Final Reflection
By researching this topic, I was able to learn more about economics, and how cities work and function through taking in tax revenues, along with how middle-class Americans change their spending habits during times of economic stress. I think that with this knowledge, I now better understand how people change their spending habits, which will be useful in my hopeful career in finance after MBA school in a couple of years. This experience was incredibly interesting due to learning about a group that is underrepresented despite being large in size, which makes me curious about other large underrepresented groups in research.
Through the final presentation, oral defense, and later the research symposium, I learned and improved on several things. Through the final presentation, I received feedback on my presentation and noted that my topic was difficult for someone unfamiliar with the field I was researching. I used this feedback to be a little clearer and slow things down during the research symposium, where I feel I did a better job explaining and clarifying my presentation to make it easier to understand for those who came to the symposium. I will apply this knowledge and adaptation to make sure that I'm aware of my tendency to make things harder to understand in my future endeavors.
I learned that as a researcher, I enjoy analyzing data and the trends and skew that it shows a lot more than I enjoy collecting that data. I learned that the most interesting portion of my presentation to those I presented to was my data graphs and further analysis, which was also my favorite part to do. As a person, I learned that if I don't keep myself on a strict schedule, I will procrastinate things to the last minute, and I need a timetable and schedule to keep myself on track.
Gratitude
I am grateful to Mr. McBride and Ms. Dobos for helping me to stay on track and on plan during this project. I was out of town a lot in the second semester, and I think the weekly check-ins and assignments really helped me to remind myself of where I needed to be progress-wise, and kept me on track.
Abstract + link to Presentation and Paper
This study investigates how middle-class Americans in the Western United States change their spending habits during times of economic unrest. This study measured this spending by looking at the tax revenue changes in cities that fall in between the median income ranges that are middle class, and comparing the changes in cities with and without large shopping centers, and comparing the volatility from 2014-2024 of these types of cities. (18% of sales tax revenue from an area). The findings of this study are that in cities with large shopping centers, they experienced more volatility, seeing a bigger drop around the 2019-2020 years, but a faster bounce back and overall higher volatility, showing that the middle class reduces their luxury or non-necessary spending in times of economic unrest but not to the same degree as poorer populations.
Future Plans
I will be attending the University of Colorado at Boulder, to study Aerospace Engineering as part of the Engineering Honors Program. I would love to continue research in college, just with a focus on Aerospace this time and not economics.