Professor Kenneth Couch of the University of Connecticut Department of Economics recently received Federal funding of his research regarding possible adjustments of Social Security Retirement Benefits for differential longevity.
The population of the United States is living longer but gains in longevity have been unequal across income groups and this affects lifetime benefit receipt over successive generations of Americans. Funding from the Social Security Administration supports research by Couch and his collaborators into potential approaches for adjusting benefits to account for these changes.
Professor Oskar Harmon has been invited to serve a three-year term on the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education, ending December 31, 2020.
The Committee organizes the program for the annual Conference on Teaching and Economic Education (CTREE) and the Economic Education session for the annual ASSA meetings that goes into the AER P&P.
Professor Ross’s paper “What Drives Racial and Ethnic Differences in High-Cost Mortgages? The Role of High-Risk Lenders” was just published in the Review of Financial Studies, a Top 3 Finance Journal.
This paper documents the existence of large differences in the cost of credit for minority borrowers, and the fact that most of the racial differences arise across lenders, rather than being driven by lenders who treat equally qualified minority borrowers differently than white borrowers. The paper shows that these effects are primarily driven by lenders whose loans tended to have very high default rates during the crisis.
Professor Richard Langlois was quoted in an article in the Stamford Advocate, commenting about the Federal Trade Commission response to a possible acquisition by Stamford-based chemical company Tronox .
Congratulations to the undergraduate students from the Storrs campus who took part in the College Fed Challenge!
Tyler DiBrino, Gabriel Hack, Max Karsanow, Ari Nishimura-Gasparian, John Roberts, Alexander Rojas, Joaquin Sanchez, and Timothy Sullivan all participated on behalf of the University of Connecticut – Storrs in the 2017 Fed Challenge held at the Boston Fed on Friday, November 3rd. The students, and their faculty advisors Derek Johnson and Owen Svalestad, are shown at left in Boston.
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.”
A recent working paper by co-authors Michele Baggio (UConn faculty, Department of Economics), Alberto Chong (Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Department of Economics), and Sungoh Kwon (UConn graduate student, Department of Economics), has been featured in the Washington Post:
Alcoholic beverage sales fell by 15 percent following the introduction of medical marijuana laws in a number of states, according to a new working paper by …
And in Mother Jones magazine:
Back in 2009 I wrote a piece for the magazine about marijuana legalization. One of the things I learned is that a key question about the effect of legalization is whether marijuana and alcohol are substitutes or complements. If alcohol and marijuana are substitutes, it means that higher sales of marijuana will likely produce lower […]http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/12/new-study-says-marijuana-legalization-reduces-alcohol-use/
We use data on purchases of alcoholic beverages in grocery, convenience, drug, or mass distribution stores in US counties for 2006-2015 to study the link between medical marijuana laws and alcohol consumption and focus on settling the debate between the substitutability or complementarity between marijuana and alcohol. To do this we exploit the differences in the timing of the of marijuana laws among states and find that these two substances are substitutes. Counties located in MML states reduced monthly alcohol sales by 15 percent. Our findings are robust to border counties analysis, a placebo effective dates for MMLs in the treated states, and falsification tests using sales of pens and pencils.
This paper discusses a model for the restructuring of national economies for the purpose of achieving optimal growth under conditions of decreased energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The discussion combines input–output and factorial-decomposition models, and applies projected gradient and factor analysis to find the optimal structural changes that serve all three goals. A comparative analysis of the economies of the United States and China, including opportunities for cooperative restructuring, serves as a case study.
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.
The Early College Experience (ECE) Economics Program presented a workshop on October 31 for Connecticut high school teachers offering Principles of Micro and Macro Economics (Econ 1201 and 1202) and Essentials of Economics (Econ 1000) in their high schools. The economics program now has certified 39 instructors as either Adjunct Professors of Economics or Preceptors in Economics. Twenty-nine of them choose to attend the workshop.
The teachers were instructed on the economics of climate change by Wensu Li, one of UCONN’s knowledgeable graduate students who discussed what one could teach in the principles classes about climate change. Professor Paul Tomolonis, Assistant Professor of Economics, Western New England University and Adjunct Professor of Economics University of Connecticut, reflected on earnings management with the workshop participants. He used earnings managment as an example of misallocation of resources. Professor Stephen L. Ross, Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut described the importance of distinguishing between permanent shocks and transitory shocks to the macro economy and the day was concluded with Professor Dennis Heffley, Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut, Emeritus who addressed the workshop on the teaching of health economics at the principles level.
Finally, three of the teachers (Ms. Vancil, Shelton, Ms. Pelling, West Hartford, and Mr. Staffaroni from New Canaan) spent a few minutes over lunch to shared one of their learning experiences with their colleagues gained while attending the Joint Council on Economic Education Conference in New York City in early October.
UCONN ECE is a concurrent enrollment program that allows motivated high school students to take UCONN courses at their high schools for both high school and college credit. Every course taken through UCONN ECE is equivalent to the same course at the University of Connecticut. Students benefit by taking college courses in a setting that is both familiar and conducive to learning. High school instructors who have been certified through the University of Connecticut serve as adjunct faculty members and teach UCONN ECE courses. Established in 1955, UCONN ECE is the nation’s longest running concurrent enrollment program and is accredited by The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships.
Professor Oskar Harmon has been invited to serve a three-year term on the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Education, ending December 31, 2020.
Tyler DiBrino, Gabriel Hack, Max Karsanow, Ari Nishimura-Gasparian, John Roberts, Alexander Rojas, Joaquin Sanchez, and Timothy Sullivan all participated on behalf of the University of Connecticut – Storrs in the 2017 Fed Challenge held at the Boston Fed on Friday, November 3rd. The students, and their faculty advisors Derek Johnson and Owen Svalestad, are shown at left in Boston.
