Professor Tianxu Chen Recognized as a Distinguished Career Champion

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The Department of Economics is pleased to announce that Professor Tianxu Chen was recently honored as a Distinguished Career Champion at UConn’s 2024–2025 Career Everywhere End-of-Year Recognition and Celebration. This award, presented by the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills, recognizes faculty who demonstrate outstanding commitment to integrating career development into their teaching and student support.

As a Faculty Fellow with the Center, Professor Chen participated in the 2024 Summer Institute and implemented a series of career-focused assignments in her large-enrollment course, ECON 2441: Labor Economics, during both the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 semesters. Her efforts included curriculum development, guest lectures, and a suite of career competency-based assessments designed to connect labor market theory with students’ professional development. Grounded in the NACE Career Competencies framework, the initiative received highly positive student feedback, with many reporting increased confidence in applying key skills in career preparation.

This recognition also highlights Professor Chen’s broader contributions through the department’s GA Training Program, where she mentors and prepares graduate assistants for effective undergraduate instruction. She is honored by this award and grateful for the opportunity to support student growth across both academic and career dimensions.

Edward Elgar Publishes Handbook on Inequality and COVID-19 Edited by Professor Couch

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Book cover.In this comprehensive Handbook, Professor Kenneth Couch of the University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, brings together expert contributors to provide insights into the impact of COVID-19 on new and pre-existing inequalities in health, work, and education. While sharper impacts on pre-existing cross-group disparities were often resolved by vaccinations and the lifting of restrictions, this important work indicates that in many respects disadvantaged groups will endure lasting negative effects from the pandemic.

An interdisciplinary and international range of authors investigate disparities in mortality, healthcare spending, domestic violence, and mental health for people of different genders, ethnicities, immigration statuses, and age, providing novel contributions to post-pandemic scholarship and introducing innovative empirical research. They emphasize the effect of the pandemic on the labor market, including  the ramifications on minority and migrant employment and the gender-specific outcomes of working from home. The Handbook also underscores the negative and heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on school enrollment, student well-being, and academic performance across all school ages. Ultimately, this Handbook provides a detailed overview of contemporary post-pandemic research into inequality.

Econ major Andy Zhang inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society

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Excellence in liberal arts and sciences, a commitment to intellectual curiosity, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge—these are the hallmarks of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Today, we celebrate Andy Zhang, an outstanding economics and environmental sciences major whose dedication and brilliance have earned him a place among the nation’s most distinguished scholars. With a legacy that includes presidents, Supreme Court justices, and Nobel laureates, it represents the highest honor in academic achievement. Congratulations on this well-deserved honor! Read more: Junior Named Key Into Public Service Scholar – UConn Today

Andy Zhang '26 (CLAS) poses for a photo near Wilbur Cross on Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Professor Tianxu Chen Awarded AI Teaching Innovation Mini-Grant

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Professor Tianxu Chen has been awarded a 2025 AI Teaching Innovation Mini-Grant from UConn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The grant supports faculty in redesigning courses to help students engage directly with generative AI tools and concepts.

Professor Chen will integrate AI-focused activities into her undergraduate Labor Economics course, encouraging students to explore how technologies like generative AI are transforming labor markets and skill demands. The revised course will include hands-on assignments that build AI fluency, such as prompt engineering, critical evaluation of AI-generated content, and discussions on the ethical and economic implications of AI in the workplace.

The redesigned course will be implemented during the 2025–2026 academic year.

Frontiers in Undergraduate Research 2025 at Stamford

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Two Economics students, Madina Mamedli and Cole Sembrot presented their research at the Frontiers in Undergraduate Research Exhibition in Stamford on April 22, 2025. Their academic adviser is Professor Smirnova.

Madina Mamedli presenting her research
Madina Mamedli presenting her research

Madina’s paper was entitled “From Chalk to Checkbooks: The Real Price of Educational Inequality”. Madina compared the investment in and the outcomes of public and private secondary education institutions in the U.S. Her literature review and regression analysis revealed inadequate funding for public schools, which leads to lower SAT scores, lower college counselor / student ratio, and other disadvantages for students attending public schools. Madina concluded that educational inequality transforms early life privileged into long-term economic advantage. Disparities in school resources, academic support, and access to college counseling directly shape earning potential.

Cole Sembrot presenting his research
Cole Sembrot presenting his research

Cole Sembrot discerned fiscal and monetary policies’ impacts on the economy during the pandemic. His paper was entitled “Was COVID Inflation Worse Because of Combined Fiscal and Monetary Expansion?” Cole has built the regression model that examines how much post-COVID inflation is due to the actions of the Federal Reserve: near zero interest rates, QE, balance sheet expansion, and money supply growth, while controlling for supply-side shock. Cole concluded that the post-pandemic inflationary episode is due to a complex interplay between policy and external economic shocks.

Madina Mamedli (’25), Dr. Smirnova, Cole Sembrot (’25)
Madina Mamedli (’25), Dr. Smirnova, Cole Sembrot (’25)

The event was attended by more than 50 people: students, faculty, and staff. There were guests from the Office of Undergraduate Research and UConn Enrichment Programs as well as Stamford campus administration. The atmosphere of the event was academic in nature, but friendly and supportive. 20 students from various fields of study presented their research results. Experiences like this help students gain confidence and prepare for careers upon graduation.

 

Spring 2025 GA Training Workshop: Supporting Graduate Instructors at Every Stage

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On Monday, March 31st, 2025, the Economics Department held this semester’s Graduate Assistant (GA) Training Workshop, led by Professor Tianxu Chen, with Professor Ling Huang and Professor Kai Zhao also joining the discussion. The session provided a valuable opportunity for GAs to ask questions and receive guidance on a range of teaching-related topics, including student engagement, effective instruction strategies, and classroom management.

This semester’s workshop was structured as an open office hour, allowing all GAs—whether new or experienced—to bring up challenges they have encountered in their teaching roles. Professors Chen, Huang, and Zhao shared their insights and advice, helping students navigate common concerns such as fostering student participation, balancing grading responsibilities, and communicating effectively with undergraduate students.

This GA training workshop continues to play a crucial role in strengthening the quality of Economics education at UConn, while also reinforcing the Department’s commitment to supporting GAs in their teaching and career development.

Professor Langlois Publishes Advanced Introduction to the Economics of Organization

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Book Cover of Advanced Introduction to the Economics of OrganizationProfessor Langlois’s book Advanced Introduction to the Economics of Organization has been published in the Elgar Advanced Introduction series:
This incisive book presents a succinct overview of the economics of organization. Combining traditional approaches with more challenging, cutting-edge perspectives, Richard N. Langlois critically examines the ways in which tasks and transactions in the economy are organized.

Drawing on a diverse array of historical and real-world examples, chapters outline key principles of the field including division of labor, transaction costs, moral hazard, and asset specificity. This Advanced Introduction investigates ‘organization’ more broadly, delving into underexplored areas such as capabilities and routines, evolutionary selection, dynamic transaction costs, and modular systems.

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration within “Money and Banking” Course at Stamford

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Chains that Bind Us Bookcover
Photo: Bradford, Phillip G. 2023. “Chains that Bind Us”. Amazon Publishing, book cover. Used with permission of the author.

Students in Professor Smirnova’s “Money and Banking” course were exposed to a discussion about the block-chain technology from a viewpoint of the computer science as Dr. Phillip Bradford, Computer Science Professor at Stamford, delivered an engaging lecture “Chains that Bind Us” on February 27, 2025.

Professor Bradford connected the history of blockchains to the history of payment systems and functioning of Central Banks in an economy. He helped students understand the appeal of anonymous but verified ledgers of transactions, and linked such economic concepts as money supply, inflation, and economic growth to the development of various blockchain technology based “coins” and their fluctuating value in the market.

Professor Bradford demonstrated his Python codes and showed the “Raspberry Pis”, which he used in his experiment of mining bitcoins.

Dr. Bradford intrigued students with a basic ledger such as shown in Figure 1.

Basic Ledger (Bradford, 2023, p. 21)
Figure 1. Basic Ledger (Bradford, 2023, p. 21)

This ledger is itself coded. For example, the first account “CAFEBABE” is a keyword in Java program files. See for example: Java class file – Wikipedia sometimes called a magic number to start Java machine files. Do you see any code for #3 account “FED”?

Such ledgers are in each block of a block chain such as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Blockchain (Bradford, 2023, p. 116)
Figure 2. Blockchain (Bradford, 2023, p. 116)

 

The curriculum of the “Money and Banking” course focuses on the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States, its policy tools, goals, strategy and tactics, and on the banking system as a participant in the country’s financial system. An exposition of new and emerging technologies that provide alternatives to central banking is an exciting addition to the course. Students are using Dr. Bradford’s book “Chains that Bind Us” (Bradford, 2023) as a supplemental reading material to the required textbook (Mishkin, 2022).

Such multi-disciplinary collaborations among faculty strengthen our learning community at the Stamford campus. Co-authoring papers and presentations, monthly multi-disciplinary colloquia, and visits to classes support diverse interests of our students that will be joining the workforce with career-transferable knowledge and skills.

 

Bibliography:

Bradford, Phillip G. 2023. Chains that Bind Us. Amazon Publishing.

Mishkin, Frederic S. 2022. Economics of Money and Banking Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, 13th edition, Pearson.

Professor Kai Zhao to be published in Review of Economic Studies

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Professor Kai Zhao’s paper, “How Important Is Health Inequality for Lifetime Earnings Inequality?” (with Roozbeh Hosseini and Karen Kopecky), has been accepted for publication in the Review of Economic Studies, one of the top five academic journals in Economics.

In this paper, Professor Zhao and his coauthors examine an often-overlooked driver of economic inequality: health disparities. They show that health inequality is not just a reflection of broader economic disparities but a key driver of them.

Abstract:

Using a dynamic panel approach, we provide empirical evidence that negative health shocks significantly reduce earnings. The effect is primarily driven by the participation margin and is concentrated among the less educated and those in poor health. Next, we develop a life cycle model of labor supply featuring risky and heterogeneous frailty profiles that affect individuals’ productivity, likelihood of access to social insurance, disutility from work, mortality, and medical expenses. Individuals can either work or not work and apply for social security disability insurance (SSDI/SSI). Eliminating health inequality in our model reduces the variance of log lifetime (accumulated) earnings by 28 percent at age 55. About 60 percent of this effect is due to the impact of poor health on the probability of obtaining SSDI/SSI benefits. Despite this, we show that eliminating the SSDI/SSI program reduces ex ante welfare.