Faculty in media

Professor Prakash in the News

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Professor Prakash’s recent work on crime against women and all women police stations in India has been in the news. Most recently, Indian Express, a leading newspaper in India, interviewed him to discuss the economic effects of violence against women in a podcast prepared for United Nation, India.

He also presented his latest work (joint with Sofia Amaral (ifo Institute) and Sonia Bhalotra (Essex)) “Gender, Crime and Punishment: Evidence from Women Police Stations in India” at the Urban Economics Association Conference at Columbia University and the North East Universities Development Consortium Conference at Cornell University in October, 2018. In this paper, the authors find that the presence of All Women Police Stations in India leads to more reporting of violence against women crime, in particular, female kidnappings and domestic violence. The study finds modest impact on the measures of police deterrence such as arrests.

Professor Ritter and the Peruvian Soda Tax

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Professor Patricia Ritter has had her research featured in the debates about an increase in the tax on sugary drinks recently implemented in Peru, and was asked to write an article for the newspaper El Comercio on the topic:

https://elcomercio.pe/opinion/colaboradores/isc-gaseosas-salud-obesidad-opinion-debate-patricia-ritter-noticia-521267

and she was mentioned in three other articles:

https://elcomercio.pe/economia/isc-subida-impuesto-selectivo-consumo-bebidas-azucaradas-pablo-lavado-noticia-519474

https://elcomercio.pe/opinion/editorial/editorial-cambios-impuesto-selectivos-consumo-isc-reforma-tributaria-gobierno-noticia-520299

https://elcomercio.pe/opinion/columnistas/isc-gaseosas-impuesto-selectivo-ahhh-salud-fernando-caceres-noticia-520274

She was mentioned as well at the end of the program Enfoque de los sábados on April 12th:

Professor Langlois Quoted in the Stamford Advocate

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Professor Richard Langlois was quoted in an article in the Stamford Advocate, commenting about the Federal Trade Commission response to a possible acquisition by Stamford-based chemical company Tronox .

The article is online at:  http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/business/article/Tronox-grapples-with-litigation-on-planned-12434139.php

Medical Marijuana in the Washington Post and Mother Jones

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A recent working paper by co-authors Michele Baggio (UConn faculty, Department of Economics), Alberto Chong (Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Department of Economics), and Sungoh Kwon (UConn graduate student, Department of Economics), has been featured in the Washington Post:

 

Medical marijuana took a bite out of alcohol sales …

Alcoholic beverage sales fell by 15 percent following the introduction of medical marijuana laws in a number of states, according to a new working paper by …

And in Mother Jones magazine:

Back in 2009 I wrote a piece for the magazine about marijuana legalization. One of the things I learned is that a key question about the effect of legalization is whether marijuana and alcohol are substitutes or complements. If alcohol and marijuana are substitutes, it means that higher sales of marijuana will likely produce lower […]http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/12/new-study-says-marijuana-legalization-reduces-alcohol-use/

 

The working paper is online at: Helping Settle the Marijuana and Alcohol Debate: Evidence from Scanner Data

Abstract:

We use data on purchases of alcoholic beverages in grocery, convenience, drug, or mass distribution stores in US counties for 2006-2015 to study the link between medical marijuana laws and alcohol consumption and focus on settling the debate between the substitutability or complementarity between marijuana and alcohol. To do this we exploit the differences in the timing of the of marijuana laws among states and find that these two substances are substitutes. Counties located in MML states reduced monthly alcohol sales by 15 percent. Our findings are robust to border counties analysis, a placebo effective dates for MMLs in the treated states, and falsification tests using sales of pens and pencils.

Professor Lanza recently quoted in the Hartford Courant

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Professor Steve Lanza, a long-time analyst of the Connecticut economy, is frequently called upon for comment on economic events in the state.

Professor Lanza was quoted in the October 2, 2017 edition of the Hartford Courant about a U.S. Census Bureau report of a troubling drop of 0.4% in the state’s population between 2015 and 2016.

In a separate article in the same edition, Professor Lanza was quoted regarding small businesses as engines of growth in the Stamford CT metropolitan area.

Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India

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The American Economic Association has posted an interview with Karthik Muralidharan on “Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India“, the paper that he and Professor Nishith Prakash have published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

The interview is online at

Biking to a better future

An interview with Karthik Muralidharan about closing the education gender gap in India

Professor Prakash is following up on this work with his new project, ‘Wheels of Change: Impact of Cycles on Female Education and Empowerment in Zambia’.  For more information, see Professor Prakash Studies the Impact of Bicycles on Female Education and Empowerment in Zambia

Professor Steve Ross talks about School Quality and Housing Prices

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ross[1]The National Real Estate Forum recently interviewed Professor Ross on his work on the relationship between housing prices and school quality.  This interview has been produced as a podcast at:

Our Guests

In this work, Professor Ross discusses the surprising findings that school quality has only a quite modest effect on property values, and that much of the early work on this question confounded the effects of neighborhood quality with the effects of school quality.  He also discusses the contradiction between these findings and evidence that school choice actually has substantial effects on school quality, suggesting that the reason for the large effects is because school choice affects where people live and so change neighborhood quality, which as noted has large effects on housing prices.