Prof. Ross in Washington Post Blog

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rossProfessor Ross‘s work on mortgage lending was featured in the Washington Post’s Storyline Blog.

Read it here.

Professor Ross’s work finds large differences in the price of credit paid by African-Americans and Hispanics compared to white borrowers that cannot be explained by traditional underwriting variables.  These differences primarily arise due to differences in loan pricing across lenders, rather differential treatment of whites and minority borrowers at the same lender. Further, these differences are concentrated among borrowers from locations that have high poverty rates and relatively lower education borrowers

Couch organizes Conference at AARP

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couch

Couch organizes Conference at AARP

Professor Couch along with his collaborators, Julie Zissimopoulos (USC) and Mary Daly (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco), organized a one-day conference on Social Insurance and Lifecycle Events Among Older Americans held at the national headquarters of AARP in Washington, D.C. on December 5th.  Researchers from major universities, federal agencies, consulting firms, and think tanks made presentations.  About 80 people attended the event including representatives of two Congressional committees, multiple federal agencies, several philanthropic organizations, the NIA, and numerous universities and think tanks.  The papers presented will be considered for inclusion in a special issue of Research on Aging.  The event was supported by a grant from AARP to the University of Connecticut.

Latest RePEc Rankings- Economics is Up

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oakleaf1According to the latest RePEc rankings, the UConn Department of Economics is currently ranked 55 out of 491 U.S. institutions. This latest increase in ranking is a true reflection of the university’s recent investment towards national prominence. With continuing hard work from faculty and students, we expect our rise to continue in the future.

See the rankings here: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.usecondept.html

Prof. Ross’s research mentioned in Slate Magazine

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rossAn article on the American Melting Pot in Slate Magazine on October 31st discusses one of Professor Ross‘s recent working papers.  In this paper, Professors Ananat, Fu and Ross find that African-Americans benefit less in terms of earnings for working in locations with lots of economic activity.  Exposure to economic activity allows workers and firms to learn from each other and raises productivity and thus wages.  However, these spillovers appear to accrue along racial lines so that African-Americans do not benefit from a vibrant work location when most of the individuals working in that location are white.

Prof. Hallwood’s Press Release

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Prof. Paul Hallwood’s (with Professor Ronald MacDonald of University of Glasgow) Press Release on Wednesday of his position paper (submitted to the Smith Commission) outlining a new fiscal settlement for Scotland – following September’s Independence Referendum – had within 24-hours received widespread coverage in the Scottish Press; five newspapers covered it in six reports or editorials. The headlines of the news pieces were: “No Scots bail-out by Westminster, academics warn” (Daily Express), “Pressure mounts on Labour to review tax proposals” and an editorial “Party labours with its powers plan” (The Herald), “Scotland should have to wait 15 years for a bailout it its spends too much” (The Scotsman), “Tight rein on spending needed” (Aberdeen Press and Journal), and “Put up and Shut up” (Daily Record).

Prof. Hallwood’s Position Paper on Rearranging Scottish Finances Released

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hallwoodAn excerpt from the Press Release is below.

A copy has been lodged with the Smith Commission on Scottish finances

 

NEWS RELEASE

22 October 2014

WHAT IS THE RIGHT BUDGET CONSTRAINT FOR SCOTLAND?

An analysis by Professor Paul Hallwood (University of Connecticut) and Professor Ronald MacDonald (University of Glasgow)

 

Highlighted recommendations include:

  • Block grants from Westminster should not be elastic in the sense that if the Scottish Parliament cannot finance its chosen spending level out of the existing block grant and own-sourced taxes, the block grant is not automatically or quickly increased.
  • Any extra taxes raised by Scotland are not shared with Westminster.
  • If the Scottish Parliament’s tax policy led to a smaller tax base (a shrinking economy), it should have to live with that during the extended period of non-adjustment.
  • Borrowing by the Scottish Government should be regulated.

 

The fiscal design proposals of all the main Scottish political parties are examined against these criteria. Only those of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Conservatives are shown to be workable.

CHOICE reviews Prof. Hallwood

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hallwood[1]CHOICE magazine reviewed Professor Hallwood’s Economics of the Oceans: Rights, Rents and Resource, Routledge, Oxford, 2014. It awards the book a “highly recommended” saying: “This unique study combines ecological concepts and neoclassical economic models with case studies to analyze critical problems relating to the oceans. Using the perspectives of law and economics, Hallwood (Univ. of Connecticut) provides both historical context and a discussion of how conflict resolution institutions may help solve problems pertaining to oceans. The book’s parts describe the study’s topical domain: historic wrecks, modern pirates; enclosure; fisheries economics; fisheries regime formation; marine mammals; coral reefs, marine protected areas, wetlands; pollution; and minerals. Each part includes one to four chapters. In every instance, the author couches problems in economic terms: free rider problems relate to maritime piracy; microeconomics concepts apply to resolving maritime boundaries; the Coase theorem applies to fisheries management.”

Sining Wang at IFREE

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IFREE-logoAs other graduate students battle the winter snow, PhD student Sining Wang will be spending a week in January in Southern California. Sining has been selected to participate in IFREE’s Twentieth Annual Visiting Graduate Student Workshop in Experimental Economics. IFREE is the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics and was established in 1997 by Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Prize winner for his pioneering research bringing experimental methods to economics. The workshop will be held at Chapman University, Vernon Smith’s academic home. In the week-long session, Sining will participate in experiments, learn about experimental results and techniques, and have a chance to present his own research to leading faculty in experimental economics.

Prof. Agüero on Leave

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agueroProfessor Jorge Agüero is spending this academic year at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the leading source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Professor Agüero will be part of the visiting scholar program at IDB, a program created to address the Bank’s growing demand for knowledge to support the design of public policies and operational loans in public policy areas to prevent and reduce violence in Latin America and the Caribbean. Professor Agüero will contribute to this goal through his research on domestic violence in the region.