Professor Lanza contributed expert commentary to the recent WalletHub.com study entitled “2023’s Most and Least Independent States.” WalletHub.com is a leading outlet covering the personal finance industry and its studies appear in their consumer education section.
The study is available online at WalletHub.com.
Professor Steven Lanza has launched The Connecticut Green Sheet, a short quarterly newsletter on the state’s economy (see the coverage by CT News Junkie at: https://directory.ctnewsjunkie.com/2021/05/quarterly-newsletter-analyzes-connecticut-economy/).
The Green Sheet “takes a page” from the department’s old Connecticut Economy Quarterly Review (the green is a nod to the Quarterly’s signature dark cyan accent color) and offers readers a current indicator of state economic activity (the General Drift Indicator or GDI) plus a forecast of anticipated nonfarm job changes.
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
The Early College Experience Economics program (https://ece.uconn.edu/) held its annual workshop this fall for 30 Connecticut high school economics teachers who are teaching UConn’s Principles of Microeconomics (ECON 1201), Principles of Macroeconomics (ECON 1202) and/or Essentials of Economics (ECON 1000).
Leading off the workshop was Professor Mike Shor, presenting “Patent Holdup” in which he explained the limits monopoly power conveyed by patents. The complementary relationships among patents and the price determination of purchasing or licensing of patents. He went on to explain the idea of the patent hold up. He also provided the workshop participants with a classroom exercise in which students discover how patents are priced.
There followed a presentation by Professor Natalia Smirnova, “Using Data in the Classroom: FRED database.” Professor Smirnova demonstrated several empirical uses of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank’s FRED database including both Macro and Micro economic examples.
Professor William Alpert presented a lunch time talk about the “Perils and Pitfalls of Prediction” highlighting the famine predictions of Paul Ehrlich for the 1980 (100’s of millions die) and the failed predictions of The Club of Rome from 1973. Professor Alpert also “predicted” the rise to more than 600 million in the number of horses in the United States if 18th Century trends had continued, assuming no alternative means of transportation.
Professor Steven Lanza then followed up with a presentation entitled “Rediscovering Lost Arts: Economic Index Numbers” in which he stressed the importance of index numbers and the biases in those numbers. He also demonstrated how to calculate them using data that is easy to access and readily available.
Professor Nishith Prakash rendered the concluding presentation concerning a natural experiment concerning the harassment. In India 79% of women living in cities have experienced harassment in public spaces. Professor Prakash and his coauthors set out to determine the effect of street patrolling that targets harassment, on the type and frequency of incidents and women’s proactive responses. They also are trying to determine the impacts of targeting perpetrators of harassment and what drives these changes — visibility, and/or quantity of a focused taskforce?
All of the presentations were well received and the workshop was among the most successful offered by the ECE Economics program.
Congratulations to Economics faculty members Michele Baggio and Kai (Jackie) Zhao, who have received promotion to tenured Associate Professor, and to Steven Lanza, promoted to Associate Professor in Residence!
The UConn Board of Trustees approved the promotions, effective August 23rd, at the Board meeting on Wednesday, April 24th.
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.
The New York FED is one of five Federal Reserve Banks that host the FED Challenge Competition. The regional winners go to the final round at the FED in Washington D.C. 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 5 tea
m participants were:
Front row: Ryan Dodd, Olga Jaramillo; Middle row: Chris McLaughlin (a two time participant), graduate assistants PD Aditya and Gul-e-Rana; Back row: Esteban Peralta, Randall Giles.
The students were assisted in their preparations by Professors Oskar Harmon, Kanda Naknoi and Steven Lanza.
The team received invaluable assistance from three graduate student assistants (PD Aditya , Di Yang, and Gul-e-Rana from the Stamford Business School MBA.
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.
Professor Steven Lanza was quoted in an article in the Wall Street Journal this week:
Tax-Credit Plan Aims To Keep Grads in Connecticut
Congratulations to the undergraduate students from the Stamford and Storrs campuses who took part in the College Fed Challenge this month!
Sponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, 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 Stamford team (above left) participated in the NY Fed Challenge, competing against forty-one other schools.
The Storrs team (below right) presented at the Boston Fed Challenge, competing against twenty-four other New England schools.
Congratulations to both teams on all of their hard work in this competition!
Stamford Team:
Joanna Ksiazek
Chris McLaughlin
Amir Parikh
Shrey Patel
Alex Rojas
Ravinder Singh
Dr. Julia Coronado (Advisor)
Professor Oskar Harmon (Advisor)
Professor Steven Lanza (Advisor)
Professor Kanda Naknoi (Advisor)
Storrs Team:
Patrick Adams
Matt DeLeon
Erik Eason
Gabriel Hack
Ed Leardi
Stephen Mwangi
Matt Regan
Joe Roessler
Professor Owen Svalestad (Advisor)