Several members of the SMU Economics Department participated in the 2019 Stata Texas Empirical Microeconomics Conference at the University of Houston on Friday, September 27 through Saturday, September 28. This annual conference, generously supported by StataCorp., rotates among several Texas universities and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. It brings together empirical economists to discuss current issues in economics and present new research for comments by participants. The conference also hosted a poster session where about twenty economics graduate students discussed and received feedback on their research.
The conference presentations spanned a variety of topics, including knowledge spillovers and innovation, the effects of police officer race, the impact of Protestant missions in colonial India, and the immigration response to rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea. Two members of the SMU Economics Department presented research at the conference. SMU Assistant Professor Nathaniel Pattison discussed a new type of small business lender, an industry-specialist, and the impact on access to loans. SMU PhD student Ding Liu gave a poster presentation on estimating the relationship between disability and employment in the presence of contaminated data. In addition to the presenters, many other faculty members and PhD students from several Texas universities and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas attended the conference, making for an exciting and productive weekend.