Thesis Corner: Tesha Shalon

A few days ago I had a talk with graduating senior and former Sound Economics writer, Tesha Shalon about her thesis on the impact of low cost carriers (LCCs) in the domestic airline market. In her thesis, she compares the profit and revenue of these airline companies to legacy carriers, who prospered during the airline regulatory era before the late 1970s. Tesha examines the effect of these LCCs on the profit and revenue of legacy carriers, while analyzing the extent to which LCCs’ profit compares to that of legacy carriers. Since deregulation in 1978, airline carriers have been forced to Continue reading Thesis Corner: Tesha Shalon

Chinese Law May Show Trend Towards Tighter Regulation of Microtransactions

As I touched on in a previous article, the market for digital items in video games is complex, lucrative, and rapidly changing. One particularly notable change has just come into effect. Last year, a Chinese law was introduced that would require video game publishers to release the item drop rates from in-game “loot boxes”, and as of May 1st this law is now in play. The “loot box”-based model of microtransactions has gained tremendous popularity among video game developers in the last handful of years, with games like DOTA 2, League of Legends, Overwatch, and others making extensive use of Continue reading Chinese Law May Show Trend Towards Tighter Regulation of Microtransactions

Thesis Corner: Annie Vela

Alex Shaw (AS): Annie, first, what was your thesis about? Annie Vela (AV):  My thesis was about US government changing allocation of funding from public prisons to public education. AS: How did you arrive at this topic? AV: When Kate (Stirling) asked us to start thinking of a topic over the summer, I started thinking about which of my economics classes I really enjoyed my Urban Economics class with Bruce Mann, which I loved. I’m very interested in how economic policy tangibly affects actual people. So I thought about topics that focused on people, and education is super important to Continue reading Thesis Corner: Annie Vela

Thesis Corner: Predicting College Attendance

So three weeks ago, I spoke with Ian Hughes about his thesis, titled: Identifying Socioeconomic Indicators of College Attendance with Classification Trees Much of Ian’s research centered around intergenerational income mobility and barriers to it. Some of the research showed that “low-income students are subject to less college preparation and lower test scores because of their financial situations”, which contributes to more difficulty in using education as a route out of poverty.  Much of the literature surrounding wealth, race, and parental education in connection with children’s college attendance is well established, so Ian included some other characteristics that have not Continue reading Thesis Corner: Predicting College Attendance