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Two SMU Economics alumni have received prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship awards for the 2024-2025 academic year. The two Economics winners are Colton Fontenot, who will travel to the Slovak Republic and Victoria Romanczyk, who will go to Poland.

Colton (Cole) Fontenot graduated in May 2022 with a B.A. in economics, history, philosophy, and public policy and achieved the rare feat of completing three distinction theses during his senior year. Eager to learn more about educational systems in other countries, the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in the Slovak Republic will support Cole’s long-term goal of crafting more equitable education policy in the United States.

Victoria Romanczyk graduated in May with a B.S. in economics and statistical science and a B.A. in international studies.  She will teach not just Polish students, but students from all over the EU.  Victoria said that “this is a dream come true and for any upcoming seniors who are thinking about taking on a gap year or who are interested in seeing what it is like to live, work, or do research abroad I would definitely recommend looking into Fulbright programs.”

Congratulations Cole and Victoria!  We wish you the best of luck!

On April 23rd, the Department hosted the spring awards luncheon.  Omicron Delta Epsilon (ODE) inductees as well as departmental award winners were recognized for their accomplishments.

Enrique Martínez García, an economic policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, provided a talk on “Where Do Post-COVID Housing Markets Stand? A Shifting Outlook for Global Real Estate”.

Congratulations to all of our inductees and award winners!  Keep up the good work!

Dr. Ahlberg has been chosen to receive the Barbara and James Mangum Teaching Award in recognition of her extraordinary student engagement. Her dedication to teaching, including her work in redesigning principles courses and creating new undergraduate electives, is appreciated by the department and cherished by students.

Distinguished alum and private investor Charles Mangum gave a million dollar gift to SMU for two teaching awards – one in Economics and the other in Accounting, the two disciplines that (according to him) offered the most challenging courses in his undergraduate curriculum at SMU. The award is intended to “promote and reward the art of teaching”. The criteria for the award is that the recipient be non-tenured and extraordinary at student involvement. The award itself is named after his parents Barbara and James Mangum who live in New Orleans.

Charles Mangum graduated from SMU 1986 with a BA in Economics and a BBA in Finance. He earned an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1990 and has had a highly successful career in investment and portfolio management.

We are excited to announce that Dylan Zlatinski is the recipient of the Economics Department’s Fall 2023 Lovejoy Award.  Congratulations Dylan!  Best of luck in your future endeavors!

Dr. Sposi has been chosen to receive the Barbara and James Mangum Teaching Award in recognition of his extraordinary student engagement.

Distinguished alum and private investor Charles Mangum gave a million dollar gift to SMU for two teaching awards – one in Economics and the other in Accounting, the two disciplines that (according to him) offered the most challenging courses in his undergraduate curriculum at SMU. The award is intended to “promote and reward the art of teaching”. The criteria for the award is that the recipient be non-tenured and extraordinary at student involvement. The award itself is named after his parents Barbara and James Magnum who live in New Orleans.

Charles Mangum graduated from SMU 1986 with a BA in Economics and a BBA in Finance. He earned an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1990 and has had a highly successful career in investment and portfolio management.

Dr. Desmet, along with coauthors Bruno Conte and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, discuss how a unilateral carbon tax introduced by the United States or the European Union may be a boon for the world, even in the short run. This Vox EU column goes into more discussion.

Former PhD student, Punarjit Roychowdhury, has been awarded the prestigious Prof. M.J. Manohar Rao Award 2021! The Indian Econometric Society (TIES) – the oldest and largest body of professional quantitative economists and econometricians with more than 2000 members from all over India and abroad – gives this award once a year to an Indian economist under the age of 35 years who has made outstanding contributions to quantitative economics while working in India.

Jun Nie, a 5th year PhD student in economics at SMU, had a paper accepted for publication at the European Journal of Political Economy. The paper, coauthored with James Lake, is called “The 2020 US Presidential Election and Trump’s Wars on Trade and Health Insurance”. Jun is interested in international trade, multinational firm structure, growth and structural change. He has exciting projects on the impact of trade on technology diffusion in explaining cross-country income differences as well as the role of multinationals and foreign direct investment on services trade. Take a look at his website for more information: https://sites.google.com/view/smu-jun/home.

Dr. Wookun Kim recently presented his working paper titled “Heterogeneous Local Employment Multipliers: Evidence from Relocations of Public Entities in South Korea”  in the Atlanta Fed’s Early Career Program Workshop. The authors (joint with Changsu Ko and Hwanoong Lee) estimate local employment multipliers following an episode of relocations of public entities in South Korea. They find that an introduction of one public sector employment increases the private sector employment by one unit, with employment growth in the services sector driving this increase in private sector employment. In addition to the effects being highly localized, their results imply that local employment multipliers tend to be higher in areas with predetermined characteristics that allow faster and larger general equilibrium responses to take place after the public sector shock. Here is a link to a summary, along with the other papers at the workshop: https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/macroblog/2022/10/20/atlanta-feds-early-career-visitor-program-workshop-synopsis.