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 Stephen Ross has been named a Research Associate in the Education Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
https://www.nber.org/people/stephen_ross
The full announcement from NBER may be found online at:
NBER Appoints 15 Research Associates, 57 Faculty Research Fellows | NBER
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 chaired the Student Prize Committee for the 2020 Virtual Urban Economics Association Meetings. To see the prize winners and the full prize committee, go to:
http://www.urbaneconomics.org/meetings/awards.html
For the actual papers, see the conference program at:
http://www.urbaneconomics.org/meetings/virtual2020/program.html
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:
The Surprising Ways Race Remains a Factor in Mortgage Lending
The Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group (HCEO) at the University of Chicago announced their top five downloaded working papers of 2019.
Steve Ross’s paper “The Consequences of Friendships: Evidence on the Effect of Social Relationships in School on Academic Achievement” with Jason Fletcher and Yuxiu Zhang was among that list.
In that paper, they show that female students experience substantial improvements in their academic performance when they have more friends from an advantaged economic background, i.e. friends whose mothers completed four years of college. These effects may arise in part because girls with such friendships are also better integrated into their school environment.
Matt Ross, one of our Ph.D. graduates, was interviewed by The Guardian about the new study of racial profiling in police stops in the State of California, as well as about his own research with UConn faculty member Steve Ross and another Ph.D. graduate Jesse Kalinowski:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/02/california-police-black-stops-force
Economics Department faculty member Steve Ross was just appointed to the Board of Editors of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/pol/about-pol/editors
Anupam Nanda has accepted a Professorship at the University of Manchester, UK. He will start in November this year.
Anupam completed his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Connecticut in 2006. Anupam has been at the University of Reading and has developed a significant scholarly reputation for his research in real estate markets. Professor Stephen Ross was his major advisor.
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.”