Highlighting new scholarly work, awards, grants and other news in the Oxy Economics department.

  • Associate Professor of Economics Brandon Lehr published a new article in the Public Finance Review studying the optimal design of social security when individuals evaluate losses of money or leisure time as larger than equivalently sized gains. The research shows that such loss aversion motivates a more generous social security system.
  • Associate Professor of Economics Bevin Ashenmiller participated in a panel titled "Social and behavioral considerations for recycling participation" for the Costs and Approaches for Municipal Solid Waste Recycling Programs Committee of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine.
  • Associate Professor of Economics Diana Ngo published a new article in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics studying the gender gap in STEM and how it widens during high school due both to differences in student choices and institutional barriers to accessing STEM education. 
  • Mary Lopez, professor of economics, was presented with the prestigious Graham L. Sterling Memorial Award, established in 1972 to recognize a faculty member with a distinguished record of teaching, service, and professional achievement.
  • Jorgen Harris, assistant professor of economics received the Linda and Tod White Teaching Prize, which is based on student nominations. 
  • This year's recipients of the Economics Department's awards are Leonard Tillson (Bennett Schwartz Award), Daria Undeland (Jim Halstead Award), Francesca Rodoni and Leonard Tillson (Betty Tracy Award) and Grace Luu (Robby Moore Award). Award descriptions can be found here

  • Associate Professor Andrew Jalil’s study, “Eating to save the planet:  Evidence from a randomized controlled trial using individual-level food purchase data,” appears on a list of the most cited articles in the journal Food Policy.
  • 18 students and Professor Jason Wong went to Germany as a part of ECON 312 (Political Economy of Sustainable Development: Case of Germany). The course began as an on-campus seminar in Spring 2021. After that, students spent three weeks traveling across Germany to learn about the country's political and economic structures, as well as environmental and sustainability topics.
  • This year's recipients of the Economics Department's awards are Ruth Schlosser (Bennett Schwartz Award and Jim Halstead Award), Ansel Jeffries (Robby Moore Award), and Ashley Muranaka-Toolsie (Betty Tracy Award). Award descriptions can be found here
  • Associate Professor Andrew Jalil and his coauthors published their new study, examining the effectiveness of an intervention to shift consumers towards more sustainable food choices, in Nature Food, one of the Nature journals.
  • Assistant Professor Jorgen Harris, along with coauthor Rhiannon Jerch, released a working paper with the Center for Growth and Opportunity. They examine the effect of receiving Temporary Protected Status on formerly undocumented immigrants, finding that legal immigration status led to sustained improvements in income, job quality, and homeownership.
  • Associate Professor Jesse Mora and Economics Major Mary Hancock’s research paper “The Impact of COVID-19 on Chinese trade and production: An empirical analysis of processing trade with Japan and the US” was published in the Journal of Asian Economics. Mary is the first Oxy student to publish a peer-reviewed academic paper with an Econ professor.
  • Assistant Professor Kevin William’s article "Foreign Students in College and the Supply of STEM Graduates" was published in the Journal of Labor Economics.
  • Assistant Professor Jesse Mora was awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.
  • Economics majors Aidan Garagic ’22 and Layla Devlin ’23 have been named as Occidental’s 2023-24 student Fulbright semi-finalists.
  • Associate Professor of Economics Andrew Jalil’s research on banking panics is cited in Christina Romer’s presidential address at the American Economics Association.
  • Economics alum Gail Ginell ’79 received the 2023 Alumni Seal Awards from the Occidental College Alumni Association.

  • A team of six Oxy students, including Andrew Masciarelli - an Economics major, Stephanie Enriquez Isais, Roshni Edwards, Dylan Herbert, Oscar Petter, and Peyton Resto, won third place in the Global Circular Challenge 2022 held at the London School of Economics on Dec 3 2022. Team Oxy was led by Economics Professor Jason Wong and supported by the Bennett Schwartz Fund.
  • Project management techniques are important for the successful completion of large projects. Associate Professor of Economics Daryl Ono’s  new article  in the Journal of Cost Analysis & Parametrics shows that microeconomic tools can be implemented to improve the probability of success of a project. “A Continuance of Marginal Cost Methodology in Project Change Management” uses statistical analysis to illustrate the effectiveness of this methodology.
  • Associate Professor of Economics Andrew Jalil appeared on California’s KCRW to discuss rising inflation in the United States. Professor Jalil explained that the Federal Reserve is striving for a “Goldilocks moment,” where they raise interest rates enough to slow inflation but not so much as to provoke a recession.
  • The Economics Department's work in the 2021-2022 academic year to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion is summarized in the year-end report.
  • Assistant Professor of Economics Jorgen Harris published "Male judges are more likely to hire women as clerks after working with female judges" in The Conversation describing his research on gender and employment in the judiciary. The article highlights a  paper  by Harris and his coauthors, published in the Journal of Labor Economics.
  • Woody Studenmund, Laurence de Rycke Professor of Economics, retires after 52 years at Oxy.
  • Professor of Economics Lesley Chiou was awarded the 2022 Antitrust Writing Awards by Concurrences Review for her article with co-author Avigail Kifer, "Free Can Make Cents: How to Think About 'Free' in Competitive Markets." The article examines when firms may offer products priced for free and how do firms compete in markets where prices are set to zero?
  • Associate Professor of Economics Andrew Jalil was interviewed by Marketplace about the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate hikes and the likelihood of recession.
  • Assistant Professor of Economics Jorgen Harris   has a new article in Labour Economics! In “Do Wages Fall when Women Enter an Occupation?”, Professor Harris finds that increases in women's work and education in the second half of the 20th century led to big changes in women’s representation in many high-education occupations. 
  • Using a randomized control trial in India, Assistant Professor of Economics Jason Wong and co-authors find that vouchers of equal value increase household willingness to pay for solar lanterns more than cash transfers and microfinance schemes. “Increasing microsolar technology adoption: Efficacy of vouchers, cash transfers, and microfinance,” published in Energy Economics, demonstrates that affordability is a prime obstacle and supports the use of voucher-like incentive programs to encourage transitional technologies.
  • Assistant Professor of Economics Jesse Mora’s new article in Empirical Economics takes a new approach to defining how country-level exports grow. “Export Growth Drivers and Economic Development” shows that country-level export growth will depend on five growth drivers (comparative advantage changes, product demand growth, country-level growth, global growth, and growth in destinations reached).
  • Catlin Hedeman '21 publishes her honors thesis "The Effects of Increased Access to Mail-In and Absentee Voting Due to COVID-19 on Voter Turnout in the 2020 Presidential Election" in the Undergraduate Economic Review.

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