10 Great Skills You Can Teach Yourself

In fall of 2018, 1st year student Mrithyunjayan Nilayamgode presented a paper at the Northeast Universities Development Consortium (NEUDC) conference on development economics at Cornell University and at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Economic Association (SEA) in Washington, DC. He met and received valuable feedback on his paper from development economists and crime economists from across the world. The NEUDC conference typically accepts around a quarter of the 600-odd submissions it receives, and is one of the premier conferences in development economics in the US.

Third year PhD student Joaquin Saldain won the Economic Department's Tipton Snavely Award for Best Summer Paper (an honor he shares with Ga Young Ko). Joaquin describes the key issues and findings in his paper, High-cost Consumer Lending: Evidence and Theory​, as follows: "High-cost consumer lending, e.g. payday loans in the U.S., typically charge an APR of 322% for small, short-term loans. It is often discussed whether they cause more harm than good but the current literature has not provided a clear answer.