Assistant Professors in Economics Recognised for Academic Excellence Congratulations to Dr Nicola Mastrorocco and Dr Andrea Guariso who have received prestigious awards for their research: European Economic Association Young Economist Award Dr Nicola Mastrorocco, was awarded the 2020 European Economic Association (EEA) Young Economist Award, along with co-author Dr Arianna Ornaghi (University of Warwick), for their research project titled ‘Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behaviour in the United States’. The research studies the impact that local media coverage of crime has on the behaviour of municipal police forces in the US. The award-winning study collected a unique dataset of 9.5 million stories from 300,000 newscasts of local US TV stations. It then exploited sophisticated econometric techniques and text analysis models to show that a reduction in news coverage of local crime affects police behaviours and, in particular, decreases violent crime clearance rates. The authors postulate that the decrease in coverage affects individuals’ perceptions of crime, which becomes less salient for local citizens. This in turn reduces the pressure that citizens put on the police to solve these crimes, causing police officers to reallocate their effort away from clearing these types of crime in favour of other policing-related activities. Dr Mastrorocco lectures on econometrics and political economy, including the political economy of organised crime and media bias, and his research interests centre on political economy and applied microeconomics. Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy Award Dr Andrea Guariso was awarded the Walter Isard Annual Award for the best article in Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy for his article titled ‘Armed Conflict and Schooling in Rwanda: Digging Deeper’, coauthored with Professor Marijke Verpoorten (University of Antwerp). The paper focuses on a crucial consequence of armed conflict, namely the loss of schooling. By focusing on the case of Rwanda and relying on a rich census dataset, the paper estimates that the violence of the nineties caused a drop of about one year of education for the cohort of children at schooling age. The consequences were widespread across the country, and girls suffered slightly larger drops in schooling than boys. While increased dropouts and school delays explain the drop in primary schooling, secondary schooling was mainly affected by a drop in enrolments. The results provide concrete implications for the design of post-conflict recovery programmes. Dr Guariso primarily lectures on development economics and impact evaluation and his research exploits rigorous quantitative methodologies to study the origins, consequences, and potential solutions of constraints hampering development and wellbeing. He is currently designing a range of randomised experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of development programmes and understand their underlying mechanisms. TIME Annual Keynote Lecture November 19, 2020, 2pm Gender and Development: (R)evolution of our Understanding Speaker: Dr Markus Goldstein – The World Bank Dr Goldstein is a lead economist in the Office of the Chief Economist’s Office for Africa at the World Bank, where he leads the Gender Innovation Lab. A development economist with experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South Asia, his current research centres on issues of gender and economic activity, focusing on agriculture and small scale enterprises. Register: Please email economicsresearch@tcd.ie to register for the lecture live on Zoom. www.tcd.ie/time/events TIME Economists: Dr Nicola Mastrorocco with Head of School Professor Carol Newman, Dr Andrea Guariso and Head of the Department of Economics Professor Gaia Narciso Both award-winning economists are core members of the Trinity IMpact Evaluation Unit (TIME), a research centre based in the Department of Economics, which aims to provide strong evidence to inform policy, so that better investments with a real impact on the development process can be made. www.tcd.ie/economics
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