Zinnia Mukherjee, an ’09 PhD graduate of the Department of Economics, received the Professor of the Year award at the Simmons College Senior Faculty Banquet in April.
This award, voted upon each year by the entire graduating class of Simmons College, recognizes outstanding work “in teaching, advising, and providing support and guidance to students.”
William Alpert, Associate Professor Emeritus, was recently awarded the Thomas E. Recchio Faculty Coordinator Award for Academic Leadership in the University’s Early College Experience program (ECE).
The Early College Experience, one of the first concurrent enrollment programs in the world, is committed to providing access to and preparation for post-secondary education programs through its ability to offer University of Connecticut courses to high school students in their high schools. ECE is committed to excellence in education by fostering a relationship between higher education and partner high schools to create an effective transition for students who have made college a goal.
Professo
r Alpert began his association with the ECE program in Economics in 2002 with two instructors participating at two Connecticut high schools. By April 2018 Economics fielded 30 economics (Principles Microeconomics, Principles Macroeconomics and Essentials of Economics) with classes in more than 30 schools with well over 30 teachers certified as ECE instructors or preceptors in Economics.
In presenting the award, Professor Recchio (English) noted Professor Alpert’s distinguished publication record, saying it represented the Early College Experience Program’s dedication to serious scholarship.
Dominic Albino, a fourth-year graduate student in the department, and co-authors Seth Frey and Paul Williams have had their paper, “Synergistic Information Processing Encrypts Strategic Reasoning in Poker,” accepted for publication in the journal Cognitive Science.
To win at poker, players must exploit public signals from opponents, but using those signals usually makes the player’s own strategy vulnerable. The paper uses 1.75 million hands of online poker data to show that winning players successfully encrypt their strategy, using their own cards like the private key in public key cryptography. By doing so, they are able to solve the problem of exploiting others while remaining protected themselves and turn uncertainty, usually considered a liability, into an advantage.
A copy of the paper may be found on Dominic Albino’s ResearchGate page.
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.
On March 29, the department convened for an awards banquet that recognized the best among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty. This year’s award recipients are:
Omicron Delta Epsilon inductees:
Ryan Christopher Dodd
Liam Dorris
Matthew Gorman
Rebecca Hill
Shannon Lozier
Madeline Memoli
Alexander Rojas
Ryan Verano
Mingrui Zhou
Undergraduate Awards
Louis D. Traurig Scholarship
John Cizeski
Tyler DiBrino
Rebecca Hill
Zachary Lobman
Paul N. Taylor Memorial Prize
Steven Hashemi
Rockwood Q. P. Chin Scholarship
Matthew Edson
Harry Godfrey-Fogg
Colin Mortimer
Magda Soto-Enciso
Ross Mayer Scholarship
Matthew DeLeon
Julia & Harold Fenton and Yolanda & Augustine Sineti Scholarship
Alexander Rojas
Economics Department General Scholarship
Michelle Grieco
Kathryn A. Cassidy Economics Scholarship
Adam Vancisin
Mary F. Vlamis
Zihan Wang
Charles Triano Scholarship
Jenifer Repaci
Albert E. Waugh Scholarship
Timothy Brown
Graduate Awards
W. Harrison Carter Award
Michael DiNardi
Patralekha Ukil
Abraham Ribicoff Graduate Fellowship
Kevin Wood
Timothy A. and Beverly C. Holt Economics Fellowship
Huarui Jing
Chuang Li
Wensu Li
Shilpa Sethia
Rui Sun
Jinning Wang
Economics Department General Scholarship
Samantha Minieri
Best Third Year Paper Award
Mark McInerney
Zhonghui Zhang
Faculty Awards
Grillo Family Research Award
Grillo Family Teaching Award
Employee Appreciation Awards
Rosanne Fitzgerald – 20 years
Olivier Morand – 20 years
C. Paul Hallwood – 30 years
Congratulations to everyone!
Routledg
e has just published Contemporary Issues in Law and Economics by Thomas J. Miceli.
Law and economics is the field of study devoted to understanding laws and legal institutions using the tools of economic theory. This growing subject has become a mainstream area of study in both law schools and economics departments and this book explores the “law and economics” approach to some of the most interesting questions, issues, and topics in law, order, and justice.
Contemporary Issues in Law and Economics considers what economists call the “positive” analysis of the law – that is, using economic theory to explain the nature of the law as it actually exists. As part of this approach the author examines questions such as, what is the economic basis for the predominance of negligence rules in tort law? And, what is the explanation for the illegality of blackmail? Furthermore, another set of questions arises where the law seems to depart from the prescriptions of economic theory, and these issues are also examined in this volume. For example, the deeply rooted norm of proportionality between punishments and crimes, and the use of escalating penalties for repeat offenders, are both explored.
With self-contained chapters written in a non-technical style, this book offers a rigorous discussion of the above themes while remaining accessible to those without formal legal or economic training. It offers the ideal introduction to the field of law and economics while also providing a basis for students in more advanced courses.
https://www.routledge.com/Contemporary-Issues-in-Law-and-Economics/Miceli/p/book/9781138099760
Education blog Chalkbeat discusses the implications of school choice for residential segregation and discusses Professor Ross’s research on the topic:
Steve Ross’s recent paper on the effect of the No Child Left Behind Act on local property values with Steve Billings and Eric Brunner was just published in the first issue of 2018 in the Review of Economics and Statistics.
In this paper, they show that property values near failing schools sometimes actually increase in value consistent with individuals moving into those neighborhoods to take advantage of the enhanced school choice opportunities available when a family’s children are assigned to a failing school.
Professor Simon and Professor Furtado both had papers accepted at the Journal of Human Resources in the fall semester.
Professor Simon’s paper, “The Effects of Aggregate and Gender-Specific Labor Demand Shocks on Child Health,” coauthored with Marianne Page and Jessamyn Schaller, considers the relationship between local labor market conditions and child health. The paper shows that local (state level) labor market recessions that primarily affect women increase maternal time spent at home and improve child health, whereas recessions that affect men have the opposite effects. These patterns suggest that both maternal time and family income are important inputs to child health.
Professor Furtado’s paper, “Settling for Academia? H-1B Visas and the Career Choices of International Students in the United States,” coauthored with Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, examines whether international students respond to U.S. immigration policy when making career decisions. The authors find that international students who require H-1B visas to work in the United States became more likely to pursue careers in academia -a sector not subject to H-1B visa caps- after the H-1B visa cap was lowered in 2004.
The Journal of Human Resources is a leading journal in applied microeconomics. According to the 2016 ISI Journal Citation Reports, the journal has an impact factor of 4.047. The journal’s website reports an acceptance rate of 4 percent.
Professor Zhao’s paper “The Chinese Saving Rate: Long-Term Care Risks, Family Insurance, and Demographics” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Monetary Economics, a top macro journal.
In this article, Professor Zhao and his coauthor find that the combination of the risks faced by the elderly and the deterioration of family insurance due to the one-child policy is an important cause of the increase in China’s saving rate since 1980. This paper is the first major paper growing out of their research agenda on the Chinese economy and its implications for the rest of the world.
Professor Zhao’s article can be found at his website: https://sites.google.com/site/kaijackiezhao/research