Several AEDE graduate students have been awarded travel funding and selected to present papers at upcoming national conferences.
Cristina Connolly, Kathryn Dotzel, Norma Gomez and Isha Rajbhandari, all students in AEDE’s doctoral program, will present papers at the 61st Annual North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), which will be held from November 12-15, 2014 in Washington D.C. RSAI aims to bring together the international community of scholars who study the regional impacts of national or global processes of economic and social change. Dotzel, Gomez and Rajbhandari study with Alessandra Faggian, while Connolly is advised by H. Allen Klaiber.
Wendong Zhang, a doctoral student who is studying with Elena Irwin, will present a paper at the 84th Annual Meeting of the Southern Economic Association (SEA), which will be held from November 22-24, 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia. SEA is one of the oldest regional economics associations in the U.S. Since its founding, SEA has focused on furthering the education of scholars and the public in economic affairs.
Additionally, all of the students were chosen to receive travel awards from Ohio State’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis (CURA). CURA is housed in Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences and is comprised of an interdisciplinary group of scholars from across the university working in social, natural, and environmental sciences; applied economics; agriculture; engineering; health and medical professions; and the humanities. CURA offers a wide range of support services for research that applies to urban and metropolitan areas, rural areas, and broader regional issues.
Connolly, who is in her fifth year of study, will present: "Location Choice and Health Tradeoffs: A Micro-Level Analysis of Household Well-Being." She examined consumer preferences for health inputs, including food access and recreation, which she identified using the location choice of residential households. She then used a structural sorting model to analyze transactions data in Cleveland, Ohio in order to assess the health tradeoffs consumers make when choosing where to live, which has policy implications for both land use and health.
Dotzel, who is in her third year of study, will present: "Do Natural Amenities Influence Undergraduate Student Migration Decisions?" She conducted a comparative analysis of the influence of university natural amenities on nonresident enrollment based on the amenities of a student's origin location.
Gomez, who is a fourth year student, will present: "Returns to College Education in Colombia." She estimated the monetary return in the labor market to college education for students working in different fields in Colombia. Additionally, she analyzed how the return changed for students who graduated from universities in different regions of the country.
Rajbhandari, who is in her third year of study, will present: "Do Initial Conditions Matter? Comparing the Economic Impacts of Natural Gas Development in the Northeastern and Southwestern United States." She compared the economic impact of natural gas development across regions, while investigating whether variations in conditions such as supply chain network and local supply of skilled labor lead to significant differences in such impacts. Rajbhandari is also advised by Mark Partridge.
Zhang, who is in his fifth year of study, will present: "A Spatial Economic-Hydrological Model of Fertilizer Demand and Phosphorus Loadings in the Western Lake Erie Basin." Using a survey of 7,500 farmers and a structural model, he analyzed the impacts of different nutrient management policies on field-level farmer profits and fertilizer applications and watershed-level phosphorus runoffs.
October 21, 2014