Nicole Roussell

In a special guest lecture just for M.S. students, Dr. Ginger Jin presented her recent NBER Working Paper, Does Generative AI Crowd Out Human Creators? Evidence from Pixiv. Dr. Jin is currently the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She served as the Director of the FTC Bureau of Economics from January 2016 to July 2017, and as an Amazon Scholar and Senior Principal Economist at Amazon.com from January 2019 to May 2020. Most of her research focuses on information asymmetry among economic agents and how to provide information to overcome the information problem.

In this M.S. in Applied Economics program at UMD, guest lectures are a regular occurrence from department faculty on new and emerging research and analysis, and from outside experts, researchers, and academics.

Read more about Dr. Matthew Gentzkow’s lecture on “Social Media and Social Good” and Dr. Thomas Drechsel’s talk regarding “Political Pressure on the Fed“

On Thursday, December 11th, University of Maryland professor Thomas Drechsel gave a guest presentation in our program’s Washington, DC location.  Dr. Drechsel presented his paper, “Political Pressure on the Fed,” which has recently been accepted for publication in The Review of Economic Studies.  The research uses data on personal interactions between U.S. Presidents and Federal Reserve officials to estimate the effects of political pressure on the Fed.  He finds that political pressure to ease monetary policy increases inflation without increasing real economic activity or reducing unemployment.  These effects differ from the effects of typical monetary policy, possibly because political pressure on the Fed has a stronger effect on inflation expectations. 

The guest presentation and reception was coordinated with a meeting of our program’s core Macroeconomics course, taught by longtime economist at the International Monetary Fund Dr. Arto Kovanen.  The event was also open to all our students and alumni, including students from the version of our program on our main campus in College Park (also within the Washington, DC metro area, less than 10 miles from downtown), and students in the online version of our program (many of whom also live in the Washington, DC area even though their classes meet online).  

We look forward to more guest presentations from our own department’s research faculty, and from some of the many prominent economists working in the Washington, DC area.  

Master’s degree students are a part of UMD’s top-20 ranked Economics Department, which hosts seminars with world-renowned scholars and researchers. This month, Rachel Glennerster – President of the Center for Global Development and former Chief Economist at the UK FCDO – addressed the department at a time when aid budgets are under increasing pressure globally. She discussed how programs can reduce costs, improve delivery, and reach more people effectively. Her insights offer valuable lessons for Norwegian development cooperation, helping programs achieve more with the resources available.

Read more about the admissions requirements for the Master’s of Science and apply

Our newest College Park, downtown Washington DC, and online cohorts for the M.S. in Applied Economics successfully started this month! New students are settling in and veteran second-years are filling out their informal advisor roles.

Each program has an orientation specific to the location with faculty, staff, and TAs for new cohorts. Above is a picture from the College Park orientation, where new students are getting to know each other just before the first night of class (ECON641).

If you want to learn more about the program, join one of our upcoming information sessions.