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Everything Economics at the University of Toronto

PhD Student Adrian Schroeder Wins Econometrics Award

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Portrait of PhD candidate Adrian Schroeder
Adrian Schroeder Photo credit: A. Macedo

Adrian Schroeder, a PhD student with the Department of Economics won the Best Graduate Research Poster Award at the Canadian Econometrics Study Group (CESG) annual conference on October 25-27, 2024. Fifty-three researchers representing universities and monetary institutions in seven different countries including Belgium, France, and Australia presented posters over the weekend-long conference. Highly visual representations of methods and data, research posters are considered valuable presentation tools in econometrics, a field that applies theoretical models to datasets to evidence policy implementation and equip economists with new tools. [Read more…]

Taking Down the Economics of Crime: Heather Bone

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Portrait of PhD Candidate Heather Bone
PhD Candidate Heather Bone Photo: A.Macedo

Heather Bone is a specialist in the economics of crime. It’s the basis of her research and there are traces of it in her tutorials and involvement in the broader community. Her research, though, is not like the true crime stories Bone remembers her mother watching throughout her childhood in Brussels, Ontario. Her job market paper, Kingpin Down: Power Vacuums, Market Structure, and the Violent Consequences of High-Profile Arrests, studies a policy that is often used by governments to combat organized crime. The policy involves targeting the top leaders, or kingpins, of criminal enterprises for capture or removal. Bone’s paper studies the policy’s effects in the context of Mexico during a period in which homicide rates more than doubled.

“The government implemented the policy with the aim of reducing violence in the long term,” Bone explained. “However, my findings indicate that the policy leads to an increase in violence in the short to medium term, with no evidence of a long-term reduction.” [Read more…]

Economics PhD Candidate James Macek Wins Bank of Canada Best Paper Award

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Portrait of James Macek
James Macek Photo credit: A. Macedo

James Macek, a PhD candidate with the Department of Economics, has won the Bank of Canada’s Best Graduate Student Paper Award.  Macek’s research into housing policy and affordability examines how re-thinking minimum lot size and building smaller housing units could eliminate the housing shortage and reduce the cost of buying a home by 17%.

“It’s an incredible honour to receive this award from the Bank of Canada,” Macek said. “I’d like to thank my supervisor Nathaniel Baum-Snow, advisors William Strange, Kevin Lim, Joseph Steinberg, the faculty, and colleagues. I could not have achieved this without their tremendous support, care, and collaborative discussion. They make me feel valued.” [Read more…]

Investigating the Power of Physicians’ Daughters

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Portrait of Tianyi Wang
Assistant Professor of Economics, Tianyi Wang

When male physicians have daughters, their female patients experience better health outcomes. A new working paper by Professor Tianyi Wang of the Department of Economics and his co-authors suggests that the empathy that grows from fathering daughters leads male physicians to order more tests and confirm diagnoses earlier, creating better treatment outcomes for female patients who experience breast cancer and gynecological cancers. [Read more…]

Making Advice Palatable: Alex Ballyk’s Behavioural Economics Research

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Portrait of Alex Ballyk
Alex Ballyk

If you’re advising people to make better decisions, you’d better give them appealing alternatives to choose from. That’s one takeaway from PhD candidate Alex Ballyk’s behavioural economics research. The Department of Economics’ student explores decision making through experiments at the Toronto Experimental Economics Laboratory (TEEL). In the experiment at the heart of her working paper Paternalistic Persuasion, Ballyk designated participants as experts (called “Advisors”) to try to help a second group of participants (called “Choosers”) to make better decisions by giving them advice. However, persuading Choosers was challenging: Choosers weren’t sure whether all recommendations came from those well-meaning Advisors. Therefore, Advisors needed to send recommendations that Choosers could trust to be in their best interest. [Read more…]

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