prompt engineering, critical evaluation of AI-generated content, and discussions on the ethical and economic implications of AI in the workplace.
The redesigned course will be implemented during the 2025–2026 academic year.
On Monday, March 31st, 2025, the Economics Department held this semester’s Graduate Assistant (GA) Training Workshop, led by Professor Tianxu Chen, with Professor Ling Huang and Professor Kai Zhao also joining the discussion. The session provided a valuable opportunity for GAs to ask questions and receive guidance on a range of teaching-related topics, including student engagement, effective instruction strategies, and classroom management.
This semester’s workshop was structured as an open office hour, allowing all GAs—whether new or experienced—to bring up challenges they have encountered in their teaching roles. Professors Chen, Huang, and Zhao shared their insights and advice, helping students navigate common concerns such as fostering student participation, balancing grading responsibilities, and communicating effectively with undergraduate students.
This GA training workshop continues to play a crucial role in strengthening the quality of Economics education at UConn, while also reinforcing the Department’s commitment to supporting GAs in their teaching and career development.
Professor Langlois’s book Advanced Introduction to the Economics of Organization has been published in the Elgar Advanced Introduction series:
This incisive book presents a succinct overview of the economics of organization. Combining traditional approaches with more challenging, cutting-edge perspectives, Richard N. Langlois critically examines the ways in which tasks and transactions in the economy are organized.
Drawing on a diverse array of historical and real-world examples, chapters outline key principles of the field including division of labor, transaction costs, moral hazard, and asset specificity. This Advanced Introduction investigates ‘organization’ more broadly, delving into underexplored areas such as capabilities and routines, evolutionary selection, dynamic transaction costs, and modular systems.
Photo: Bradford, Phillip G. 2023. “Chains that Bind Us”. Amazon Publishing, book cover. Used with permission of the author.
Students in Professor Smirnova’s “Money and Banking” course were exposed to a discussion about the block-chain technology from a viewpoint of the computer science as Dr. Phillip Bradford, Computer Science Professor at Stamford, delivered an engaging lecture “Chains that Bind Us” on February 27, 2025.
Professor Bradford connected the history of blockchains to the history of payment systems and functioning of Central Banks in an economy. He helped students understand the appeal of anonymous but verified ledgers of transactions, and linked such economic concepts as money supply, inflation, and economic growth to the development of various blockchain technology based “coins” and their fluctuating value in the market.
Professor Bradford demonstrated his Python codes and showed the “Raspberry Pis”, which he used in his experiment of mining bitcoins.
Dr. Bradford intrigued students with a basic ledger such as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Basic Ledger (Bradford, 2023, p. 21)
This ledger is itself coded. For example, the first account “CAFEBABE” is a keyword in Java program files. See for example: Java class file – Wikipedia sometimes called a magic number to start Java machine files. Do you see any code for #3 account “FED”?
Such ledgers are in each block of a block chain such as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Blockchain (Bradford, 2023, p. 116)
The curriculum of the “Money and Banking” course focuses on the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States, its policy tools, goals, strategy and tactics, and on the banking system as a participant in the country’s financial system. An exposition of new and emerging technologies that provide alternatives to central banking is an exciting addition to the course. Students are using Dr. Bradford’s book “Chains that Bind Us” (Bradford, 2023) as a supplemental reading material to the required textbook (Mishkin, 2022).
Such multi-disciplinary collaborations among faculty strengthen our learning community at the Stamford campus. Co-authoring papers and presentations, monthly multi-disciplinary colloquia, and visits to classes support diverse interests of our students that will be joining the workforce with career-transferable knowledge and skills.
Bibliography:
Bradford, Phillip G. 2023. Chains that Bind Us. Amazon Publishing.
Mishkin, Frederic S. 2022. Economics of Money and Banking Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, 13th edition, Pearson.
In this comprehensive 
Professor Langlois’s book Advanced Introduction to the Economics of Organization has been published in the Elgar Advanced Introduction series:
