CSU Economics - Spring 2021 Newsletter

CSU ECONOMICS SPRING 2021

Together, we thrive!

Masks, social distancing, weekly COVID testing, Zoom meetings galore – this semester was one we won't soon forget. But we pulled together and made it through every challenge with purposeful learning, impactful scholarship, and meaningful engagement along the way.

In this issue:

Message to the Class of 2021
Department Accolades
Faculty Research Highlights
New Undergraduate Courses
Online B.A. Program
Spring 2021 Seminar Highlights
Student Leadership in Economics
List of Spring 2021 Economics Graduates

MESSAGE TO THE CLASS OF '21

Department Accolades

Faculty Recognition

CLA Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award: Professor Stephan Weiler
CLA Outstanding Service Award: Professor Bob Kling

Graduate Student Awards

Dissertation Fellowships: Kit Deming, Austin Landini
Graduate Research Assistantship: Teresa Perry & Dave Mushinski
Outstanding Graduate Researcher: Ashish Sedai
Outstanding Graduate Teacher: Kelly Lee
L.S. & Chuen-mei Fan Graduate Scholarship: Adam Walke
Terry Ozawa Graduate Economics Fellowship: Vedanshi Nevatia
ΟΔΕ Best Paper Award: ex aequo Brendan Brundage and Vinicius Cicero

Read about this year's award winners here.

Undergraduate Awards

Outstanding Undergraduate Student: America Rios-Martinez
Alok Mehta Scholarship: Uriel Bonilla
Alumni Scholarship: Claire Sullivan
Ben W. Garcia Scholarship: Paul DeCelles
Ed A. Hewett Scholarship: Uriel Bonilla
Outstanding ΟΔΕ Undergraduate Paper: Juan Morales

Read about this year's award winners here.

Omicron Delta Epsilon (ΟΔΕ) Economics Honor Society 2020-21 Inductees

Reilly Blakeslee
Macey Dodd
Nicholas Geyer
Nishant Gokal
David Kuharski
Angela Mensah
John Singleton
Mya Wilson

Read about new ΟΔΕ members here.

Faculty Research Highlights

Terry Iverson, "Carbon Taxes and Climate Commitment with Non-Constant Time Preference," The Review of Economic Studies

Ed Barbier and Jo Burgess Barbier, "Sustainable Use of the Environment, Planetary Boundaries and Market Power," Sustainability

Anita Alves Pena, "How Vulnerable are U.S. Crop Workers?: Evidence from Representative Worker Data and Implications for COVID-19," Journal of Agromedicine

Ramaa Vasudevan, "The evolution of China's monetary policy: on the horns of a dilemma," Review of Keynesian Economics

Stephan Weiler, “It’s a Wonderful Loan: Community Banking and Regional Economic Resilience,” Journal of Banking and Finance

Daniele Tavani, "Consumption Externalities and Growth: Theory and Evidence for the United States," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Ray Miller, "Demographic Transition, Human Capital and Economic Growth in China," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

Guy Numa, "The Development of Financial Economics in France between the Mid-1970s and the Early 1980s: Import or Rediscovery?" History of Political Economy

New ECON Courses - Coming Fall 2021

ECON 181 - Introduction to the Economics Major This 1 credit course is designed to welcome students into the major and orient you to economics as a discipline, the specifics of the major at CSU, and career options after graduation. One important goal of this class is to create a better sense of community among our undergraduate students and connect you to faculty in the department early on in your college careers.

ECON 281 - Mathematical Modeling in Economics This 3 credit course is designed to prepare economics majors for the application of various mathematical techniques to the study of economic issues. An alternative to MATH 141, this course covers essential math methods and applications for economics including spaces and sets, functions, graphs, equilibrium models, derivatives, comparative statics, unconstrained and constrained optimization, and integration. (Prereq: MATH 117 and ECON 202)

ECON 381 - Environmental and Climate Change Economics This 3 credit class is an important upper level addition to our departmental offerings in the area of environmental economics with an emphasis on climate change. The course examines how economic approaches can be used to address economy and environmental degradation, focusing on global warming and climate change policy. Basic environmental economic concepts and relationships are covered, such as environmental externalities, valuing environmental benefits and costs, market-based instruments and regulations for environmental management, efficient and equitable environmental policy, and management of trans-boundary environmental problems. (Prereq: ECON 202 or ECON 240)

Online B.A.

While many courses have been remote or hybrid this past year, Economics is unique because we partner with CSU Online to offer our bachelor's degree program entirely online!

Since our program launched in 2015, 31 students have earned their CSU degree in Economics online. This year alone, we have 21 intended graduates. That's incredible!

Courses newly available online:

ECON 101 Social Issues in Economics
ECON 212 Racial Inequality & Discrimination

Reminder: On-campus students can also enroll in online courses over the summer! There is space available and still time to register before the summer term starts.

Learn More

Spring 2021 Seminar Highlights

The spring seminar series featured 8 prominent economists from around the globe - including AFL-CIO Chief Economist William Spriggs who presented on economic modeling of racial discrimination during our Graduate Student Visit Day. Read the recap here >>

Global Conversations

In spite (or, perhaps, because) of the worldwide pandemic, we were able to virtually bring in two speakers from Berlin, Germany! Dr. Dorothea Kuebler from the WZB Social Science Center presented on black markets for online booking systems, and Dr. Michael Jakob from the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons & Climate Change presented on distributional impacts of climate policy.

View Recordings

STUDENT LEADERSHIP IN ECONOMICS

Economics Student Leadership Council (ESLC)

ESLC is the undergraduate student voice in the Economics Department. These students provide leadership and support of engagement activities for Economics majors and minors. Any Economics student (major or minor) is welcome to get involved with ESCL by contacting Faculty Advisor Steven.Shulman@colostate.edu. Thank you to the 2020-21 leadership council members for your leadership & service to the department!

Undergraduate Women in Economics (UWE)

This year, senior Mya Wilson and Professor Alex Bernasek worked together to reactivate Undergraduate Women in Economics (UWE), a group that works to close the gender gap in economics. UWE hosted a Women in Economics Alumni Panel on April 1, bringing in alumnae Adiam Tesfaselassie and Kristen Malloy, and Ph.D. candidate Sarah Small. Learn more from this recent segment of CTV11's "Humans of CSU."

The Association of Graduate Economists (AGE)

The Association of Graduate Economists (AGE) is a democratic forum for addressing concerns of MA, PhD, and other affiliated levels of students within the Department of Economics at CSU. Message from AGE President Débora Nunes:

"Despite the many challenges that the Spring semester brought us, we’re very proud to say that the Association of Graduate Economists (AGE) did some intense organizing this semester, uniting with a wide front of graduate students at CSU to push for direct changes in our working conditions. Members of AGE have joined together with graduate student workers across campus to form an independent organizing group, the Graduate Worker Organizing Cooperative (GWOC), to press the university’s administration to end graduate student fees and improve graduate workers' compensation overall. This organizing follows recent research by the Dean and the Associate Dean of the Graduate School highlighting major inequities between CSU and its peer universities as it relates to fees and compensation. The report includes a number of recommendations to deal with these gaps and also develops a multi-year phased budgetary model to reach competitive graduate student support levels. GWOC has circulated a petition calling on the Board of Governor’s to immediately implement an end to graduate student fees and enact the “Aspirational Scenario” — a measure that would also guarantee summer payment and raise stipends, which haven’t increased since 2010. AGE approved a formal endorsement of the petition, and is actively engaged with further actions seeking to improve graduate students' conditions through GWOC. For the next semester, we plan on keep building a broad coalition of graduate students across campus, and also aim to focus on internal demands of our dear department. We hope that current and former members of the Economics Department will join us in those important and exciting tasks."

Congratulations, Class of 2021!

Spring Graduate Degrees

Fathalla Barasi, Ph.D. Economics
Chris McCarthy, Ph.D. Economics
John Singleton, M.A. Economics

Spring 2021 Graduating Economics Majors and Minors

Brody Adkisson
Jacob Allmendinger
Saeed Alremeithi
Benjamin Amundson
Michael Anderson
Zachary Becker
Matt Blackburn
Jaden Booth
Joseph Brady
Taylor Burton
Nicholas Calley
Collin Campbell
Joshua Campbell
Peter Candell
Trent Canter
Autumn Carlson
Luis Caro
Anthony Castillo
Kobe Collins
Joseph Crowley
Ryan Davis
Alex DeJong-Brown
Brian Dunn
Mary Elson
Joshua Gadow
Maxwell Gagliardo
Adam Ganete
Austin Gardunio
Paul Gibeau
Nishant Gokal
Anthony Grassi
Sean Greenwell
Sami Haddad
Caleb Hansen
Anna Harvey
Lingyun He
Yifan He
McKenna Highfield
Zachary Hughes
Stone Hulsey
Nam Kyu Hwang
Travis Janssen
Jarrod Joiner
Brandon Kokes
Sreenath Reddy Koppula
Brian Larson
Jake Lauber
Kingsley Lawson
Mary Leonard
Dylan Leston
Brielle Levy
Megan Little
Emily Luetschwager
Seychelle Lusk
Andrea Mabie
Mantas Madelis
Zain Malik
Enrique Mendoza
Xavier Mercer-Roberts
Nicholas Miller
Mackenzie Newman
Darren O'Dorisio
Tanner O'Neal
Megan Odom
Youming Pan
Brodie Pattinson
Julia Perbohner
Nicholas Pontejos
Grace Quereau
Zachary Raak
Aileen Rascon
America Rios-Martinez
Bess Rosenberg
Blake Ruden
Alison Salomon
Carson Scott
Samuel Sernett
Derek Severson
Madison Sheets
Elijah Shrader
Justin Smith
Seth Smith
Simon Smith
Joseph Snapp
Heather Straley
Gisele Uwamahoro
Chirantha de Silva Uyanage
Caleb Vannest
Ryan Volkert
Ruben Weijers
Magdelaina Wellman
Benjamin Wilson
Mya Wilson
Samantha Ye
Dayne Zeitlow
Yichao Zhang
Wenhan Zhao

LET'S STAY IN TOUCH!

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Becca Lee-Simpson

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Created with images by nattanan23 - "money home coin" • AmrThele - "child student video conference"