Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Ideas + Action = Impact

• Jamari Stanton & Jonathan Parker

  Jamari Stanton has been working for Jonathan Parker on economic analysis of economic policy on household spending and of financial innovation and regulation on stock and bond market dynamics.  The first project uses a large dataset on consumer spending and saving to measure how much people spend and how much people save out of the Economic Impact Payments that they received in 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic. The second project investigates how the rise of mutual funds like Target Date Funds that re-balance from stocks into bonds and vice versa in response to differences in stock and bond returns are affecting the flow of money across funds in these markets and thus the relationship between the returns earned in these markets. 

  According to Jamari, "While my work was challenging, I enjoyed gaining more experience working with large datasets in R and learning about portfolio management and consumer spending. I explored research topics that are relevant to my career interests while honing my research and technical skills." Jonathan says, “It has been a joy working with Jamari and amazing how quickly he has grasped the key issues and questions, gotten the hang of the new datasets, and come back with great analyses. I am hoping that even post-pandemic, I have the opportunity to have research assistant relationships like this in the future.” 

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• Dario Anaya, Fiona Murray & Margaret McLeod

  Dario Anaya is a high school senior and incoming freshman at NYU. He has helped advance Professor Fiona Murray and MIT Sloan Master’s candidate Margaret McLeod’s research on startup ventures in the U.S. and U.K. to identify key differences  in funding approaches, capital stacks,  and employee backgrounds. He has helped tremendously with data collection. On the finance side, he has collected key data points from funding rounds and catalogued the various types of investors. On the people side, he has documented the academic backgrounds and professional experiences of early leaders in the startups being examined.  

   Dario has shared his passion and newly discovered interest in the work with Margaret. The research has confirmed his interest in studying Economics, Technology, and Venture Capital at NYU in the fall. According to Dario, Margaret has been an instrumental leader who has helped him learn how to collect and analyze data. He is excited to continue the project over the summer and learn from her writing style. “Unlike Dr. Murray and Margaret, I have never published before. This is such an exciting opportunity for me to have, especially before I start college.” 

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• Catresa Barlow & Ezra Zuckerman Sivan

  Catresa Barlow is playing a key role on a research project headed by Ezra Zuckerman Sivan. Ezra and Catresa met fortuitously in the fall of 2020, at a meeting convened by the PhD Project where business school faculty share their perspective on graduate school with prospective students. Catresa was then completing her master’s in information systems with a concentration in big data analytics at Georgia State University, and she was soon to be serving as a lecturer at Berry College. Ezra was immediately impressed with Catresa’s skills and insights and this led him to propose that they work together on some ideas that were just inchoate at the time, about using Twitter data to analyze how the onset of the pandemic disrupted our sense of time and especially the stability that the seven-day week ordinarily provides us. Catresa and Ezra have been working together steadily since then, and will soon have a paper that shares what they have learned. 

  Ezra reports that “Catresa’s work has been invaluable, not only in helping me execute on the original vision I had, but in helping to refine it and generating discoveries I never would have arrived at on my own. She is also just a joy to work with!”  For her part, Catresa reports that “It has been a pleasure working with Ezra on our research project, and my interaction with him has been invaluable to me as I seek to begin my Ph.D. journey. I could not have imagined that a random meeting would have produced this enormous opportunity to co-author my first research paper on a timely and intriguing topic. I will be forever grateful to Ezra for his guidance, encouragement, and generosity with his time." 

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• Hannah Tarver & Anna Stansbury

  Hannah Tarver has been working with Anna Stansbury on projects to do with economic inequality in the labor market since January 2022. Hannah has explored a range of areas with Anna, including doing a comprehensive literature review of the social science research on socioeconomic disparities across college majors, working to develop topic proposals on issues to do with race, education, and economic inequality, and using the Current Population Survey to investigate the labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on different groups of workers by age, race, gender, and occupation.

  Anna says, “Hannah has been absolutely stellar to work with. She has consistently gone above and beyond in terms of work that is both thorough and creative, and I’ve been impressed by her innovative thinking about important economic questions, her talent at drawing out key themes and thinking through analysis, and her diligence and motivation. It’s been a joy to work together!” Hannah says, "Dr. Stansbury is an exceptional teacher who is willing to make herself available to answer research-specific questions and questions about her doctorate journey in general. As someone who is aspiring to be the first in her family to obtain a doctorate degree, this combination of technical and personal advice was priceless. Despite having worked in Dr. Stansbury's lab for only a few months, I have been able to learn so much about the different ways research can manifest in order to reach various audiences. This experience has been invaluable and has helped solidify my decision to pursue a career in research." 

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• Dili Maduabum & Anna Stansbury

  Dili Maduabum has been working with Anna Stansbury on the labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2022. She is using the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey to disentangle the different ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic affected employment outcomes for workers of different ages, races, genders, and occupations, as well as using this unique data to understand the degree to which workers’ health concerns, childcare and elder care constraints, and other factors have played a role in limiting labor supply during the last two years. Anna says, “It has been fantastic to work with Dili. Her work showcases a rare combination of big picture insights about important economic issues, excitement for the research process, and thoroughness, efficiency, and attention to detail in data analysis and manipulation. It’s been a pleasure to work together!” Dili says, "I have learned a lot from my work with Professor Stansbury. Her thought process, reasoning, and motivation for research has greatly influenced my interest in the field of labor economics. She is an amazing mentor, and constantly asks for my thoughts on the subject matter and teaches me how to think like an economist. It’s been a delight working with her!"

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