Kai Zhao

Recent PhD publishes in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

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Recent PhD graduate Fei Zou has published “Does Early Retirement Really Benefit Women?” in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

This paper grew out of Fei’s PhD dissertation completed at UConn (2019) under the supervision of Professor Kai Zhao. It is a joint work with Dr. Hyun Lee (former UConn faculty), and Professor Zhao.

In this paper, the authors quantitatively evaluate the welfare consequences of China’s gender-specific mandatory retirement policy using a calibrated overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets. They find that while it is intended to relieve women from work earlier and to provide them with more years of public pensions benefits than men, early mandatory retirement reduces welfare for women.

The published version of this paper can be found at:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122000452

Econ PhD Alumnus is Chief Economist for Macro Policy at the CEA

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Aaron Cooke, a 2018 PhD graduate of the UConn Department of Economics, recently became the Chief Economist for Macroeconomic Policy at the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

The CEA, an agency within the Executive Office of the President, is charged with offering the President objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international economic policy.

Aaron earned his PhD degree from the Department of Economics in 2018, specializing in macroeconomics and public policy. His PhD dissertation, “Three Essays on Wealth and Income Inequality”, studied the causes of U.S. wealth and income inequality, and was completed under the supervision of Professor Kai Zhao.

Prior to joining the CEA, Aaron was an economist at the Office of Management and Budget.