Research Areas: Macroeconomics, Economic Development, and Growth

Education: Ph.D. Economics, University of Rochester, 2022

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Stepan's research focuses on exploring the idiosyncrasies in the production behavior of individual firms and households in micro-level data, using economic theory to understand this behavior, and tracing out its implications for the development path of the economy. His dissertation research proposes nutrition demand as a mechanism that can explain which goods the subsistence farmers in low-income countries choose to consume and produce, and that ultimately contributes to keeping the aggregate agricultural productivity low. Stepan is in the 2023 academic job market.

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Research Areas: International Economics, Agricultural Policy Evaluation

Education: Ph.D. Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Connecticut, 2023

Dongin is a Research Assistant Professor in the Agribusiness and Applied Economics Department at North Dakota State University. His research focuses on the impact of international trade and investment policies on economic outcomes. He developed a novel dataset on foreign direct investment to distinguish between vertical and horizontal investment activities. He has presented several working papers at international conferences. His research is supported by a USDA-NIFA-EWD award for 2021-2024. This research measures the impact of global trade shocks on U.S. agriculture. Dongin joined the Steinbach Research Group in August 2023.

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Research Areas: Empirical Industrial Organization, Applied Microeconomics

Education: Ph.D. Economics, KU Leuven, 2022

Debashrita's research focuses on the economic implications of mergers and acquisitions. She studies the evolution of market power in the automobile industry and network structures. Debashrita works with Dr. Steinbach and Dr. Lopez as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Connecticut on a research project focused on the evolving retail food market structure in the United States. A particular focus of this work relates to the role of mergers & acquisitions and their implications for consumer welfare and market structure.

 Click here for Google Scholar, here for her resume, and here for her webpage.

Research Areas: International Trade, Industrial Organization

Education: Ph.D. Agricultural Economics, Purdue University, 2023

Carlos is a Research Assistant Professor in the Agribusiness and Applied Economics Department at North Dakota State University. His research focuses on the gravity model of trade, the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, agri-food Global Value Chains, and policies around the import and export of GMO agricultural products. With significant professional experience from his professional experience within trade-related institutions in Ecuador, including the National Customs Service and the Ministry of Foreign Trade, he brings a rich real-world perspective to his work. Carlos joined the Steinbach Research Group in August 2023.

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Research Areas: Industrial Organization, Applied Econometrics

Education: Ph.D. Economics, University of California, Irvine, 2023

Mike's research uses mechanism design/information design theory and reinforcement learning to answer questions about return insurance, antitrust issues, and consumer welfare. Mike works with Dr. Steinbach and Dr. Connolly at the University of Connecticut as a postdoctoral scholar on a research project focused on food system modeling with big mobility data. His research employs economic theory and computational experiments utilizing Artificial Intelligence-based pricing algorithms to investigate search friction's impact on sellers' collusion.

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Research Areas: Empirical Industrial Organization, Big Data Analysis

Education: Ph.D. Economics, Iowa State University, 2021

Xibo is an applied microeconomist focusing on environmental, food, and energy issues. His research seeks to answer how people value environmental (dis)amenities and respond to incentives created by policy interventions. Xibo works with Dr. Steinbach and Dr. Connolly at the University of Connecticut as a postdoctoral scholar on a research project focused on consumer choice modeling with big mobility data. His work exploits extensive cellphone data and incorporates modern econometric methods, empirical IO approaches, and machine-learning techniques to study important questions in this domain.

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Research Areas: International Economics, Development, and Macroeconomics

Education: Ph.D. Economics, University of Rochester, 2021

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Armen's research emphasizes the dynamic aspect of international trade and its implications for analyzing trade patterns and the welfare effects of trade policy. Because most quantitative trade models are static, they abstract from the rich, dynamic nature of real-world trade activities. Firms are forward-looking when deciding their imports as they face various non-tariff barriers and hold inventories. His research finds that incorporating the dynamics of such models into the empirical analysis of trade policies can significantly alter commonly accepted results and provide helpful information for understanding trade. He is an Assistant Professor at Hunter College (CUNY) in New York as of August 2023.

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Research Areas: Empirical Industrial Organization, Productivity Analysis

Education: Ph.D. Economics, Binghampton University, State University of New York

Mingyang Li is an Assistant Professor at the Department of International Economics and Trade at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Binghamton University, State University of New York. Before joining Huazhong University, Mingyang Li was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Steinbach Research Group at the University of Connecticut from 2021 to 2022. His research focuses on empirical industrial organization in the context of productivity analysis and international economics. He is particularly interested in semi/nonparametric estimation methods and topics, including manufacturing, subsidies, and institutions.

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Click here for Google Scholar, here for his resume, and here for his webpage.