The below comprise key projects have worked on while a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Board and while an undergraduate student at Wake Forest University.
FEDS Note co-authored with Bora Durdu and Rochelle Edge at the Federal Reserve Board as a Research Assistant. In the note, we present a simple methodology for measuring the severity of stress-test scenarios, which relies on a comparison of scenario developments with historically stressful episodes --- specifically, recessions and house-price retrenchments. We then compute real economic, house price, and financial variable severity scores for each of the FRB's Supervisory Severely Adverse scenarios from 2013-2017.
During the late 1980s the once vibrant Venezuelan economy experienced a sudden and remarkable downturn, exacerbating political tensions that had long lain dormant. The purpose of my analysis of the Venezuelan economy from 1985-2003 is to capture a small element of the relationship between those economic and political trends which dominated the period. In particular, I examined whether or not political events such as coups, mass protests, strikes, and elections affect Venezuela’s nominal and real bilateral exchange rates with the United States and Venezuela’s real effective exchange rate. I identified and collected historical data on the date, intensity, notoriety, and duration of major political events during the crisis years of the late 1980s and 1990s up until the early years of the Chávez administrations. To test for the effects of discrete political events, I estimated time series models using dummy variables for different types of political events. My results showed that political events from the period 1985-2003 had a significant effect on the value of Venezuela’s foreign exchange rates, and a major political event was usually associated with a depreciation of the Bolívar. Such results indicate that political events are often large determinants of exchange values, with important implications for Venezuela’s trade competitiveness.
Undergraduate History seminar paper analyzing the history and economics of the early Colonial nonimportation movement that preceded the American Revolution. This paper examines the nonimportation movement that developed in response to the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties between 1765 and 1771. Many historians have studied the movement through political and social lenses, but this paper will analyze colonial protests through new economic ideas about how and why consumers join political boycotts.From this new perspective the evolution of the nonimportation movements from merchant-led protests in 1765 to movements embracing greater public participation becomes visible. In this period merchant participation was extremely important because consumers greatly preferred British goods, and so relied on merchants to adhere to any nonimportation agreement. These merchant organizations represent a kind of cartel, or coalition of producers who attempt to restrain trade. The cartel arrangement of the boycott meant that breaches of early agreements were frequent and ultimately explains the collapse of the movement in 1770-71.
Undergraduate Econometrics term paper analyzing campaign spending and election outcomes using data from 1988. The analysis used shares of candidate campaign spending and Probit regression to test the effect of campaign spending on a candidate's probability of winning the election. A candidate's share of campaign spending was statistically and economically significant, with a one percent increase in spending share corresponding to a 0.24 percent increase in win probability. The analysis also tested the possibility of diminishing marginal returns to campaign spending by including the square of campaign spending share in some regression specifications. My results indicated that this term was not statistically or economically significant, implying that there may not be diminishing marginal returns to campaign spending increases.
Undergraduate Econometrics term paper analyzing determinants of NBA player salary, with particular emphasis on measures of skill. The paper uses a simple measure of skill defined as the sum of points per game, rebounds per game, and assists per game. The variable skill was statistically significant at the 1% level and positive in every model in which it was estimated. With the exception of model 5, the coefficient on skill had the largest absolute value in the models where it was estimated. The variant of skill, skmin, was also statistically significant at the 1% level and positive in every model in which it was estimated. Like skill, its coefficient also had the largest absolute value in the models where it was estimated.