Assistant Professors Alipio Ferreira and Prasanthi Ramakrishnan join Economics Department faculty

    

Prasanthi Ramakrishnan

Ramakrishnan is a labor economist, with research interests at the intersection of Household Economics, Health Economics and Entrepreneurship. She focuses on different types of inequality in the labor market, either by gender or by race, and aims to understand the mechanisms causing these inequalities using cutting-edge microeconometric methods. Her research agenda explores the importance of incorporating education, marriage, and decisions within the household in analyzing changes to the social security system, a system that treats married and single households differently.  Her agenda also studies differences in gender and race amongst entrepreneurs and to understand policy prescriptions to boost entrepreneurship, as well as incentives to take up health insurance amongst the poor and rich. Read more

Alipio Ferreira

Before joining SMU, Ferreira worked as an environmental consultant in the Finance Department of the São Paulo, Brazil State Government, and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Abul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from Toulouse School of Economics, a Master’s degree from Tilburg University, and a Bachelor’s degree from São Paulo School of Economics. Alipio’s research is focused on law enforcement issues in public finance and environmental regulation in developing countries. He is currently studying policies to increase the efficiency of environmental enforcement practices, with the goal of reducing illegal deforestation and improving environmental quality. Read more

Former SMU PhD student wins best paper prize

Ani Harutyunyan is a former PhD student in the SMU economics department who eventually earned her PhD at KU Leuven in Belgium.  A chapter of her PhD dissertation that she wrote while at SMU has been awarded the Bergson Prize by the Association of Comparative Economic Studies. This prize is given once every 2 years to best paper published during that period in the journal Comparative Economic Studies.

Continue reading “Former SMU PhD student wins best paper prize”

Klaus Desmet on Vox: Facebook and gender gap in preferences

Klaus Desmet’s research has been featured recently in both a VoxEU column and a VoxTalk podcast! The basic question Klaus and his co-authors investigate is whether women and men more similar in their preferences in more gender-equal societies. Continue reading “Klaus Desmet on Vox: Facebook and gender gap in preferences”

Dan Millimet blog post on causalscience.org

Anyone who has sat in more than a few departmental seminars and presentations in the Economics department at SMU knows that Dan Millimet’s favorite subject matter is how measurement error affects the ability of empirical researchers to infer causal relationships from data. So, it’s no surprise that he has a new blog post on this issue for causalinference.org.

PhD student Shuo Qi wins Cobb Fellowship

Shuo Qi received the 2021 Cobb Fellowship after the Economics Department faculty voted that her third year research paper was the strongest among her fellow classmates. The fellowship provides funding for the 4th year of the PhD program and removes any teaching assistant or research assistant responsibilities so the recipient can focus as much as possible on their dissertation progress. Continue reading “PhD student Shuo Qi wins Cobb Fellowship”