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: Zander Biro

Alex Shaw (AS): First off, what is your thesis topic? Zander Biro (ZB): My thesis topic is essentially looking at developing social capital while in the institution of higher education and how the role of alcohol can actually be beneficial in lowering relationship costs in order to establish a more broad base social network. AS: I’ve heard there is a bit of a story from how your thesis started to what it ended up being, could you elaborate? ZB: It has definitely been quite the process. Starting in the fall, it started very broad as everyone says it will, and Continue reading Thesis Corner: Zander Biro

An Outside look In

Authors: Tesha Shalon and Connor Lennon Often times here, on this blog and elsewhere in the discipline, economics can be a little insular. We’re happy to take our models and insights to how our discipline applies elsewhere, but rarely do we bring in other disciplines to provide an opinion back. So we decided to ask non-economics professors and majors to tell us what they thought economics was. We posed a two part question to the group: 1.) What, in your own words, is economics? and 2.) Is economics useful, why or why not? Without further ado, these are their responses: Continue reading An Outside look In

New Faculty Interview: Lea Fortmann

As promised, this week we have an interview with Lea Fortmann, new Assistant Professor for the Economics Department. (If you missed last week’s interview, here is a link to the interview with our department’s other newest member, Peter Sullivan.) Where did go you go to college? Most recently I graduated with my Ph D. from Ohio State university so there I was in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics and prior to that I did a Master’s at the University of Washington in the Evans School of Public Affairs. So there I got my PMA and I did my undergrad Continue reading New Faculty Interview: Lea Fortmann

New Faculty Interview: Peter Sullivan

The Economics department this year welcomes two new members to the faculty. This week we have an exclusive interview with one of the two new Assistant Professors. Hired for his background in Macroeconomics, here is Peter Sullivan. So where did you go to college? “University of New Hampshire. I did all my degrees there.” And how many degrees was that? “The Bachelor of Arts in Economics, the Master of Scienc- or Arts in Economics, so the B.A., M.A., and Ph D. The program I did for the Ph D. gets you a Master’s degree after ten months.” What brought you to the Continue reading New Faculty Interview: Peter Sullivan