Anthony T
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at Yale University
Expertise
Statistics & econometrics, cities & housing, economic policy, international trade, economic history
Bio
I am a PhD candidate in economics at Yale University, with a research focus on housing, migration, and inequality. That said, my interests in economics are wide-ranging: I've worked on projects related to international trade, taxation, economic growth, urban crime, and financial securities. I'm also interested in economic history, as well as the connections between moral & political philosophy and economics.Project ideas
Comparative tax policy
Few topics in economics generate as much heated debate as taxation. Why do some countries have higher taxes than others? How does taxation affect business activity and consumer welfare? What are the arguments for progressive versus flat-rate taxation? More generally, what trade-offs are involved in making economic policy, and how should we weigh our often competing concerns for economic growth, equality, and stability? For a sample deliverable: write a policy memo on why the U.S. should or shouldn't follow other developed countries in adopting a value-added tax (VAT).
History of globalization
Examine the history of global trade and how narratives around trade and economic interdependence have evolved in the last two centuries. Students can use data and figures to highlight the growth of trade in the era of globalization. Alternatively, they can focus on some of the broader qualitative questions—drawing on politics, sociology, and philosophy, in addition to economics—that have been at the heart of debates over free trade and national sovereignty going back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
Financial forecasting and efficient markets
Learn how financial assets (such as stocks and bonds) are priced, and how investors construct portfolios out of different assets and asset classes. Then use R or Python to analyze and visualize financial data, and to build rudimentary predictive models that attempt to forecast asset prices. Students can use these models to take a first pass at testing the so-called "efficient-market hypothesis," the idea that asset prices accurately reflect all public information and that attempting to consistently beat the market is a fool's errand.
Mapping U.S. inequality
Household income varies dramatically between neighborhoods, cities, counties, and regions in the U.S. For this project, students will first use Census data and mapping libraries in R to visualize the spatial dimension of economic inequality. Then they can home in on whatever factors interest them most—such as differences in education or occupation—or examine several policy proposals intended to address this inequality. Students interested in political science might also want to study the relationship between local economic outcomes and voting patterns.