{"id":1311,"date":"2015-02-09T13:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T20:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=1311"},"modified":"2015-02-09T16:16:03","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T23:16:03","slug":"thesis-corner-taylor-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2015\/02\/09\/thesis-corner-taylor-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Thesis Corner | Taylor Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those of you who read Sound Economics <\/i>last year might remember that in the spring we had a special column dubbed \u201cThesis\u00a0Corner\u201d. This semester we are bringing it back and this time we are featuring theses written by the class of 2015. If there are any seniors that you would\u00a0like to see on the Thesis Corner, or if you are\u00a0an Economics senior that would like to be, get in touch with me\u00a0at cehoover@pugetsound.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our first thesis on the\u00a0column\u00a0is by Taylor Smith, who also happens to be the ASAPS Director of Business Services. You can come see him present his thesis,\u00a0along with all the other senior theses at the Economics Department Senior Thesis Poster Session, this Thursday from 5pm to 6:30pm in the Rotunda.<\/strong> There will be food, research in\u00a0abundance, and good times. This is designed to be a fun and entertaining event, friends and family are welcome! Topics range from football,\u00a0sustainability, the water shortage\u00a0and food deserts in California, and the music industry, so it\u2019s\u00a0guaranteed\u00a0to be a great place for people planning on writing a thesis in the\u00a0future to get ideas. Come support the latest round of thesis\u00a0writers\u00a0and see all the research that is happening on campus! And without further delay, here is the first\u00a0installation\u00a0of this year\u2019s Thesis Corner, “Where has the American Dream Gone? <\/span>A look into the Income Inequality Cycle in the United States<\/span>.”<\/p>\n

How would you describe your thesis in a\u00a0brief sentence?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a meta analysis of inequality in America examining the inequality cycle\u00a0and examining \u201cIs the American dream still a thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

And what inspired your interest for this topic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0always\u00a0very interested in inequality. It\u2019s a very\u00a0interesting\u00a0topic, it\u2019s always covered in the news and all that kind of stuff but I\u2019ve always been very frustrated by the lack of action around it. Everyone\u2019s aware of it, everyone talks about it. No one actually wants to do anything about it so I think that\u2019s why I choose to do this topic and there was so much information on it, which was\u00a0a blessing and a curse.<\/p>\n

What kind of qualifiers did you find made a source\u00a0helpful to you in your research?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For my topic, it was very interesting because there are really only a few central sources that I needed.\u00a0There are few people that have done the regressions with all the tax data over the years, which is helpful that\u00a0there are only a few\u00a0because it\u2019s really hard to mess it up. It\u2019s one set of data, everyone knows it, it\u2019s reliable, and so it was easy to look at those core sources and off of those everyone had written about that\u00a0so I was able to draw not only from those central sources, but the\u00a0secondary sources after that. Really my job was made very easy. I knew I wasn\u2019t going to do a data analysis because I don\u2019t have the time to do regressions on tax data going back to the beginning of the\u00a01900\u2019s. So that\u00a0was\u00a0 my criteria\u00a0for a source was, usually having something to do with those central data sets.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0terms of the importance of your findings, what would you say to someone whom didn\u2019t necessarily have an understanding of economics?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good question. I found three causes of income inequality. There are an infinite causes of income inequality and down on the micro-level each individuals has a unique reason why everyones’ incomes are the way they are, but\u00a0on the macro-level\u00a0I found three. There\u2019s financialization, which is the move from long term gains\u00a0to short term gains, so all they care about now is quarter to quarter, and I think that\u2019s an easy concept to understand. Shareholders want quarter to quarter gains\u00a0and don\u2019t really care about how a company does in the long run, though they should care about\u00a0a company does in the long run, but that\u2019s just the way the\u00a0financial sector shifted. Then there\u2019s taxes.\u00a0Everyone understands taxes, everyone has to pay taxes, and looking at how taxes have dropped since the 1970\u2019s, that\u2019s really when the income inequality cycle bottomed out and then has come back up in the 70\u2019s when the tax cuts began and you see income inequality start to rise again. And finally social change and with that specifically is the access to education. One of the biggest reasons income inequality was able to\u00a0to\u00a0slope off was WWII and the GI bill.\u00a0People had access to higher education and now higher education is so out of reach, as we all know. So I think those three concepts that I found,\u00a0while they are rooted in economics, everyone understands those and I think that made my thesis very accessible.<\/p>\n

What kind of advice do you have for junior\u00a0Economics majors going into their theses in the fall?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

You have to start thinking about it early. I had two ideas in my head at the spring\u00a0semester last year. I either wanted to do income inequality, which I ended up doing, or I was going to look at the economy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but in doing some initial research over the summer I couldn\u2019t really find anything on the economy of the DRC and so it was really more about the access to the data\u00a0and sources. So have an idea, do a little bit of research, and don\u2019t\u00a0stress yourself out. The thesis advisor is there to help guide you through\u00a0the way. When you show up on day one\u00a0you don\u2019t have to have your thesis already done, you just need to have a little nugget and keep an open mind because if you already do all the research and have your topic set in stone, then it\u2019s not really going to be a journey. It\u2019ll just be you regurgitating all the things you learned, where as when I started I didn\u2019t really have an opinion on income inequality so I was able to let the sources take me on a journey, which was cool.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to come to the Department Poster Session on Thursday!<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of you who read Sound Economics last year might remember that in the spring we had a special column dubbed \u201cThesis\u00a0Corner\u201d. This semester we are bringing it back and this time we are featuring theses written by the class of 2015. If there are any seniors that you would\u00a0like to see on the Thesis Corner, or if you are\u00a0an Economics senior that would like to be, get in touch with me\u00a0at cehoover@pugetsound.edu. Our first thesis on the\u00a0column\u00a0is by Taylor Smith, who also happens to be the ASAPS Director of Business Services. You can come see him present his thesis,\u00a0along Continue reading Thesis Corner | Taylor Smith<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1320,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}