Professor Sheena Murray
Sheena Murray is an Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Tennessee Chattanooga. She joined the Department of Finance and Economics in the Fall of 2018, and is excited to be a member of the Gary W. Rollins School of Business.
Originally from California, she earned her BA in Economics with a minor in Political Science in 2007. She attended graduate school at the University of Colorado Boulder, and earned her PhD in 2014. Sheena's dedication to teaching and research was recognized in graduate school by the awarding of the: Reuben Zubrow Fellowship for an unusual commitment to teaching and research, the Leslie Whittington Fellowship for excellence in economics, and the Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Award. Sheena then taught at Curry College in Boston MA for four years. While at Curry College her commitment to excellence was recognized by twice being nominated as a Faculty Mentor by Dean's List students. Since starting at UTC she has been awarded a Summer Research Award, recognition from the Summerfield Johnston Research Endowment, and recently received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Rollins College of Business.
Professor Murray specializes in labor and applied econometrics, with a focus on household decisions and economic demography. Chapters from her dissertation, An Empirical Exploration of the Determinants of Divorce, have been published in Economics Bulletin and are currently under review at Explorations in Economic History. Additionally, she worked on weather-induced migration and has a publication in the International Migration Review. A project on how broadband access affects marriage and divorce in the US was published in the Review of Economics of the Household. Recently, a joint project examining how conditions in graduate school can affect lifetime co-authorship rates with Andrew Hussey and Wendy Stock was published by Economic Inquiry. Additionally, a paper on trends in long-acting contraception over the last decade was published in Applied Economic Letters. Other working papers include projects that examine the pro-cyclicality of divorce, technology and fertility rates, and how broadband impacts labor markets in urban and rural areas differently.
Recent projects fuse her interest in the economic effects of contraception and the Tennessee region. She brings her statistical analysis skills to a partnership with A Step Ahead, a statewide charity that provides funding for long-acting reversible birth-control. By combining records on contraception received with fertility and education outcomes across the state Dr. Murray is examining how expanded contraception in the last decade has affected demographic outcomes acrossTN.
