Professors Oskar Harmon and Steven Lanza presented a paper “Factors Contributing to Differences in State Economic Outcomes over the Great Recession” at the 42nd Annual Conference of the Eastern Economic Association in Washington DC, Feb 26, 2016.
The paper employs a Cox Proportional Hazard model to analyze duration of state recession and recovery spells during the Great Recession.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Early College Experience (ECE) program at the University of Connecticut.
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. High school instructors who have been certified through the University of Connecticut serve as adjunct faculty members and teach UConn ECE courses.
Since about 29% of UConn ECE students continue on to the University of Connecticut, the Research & Development team is able to track their progress. UConn ECE students are more likely to graduate on time and to hold higher first and second semester GPA’s than those students who did not participate in the program.
The Department of Economics has participated in the ECE program since the early 1990s with a small number of instructors (two in 2006). Today that number has grown to 35 certified Economics instructors offering all of the principals classes to students in 25 high schools across the state. The Economics ECE coordinator is Professor William Alpert.
Huanan Xu, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics, has accepted a tenure track faculty position in the Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics at Indiana University South Bend.
The Leighton School offers M.B.A. degrees as well as other Masters level programs. IU South Bend has an enrollment of roughly 7,000 undergraduate and 550 graduate students.
Huanan’s thesis committee consists of Ken Couch (Chair), Delia Furtado, and Rob Fairlie (Cal-Santa Cruz).
Matthew Ross, an Economics graduate student at UConn, has just accepted a three-year post-doctoral position at Ohio State University.
The position is part of a project jointly funded by the NSF and the NIH. Principal Investigators for the project include Joshua Hawley (John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State), Julia Lane (Wagner School of Public Affairs at NYU), Jason Owen-Smith (Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan) and Bruce Weinberg (Department of Economics, Ohio State University). Ross’s thesis committee consists of Ken Couch (Chair), Delia Furtado, and Subhash Ray.
Professor Ross’s research has been featured in a Washington Post blog post: “How segregated schools turn kids into criminals“.
The research, with coauthors Dave Deming and Steve Billings, examines youth crime in Charlotte, NC, and finds that having more kids of similar age, gender and race nearby raises the likelihood of arrest, but only if those kids attend the same school. Further, these kids are more likely to be arrested together as criminal partners if they live very nearby and attend the same school.
These effects are largest when these youth have been in the same neighborhood for a longer time and if they attended the same elementary school. These findings suggest that neighborhood spillovers in criminal activity are likely caused by social interactions that arise within schools, and that school level interventions may be effective in mitigating neighborhood level clusters of crime.
Professor Oskar Harmon has arranged for the screening of the film “Agents of Change” at the Stamford Campus (2/24 at 6:15 pm) and at the Konover Auditorium on the Storrs Campus (2/25 at 4:30 pm).
Admission is free, open to the public and will have a reception and post screening discussion with the co-producer Abby Ginzberg and writer Ibram Kendi. Also on 2/25 at the Storrs Campus, Abby will present a seminar on documentary film making, and Ibram will present a seminar on racism and diversity.
The film premiered Feb 11 at The 24th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival in Los Angeles, and won The Best Documentary Award
http://www.agentsofchangefilm.com
The event is co-sponsored by 12 UConn groups: Institute for African American Studies, Human Rights Institute, American Studies, Dodd Center, AAUP, Humanities Institute, El Instituto: The Institute of Latino, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, Digital Media Center, UCONN Stamford, UCONN Student Government Association, The Connecticut Information Technology Institute and School of Business, and the UConn Stamford Economics Club.
Professor Steve Ross’s paper “The Vulnerability of Minority Homeowners in the Housing Boom and Bust” with Patrick Bayer and Fernando Ferreira was the lead article in the February issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.
In this paper, they find that African-American and Hispanic borrowers have substantially higher delinquency and foreclosure rates during the financial crisis even after controlling for detailed borrower and loan risk factors. These differences are concentrated heavily among homebuyers who purchased their home very near the peak of the market, even after controlling for negative equity associated with the timing of the purchase. For refinance mortgages, they find a similar pattern linked to when the home was purchased, rather than the date of the refinance mortgage.
They argue that the findings are consistent with higher risk borrowers, especially higher risk minority borrowers, being drawn into the market during the housing market expansion.
Professor Richard Langlois was recently asked by a staffer of the UK House of Lords to contribute written testimony on an inquiry into “online platforms and the EU Digital Single Market.”
They wanted to hear about the concept of dynamic competition, and provided a set of questions to answer.
The testimony has now been published on Parliament’s website.
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rofessor Nishith Prakash’s work has been featured recently in several publications.
An article that he co-authored with Marc Rockmore and Yogesh Uppal on The Economic Consequences of Accused Politicians in India has been published in the Centre for Economic Policy Research’s policy portal, Vox.
His work with co-author Sanjeev Kumar on the possible unintended consequences of an alcohol ban meant to stem violence against women has been published in several locations, including The Times of India
Blanket alcohol ban in Bihar won’t stop violence against women
and has been picked up by the Huffington Post.
Professor Steven Lanza was quoted in an article in the Wall Street Journal, commenting about the possible effects of the move of General Electric’s headquarters to Boston.
The article is online at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/connecticut-licks-its-wounds-after-losing-ge-to-boston-1452720267