Bates Econ
Welcome to the Bates Economics website, where you can find information on the department curriculum, faculty, events, and more.
Recent News:
- Experience of the pandemic shifts attitudes toward the function of the government and market
- Four new faculty members join the Bates economics department
Dr. Sam Bird, Dr. Sandra Goff, Dr. Amanda Lindsay, and Dr. Austin Smith joined the faculty in the economics department this fall.
A recent article in The Bates Student writes:
Coming from Miami University in Ohio, Smith looks forward to the small community at Bates and getting to know students in elements beyond the classroom, such as sports games. Smith’s goal is to get students excited about econometrics through providing hands-on opportunities to work with data and to see it in practice. “No more scaries” as he puts it, when it comes to students’ comfortability with this topic.
Bird, from Luther College in Iowa, wants to “introduce students to principal courses where they can learn tools that professional economists use in their field.” Bird’s values in economics are complemented by the support he receives from the economic department as he is able to grow and learn from colleges. Additionally, he is especially excited about teaching an economics thesis seminar this year. Outside of the classroom, Bird is looking forward to exploring Maine and discovering cool spots around.
“I chose Bates because it is a fantastic school where people value research,” said Lindsay, who also comes from Luther College in Iowa. The environmental economist says she has a lot of optimism when teaching at Bates, as she can expand her dreams while impacting students as well. In her office, she has a large white board filled with current projects, ideas and future goals- all which see views as seeds that she hopes to grow at Bates.
Goff, from Skidmore College in New York, aims to “better infuse community-engaged learning through her classes by providing students with new opportunities to explore the world of economics beyond the classroom.” After attending Colby College as a first generation student, Goff went on what she defines as an untraditional path and took more classes to explore areas of study she did not in her undergraduate, and as a result she is excited to embrace her role as an advisor and encourage students to accomplish whatever they desire.
See more at The Bates Student.
- Professor of Economics Daniel Riera-Crichton delivered the Convocation address
Professor Riera-Crichton quoted his favorite poet from his homeland of Spain, Antonio Machado: “Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más; Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” Translated to English: “Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else; Traveler, there is no road, you make your own path as you walk.”
Please read more at this Bates News article. - Welcome back from WE@Bates faculty! Join us for lunch on Wednesday at an upstairs table in Commons!
Faculty in Economics supporting Women in Economics club (WE@Bates)
From the left:
Professors Linh M. Nguyen, Amanda R. Lindsay, Lynne Y. Lewis, Sandra H. Goff and Nivedhitha Subramanian
Photo credit: Professor Austin C. Smith - Yanying (Sophie) Sheng (class of 2016) publishes research on racial animus during the COVID pandemic
Yanying (Sophie) Sheng (class of 2016) and her coauthor, Running Lu, published a new paper “How Racial Animus Forms and Spreads: Evidence from the Coronavirus Pandemic” in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, one of the top field journals in economics.
Motivated by the spike of anti-Asian hate incidents across the United States since 2020, this paper studies the formation and the spread of racial animus driven by the public health crisis. Sophie and her coauthor focus on studying the online expression of anti-Asian sentiment by measuring the use of the c-word (“chink” or “chinks”) in Google searches and tweets from different areas in the U.S. using historical data. The researchers demonstrate that these forms of expressions, albeit milder than documented hate crimes, correlate strongly with actual anti-Asian crimes. It is thus important to understand the nature of these online expressions and the factors behind them.
This paper documents a sizable rise of searches and tweets using the c-word after the first local COVID diagnosis. In addition to the rise in quantity, these expressions are highly associated with anger and hatred, implying a substantive negative shift in sentiment. Importantly, they find the rise in such tweets is primarily driven by users posting the c-word for the first time, rather than those who expressed anti-Asian sentiment in the past—suggesting a spread of the negative sentiment within the society.
Among other findings, the researchers show that the rise in such online expression of racial animus is primarily associated with social factors rather than economic loss. The c-word users tend to have a strong connection with other anti-Asian users, and have no systematic association with areas suffering from big economic losses during the pandemic.
Sophie graduated from Bates, majoring in Economics and Mathematics. She received her Ph.D. in economics from UC San Diego, and is now an economist at LinkedIn. Her coauthor on this study, Runjing Lu, is an assistant professor of Finance at the Alberta School of Business.
Please read more about their paper in the blog post here and their paper here.