Six second-year graduate students presented on their research at AREC’s Research Poster Session on November 29, 2017 hosted in the department’s conference room.
“It’s an exciting opportunity for graduate students to present their research and get feedback from faculty and other graduate students,” said Interim Chair and Professor Lars Olson. “We have some very high quality papers being produced by our students.”
Haoluan Wang presented his poster on Land Conservation for Open Space: Spatial Spillovers and the Impact of Neighbors.
“The results I found is that there is a positive impact of neighbors to conserve additional farmland or land for open space,” said Wang. His research showed that in Maryland if a landowner’s neighbor put their land in a conservation program, the closer they lived together, the more likely they would be influenced to join a conservation program.
Melissa Vega Monge also spoke at the session on the Educational Aspirations and Weather Shocks Evidence from Natural Disasters in Ethiopia. Her research looked at how natural disasters impacted the education children received. Initially, Vega Monge had wanted to focus her research on siblings, but finding data was challenging. She focused her research on children born in 1994 and 1995.
Another presenter was Fabliha Ibnat, whose poster was about The Effect of Kerosene Price on Children's Time Allocation Decisions: Evidence from India. Her research analyzed how changes in kerosene prices influences how children spend their time. Ibnat’s research showed that when kerosene prices increased, girls spent more time gathering alternative energy sources, such as wood. However, they continued to spend the same amount of time in school, because parents would contribute their time to completing chores as well.
“Because I was expecting girls to spend less time in school, I was going to argue against the decrease in subsidies for energy costs,” said Ibnat. “But based on this research, girls spend just as much time in school. I would have to do more research to find where they are losing time.”
José M Eguiguren-Cosmelli also presented his poster, Responsiveness of Low-Income Households to Hybrid. His research focused on energy saving policies in Cali, Columbia. He looked at a two fold policy for his research, one part being a mass media social responsibility campaign, and the other involving a monetary incentive with a message about responsibility.
Chris Holt had a poster about Shadow Prices of CO2 Emissions in the U.S. Power Generation Industry. For his research, he developed a new method of analyzation.
“I developed a new method that can be broadly applied using very little data on emissions,” said Holt. “It provides policymakers with information about what it costs to reduce pollution.”
Andrew Card was inspired by events that happened in his own life for his research, Economic Determinants of Tipping in Taxi Cabs.
“I was prompted to study it because, before Uber, I used to take cabs all the time and was a very good tipper,” said Card. “I took a cab recently and it didn’t even occur to me to tip, and the cap driver yelled at me.”
Thus far there is inconclusive evidence according to Card, and his research is still in progress.
The AREC Graduate Student Organization hosted the session. The department would like to thank the Graduate Student Government (GSG) at the University of Maryland for the financial support for the poster session.
