Welcome to Thesis Corner! I recently interviewed fellow senior Emily Davis about her experience with the thesis project. Enjoy!
1)What is your thesis about?
My thesis is about how inequality increased in the US after the Great Recession. I looked at the impacts of monetary policy, specifically quantitative easing (QE), on wealth and income inequality.
2)How did you get the idea for this topic?
I got the idea for this topic after reading Aftershock by Robert Reich. In his book he talks about increasing wealth gap after the Great Recession through multiple lenses. From his research, I expanded on how QE played a role in this increase.
3)How does your analysis build off of what was already known prior?
I used research that either talked about increasing inequality after the Great Recession or how monetary policy tools increase impact the economy. Using this information I made connections between why inequality increased and how monetary policy contributed to that.
4)What were your results? Were they surprising?
My results were that QE led to increases in wealth inequality because the benefits of QE disproportionately spurred economic growth for the wealthy instead of the poor or middle class.
5)What was your biggest challenge during the process?
The biggest challenge during this process was reading literature that was beyond the scope of my education. Most research was targeted for those with PhD or masters in economics so it was difficult to read and apply these concepts.
6)If you could change something about your thesis experience, what would you change and why?
If I could change anything, I would have left more time between when I finished writing and when I turned it in. This would have left more time to edit the paper without having spent so much time with it right before. I think if I would have had a few weeks away from the paper then came back to it, I could have seen new areas where I could have improved it.
7)What was it like taking a thesis class as a double major? Did you take them during the same semester? Would you recommend taking a thesis class in the spring or fall?
Because economics thesis is in fall and I didn’t want to take two thesis classes at the same time, I was limited to only taking a business thesis in the spring. If somebody did take 2 thesis classes at the same time, I recommend finding a way to only take 3 classes that semester.