The papers by the award recipients evidence a deep understanding of economic research methodology, creativity that goes beyond replicating existing studies, and an impressive amount of hard work. They address important policy questions and make commendable progress toward answering them. Their presentation is clear and well written.
Class of 2022
Carmel Elli Jean Halperin
"China’s Modern Water Policy: Testing the Feasibility and Implications of the “Three Red Lines” Guidelines"
Elli studies the efficacy of China’s “Three Red Lines” policy, which was implemented to conserve water usage across multiple provinces. She constructs a city-level panel dataset to track water usage in both affected and unaffected cities before and after the policy implementation. She then employs the difference-in-difference method to measure the policy’s impact and discusses potential mechanisms for her results.
Feiyang (Freya) Yao
"Investigation of the Impacts of Major-Field Mobility on Aggregate Welfare Under the Framework of Labor Search Theory"
Freya examines the impact on social welfare of allowing students to change their major. She extends the canonical labor-search model to have multiple sectors and pre-labor-market major choices for students. She then solves the model numerically and assesses the impact on social welfare of the relevant policy.
