Zhao

Fall 2024 GA Training Workshop: Faculty Insights

Posted on by

Last Thursday, October 17, 2024, the Department of Economics held its regular semester GA Training Workshop, aimed at preparing new Graduate Assistants for their teaching responsibilities. Three faculty members—Professors Talia Bar, Professor Kai Zhao, and Professor Tianxu Chen—shared valuable advice drawn from their teaching experience.

Professor Bar emphasized the importance of adapting to students’ varying levels of mathematical proficiency, using active learning strategies to keep students engaged, and proactively addressing potential classroom challenges.

Professor Zhao reflected on his early teaching experiences, offering advice on understanding student backgrounds, using relatable examples, and ensuring clear communication to avoid confusion.

Professor Chen concluded the session by focusing on classroom management, encouraging a positive learning environment, and balancing teaching duties with academic responsibilities. Her practical tips provided GAs with useful strategies for success.

This workshop remains a cornerstone of the department’s efforts to support GAs, offering them essential tools and insights to excel in both teaching and their academic progress each semester.

Recent PhD Graduates Publish on Wealth Inequality

Posted on by
Profile picture of Umesh Ghimire
Umesh Ghimire
Profile picture of Aaron Cooke
Aaron Cooke

Recent UConn graduates Aaron Cooke (2018 PhD, U.S. Department of the Treasury) and Umesh Ghimire (2021 PhD, Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania) have had their paper accepted for publication in Macroeconomic Dynamics.

The paper examines the impact of life-cycle savings, intergenerational transfers, and fertility differences between the rich and the poor on the wealth distribution in the United States

Profile picture of Kai Zhao
Kai Zhao
Profile picture of Hyun Lee
Hyun Lee

This paper is a joint work with Dr. Hyun Lee (former UConn faculty) and Professor Kai Zhao. The key message of the paper is that the fertility differences between the rich and the poor significantly amplify the role of bequests in shaping the U.S. wealth inequality.

You can find the paper here

2024 UConn Leafy LAEF Conference

Posted on by
2024 UConn Leafy LAEF Conference Logo

The Department of Economics is hosting the UConn Leafy LAEF Macro Conference in Storrs, CT, on October 25-26, 2024, jointly with the Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance (LAEF) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

LAEF was established in July 2005 to address important questions on growth and fluctuations in national, or aggregate, economies. It is directed by Professor Finn Kydland, Nobel Laureate (2004), Jeffrey Henley Professor of Economics at UCSB.

The conference will feature approximately 9 to 10 papers. Submissions from all areas of macroeconomics and adjacent fields are welcome. We hope you will find this conference of interest and will submit your work. The submission deadline is April 30, 2024.

You can find the call for paper and the submission portal here.

Professor Zhao published in Review of Economic Dynamics

Posted on by

Professor Zhao’s paper “The Evolution of Health over the Life Cycle” has been published in the Review of Economic Dynamics.

In this paper, Professor Zhao and his coauthors construct a unified objective measure of health status: the frailty index. Using this index, they propose and estimate a stochastic process for health dynamics over the life cycle accounting for mortality bias. Their health measure and dynamic process can be used to study the evolution of health over the life cycle and its economic implications.

Building on this work, Professor Zhao and his coauthors are currently working on a project that explores the evolution of health inequality over the life cycle and its implication for lifetime earnings inequality.

Recent PhD publishes in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Posted on by

Recent PhD graduate Fei Zou has published “Does Early Retirement Really Benefit Women?” in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

This paper grew out of Fei’s PhD dissertation completed at UConn (2019) under the supervision of Professor Kai Zhao. It is a joint work with Dr. Hyun Lee (former UConn faculty), and Professor Zhao.

In this paper, the authors quantitatively evaluate the welfare consequences of China’s gender-specific mandatory retirement policy using a calibrated overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets. They find that while it is intended to relieve women from work earlier and to provide them with more years of public pensions benefits than men, early mandatory retirement reduces welfare for women.

The published version of this paper can be found at:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122000452

Professor Zhao’s research to be published in Journal of Monetary Economics

Posted on by

Professor Zhao’s paper “Rising Wealth Inequality: Intergenerational Links, Entrepreneurship, and the Decline in Interest Rate” has been accepted for publication in Journal of Monetary Economics. In this paper, Professor Zhao and his coauthor investigate the causes of rising wealth inequality in the United States.

The working paper version of this research can be found in UConn working paper series.

Professor Agüero and Professor Zhao receive CLAS Summer Funding

Posted on by

Professor Agüero and Professor Zhao have received CLAS Summer Funding for their research projects, respectively. Professor Agüero’s project will conduct an experimental intervention providing information about college scholarships to disadvantaged high school students in Peru to motivate their study efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic. The project has also received the approval of the Ministry of Education.

Professor Zhao received funding for his project titled “Health Inequality over the Life Cycle and Its Implications for Economic Well-Being”. In this project, Professor Zhao and his coauthors examine the relationship between health inequality and lifetime earnings inequality, paying close attention to the role of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) in facilitating the tradeoff between health and economic well-being.

Econ PhD Alumnus is Chief Economist for Macro Policy at the CEA

Posted on by

Aaron Cooke, a 2018 PhD graduate of the UConn Department of Economics, recently became the Chief Economist for Macroeconomic Policy at the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

The CEA, an agency within the Executive Office of the President, is charged with offering the President objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international economic policy.

Aaron earned his PhD degree from the Department of Economics in 2018, specializing in macroeconomics and public policy. His PhD dissertation, “Three Essays on Wealth and Income Inequality”, studied the causes of U.S. wealth and income inequality, and was completed under the supervision of Professor Kai Zhao.

Prior to joining the CEA, Aaron was an economist at the Office of Management and Budget.

Professor Zhao’s Research to be Published in International Economic Review

Posted on by

Professor Zhao’s paper “Household Saving, Financial Constraints, and the Current Account in China” has been accepted for publication in the International Economic Review.

In this paper, Professor Zhao and his coauthor find that the rise and fall in China’s current account surplus was largely due to (1) the rising household saving driven by the decline in family insurance coupled with inadequate public insurance, and (2) the variation in financial constraints facing the Chinese firms.

The working paper version of this research can be found in the UConn working paper series: https://ideas.repec.org/p/uct/uconnp/2018-15.html.

International Economic Review publishes cutting edge papers in many areas of economics, including econometrics, economic theory, macro, and applied economics. It is considered one of the leading journals in economics in the world (Engemann and Wall, 2009).

Economics Faculty Baggio, Lanza, and Zhao Receive Promotions

Posted on by

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.