Professor Stephen Ross will be serving on the Universal Basic Income (UBI) working group for the City of Hartford, tasked with guiding a pilot program to evaluate the possible implementation of a UBI by the city.
The pilot program was featured this week in an article in the Hartford Courant:
City of Hartford exploring giving no-strings, monthly cash payments to single, working parents
Professor Nishith Prakash and his work with the Association for Mentoring & Inclusion in Economics has been featured in the most recent UConn Today:
The field of economics, like many areas of academics and society, has struggled over time to bring a diverse range of people into the discipline.
To address some of these issues, a UConn professor has helped create a new organization with the goal of lessening gender, race, and socioeconomic-based gaps in economics through mentorship, resource provision, and the creation of a network focused on inclusion.
AMIE, the Association for Mentoring & Inclusion in Economics, was recently founded by Nishith Prakash, an associate professor of economics at UConn with a joint appointment in the school’s Human Rights Institute. The co-founder is Priya Mukherjee, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin.
The pair started informally working on this idea while they were both visiting scholars at Boston University’s Institute for Economic Development three years ago, and decided to formally launch AMIE this year.
Specific groups that are a focus of AMIE include underrepresented minorities, the LGBTQIA+ community, first-generation college students, women, and international students – both those studying in the United States and abroad.
The full article is online at:
New Association Co-Founded By UConn Professor Looks to Diversify Economics
Professor Lanza’s 2021 forecast for the Connecticut economy was featured in the December 28, 2020 issue of the Hartford Business Journal.
Lanza predicts a year of moderate recovery as vaccines roll out and the state gets back to work.
The complete forecast may be found online at:
https://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/hbjs-2021-economic-forecast
Professor Kanda Naknoi has been interviewed by the New York Times about her latest work on the Thai military as a business group, for the article, “Almost Like Clockwork, Talk of a Military Coup Follows Thai Protests”
The article may be found online at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/world/asia/thailand-protests-military.html
Professor Stephen Ross recently took part in a panel discussion about the economic recovery from the pandemic in Connecticut:
Bouncing Forward from the Pandemic: Economic Disparities, School, Childcare, and Residential Integration
Thursday, October 15, 2020, 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Moderator: Beth Bye, Commissioner, Office of Early Childhood
State of the State on Economic Disparities: Dr. Stephen Ross, UConn Departments of Economics and Public Policy
Residential Zoning Reform: Dr. Saud Anwar, State Senator
Addressing Challenges Faced by the Working Poor : Dr. Lauren Ruth, Research & Policy Director, ConnecticutVoices for Children
High Potential Programs to Boost High School Students to a Family Living Wage: Dr. Lyle Wray, ExecutiveDirector, CRCOG
Professor Ross was interviewed by Realtor.com about racial differences in the price of mortgage credit.
The full article, “The Damaging Racism Hiding in Mortgages—Even Today”, may be found online at:
https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/black-communities-higher-mortgage-rates/
MSQE student Yuansun (Sonny) Jiang’s COVID-19 Connecticut Data Visualization website has been featured in UConn Today:
UConn Student Tracks Pandemic With Data
“Using the skills he was learning in Prof. Oskar Harmon’s Writing and Communication for Economics and Business graduate course, Jiang began assembling the COVID-19 Connecticut Data Visualization website, where he daily charts the pandemic’s course both here in Connecticut and across the country.”
Read the full article at https://today.uconn.edu/2020/04/uconn-student-tracks-pandemic-data
Information about the MSQE Program may be found online at https://msqe.econ.uconn.edu/
Based on his research of the impact of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, Professor Jorge Agüero has published two op-eds for Peruvian outlets on the economics of the Covid-19, how it could affect the Peruvian economy and the role of public policies to reduce the impact of the pandemic.
His February column was published in the leading newspaper El Comercio and his most recent article was published this week focusing on the difficulty of adopting hand washing as a common practice.
Research by Eric Brunner, Shaun Dougherty and Steve Ross on Career and Technical Education in Connecticut has been featured recently by both the Brookings-Brown Center and in The Conversation.
As described in an article for UConn Today:
Career and Technical H.S. Grads Have More Initial Earning Power, Study Says
Males who graduate from career and technical high schools in Connecticut earn more than their peers in the years immediately following graduation, according to a new study by the University of Connecticut.
Through age 23, the career and technical high school graduates earned 31% more than students who graduated from traditional high schools, according to the team from UConn’s departments of public policy, economics, and education.
The past decade has witnessed a resurgence in interest in career and technical education as an alternative pathway for high school students, the authors write in their study, published in the Annenberg Institute’s education working paper series.
“Career and technical education has been an important strategy for improving the economic opportunities of students who might not pursue a traditional four-year college degree,” says author Eric Brunner, UConn professor of economics and policy. “This is especially important given the declining opportunities for non-college educated workers.”
Even as the job market evolves, researchers found positive results for both the educational and labor market outcomes for students at the 16 technical high schools in Connecticut, where 7% of the state’s students enroll.
The team examined data on approximately 57,000 eighth-graders from 2006-2013, through age 23.
They found that male students who went to career and technical high school in Connecticut were about 10% more likely to graduate high school, with the improved labor market outcomes being accompanied by a roughly 8% dip in their likelihood to attend college.
Being disadvantaged, being eligible for free-lunch programs, and more likely to have lower scores on standardized tests did not lower the effectiveness of the career and technical high schools, Brunner says.
However, the findings were limited to males. There were not any noticeable effects in attending a career technical school, either positive or negative, for females, says Stephen Ross, co-author and UConn professor of economics.
“One of our next goals is to look closer at females in these settings and hopefully come up with some answers,” says Ross.
Additionally, in December of 2019, the researchers are slated to receive data on the eighth-graders through the age of 26, providing a fuller picture of the effects.
The study comes as the government continues to invest in this area of education. In 2018, the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act was reauthorized, providing $1.2 billion in funding for these programs and job training for students.
Can this study be applied to other states? Possibly, says Ross. While the data clearly shows the positive effect of career technical schools, it’s important to take into account the format of Connecticut.
“For most states, career technical high schools are all over but in Connecticut they really have it as a whole model with one umbrella, one superintendent and its own district,” Ross says.
Further, the degree of career and technical education offered by a traditional high school may impact the findings.
“If your [traditional high] school had a lot of career technical education then getting into the system wasn’t as important,” says Brunner. But if the traditional high school did not, “you got a bigger payoff for going to a career technical high school.”
Professors Michele Baggio and David Simon and co-author Alberto Chong have had the research in their work “Sex, Drugs, and Baby Booms: Can Behavior Overcome Biology?” featured in a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal: