The Department of Economics congratulates Yurim Lee and Xuetao Shi on being awarded the 2017-18 Henry T. Buechel Memorial Scholarship and Keita Abe for receiving the 2017-18 Conley Fellowship. Both awards are highly competitive and reward students at the earlier stages of their dissertation research who have demonstrated excellence in academic performance and teaching.
Henry Buechel (pictured right) is remembered fondly by students at the time for his outstanding teaching in the Economics Department and ability to bring even the driest subject vividly to life. The Henry T. Buechel Memorial Scholarship was created in 1998 by Aurelia Buechel in honor of her husband.
Newly created in 2016, the Conley Fellowship results from a generous gift from Bryan (BA '64) and Mary Conley. After completing his PhD in Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Bryan spent much of his professional career as a forensic economist, becoming a sought-after expert for plaintiffs and families who wanted compensation for their loss of work, limb, or life. Bryan and Mary believe strongly in the importance of graduate education and helping to create future generations of economics faculty and professionals.
This year's recipients:
Fourth-year student Yurim Lee is working with Professor Fabio Ghironi on research in the area of "subsistence business", or firms created out of necessity by owners who felt they had no better choices for work. Yurim aims to study the macroeconomic impacts and policy implications of this excess, and frequently overlooked, firm creation. She completed her BA in Economics at Yonsei University and her MA in Economics at Seoul National University.
Third-year student Xuetao Shi is working with Professor Yanqin Fan in econometric methods, with his research proposal focusing on "developing a systematic approach to the estimation, inference, and prediction [of] interval-valued random variables". When completed, Professor Fan predicts Xuetao's research will provide important new tools for researchers and practitioners working with interval data. Before coming to UW, Xuetao completed a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering at Xi'an Jiaotong University, an MS in General Engineering from Ecole Centrale de Lyon, and an MA in Economics from Vanderbilt University.
Fourth-year student Keita Abe's research, conducted under the supervision of co-chairs Professor Robert Halvorsen and Professor Chris Anderson, focuses on the economics of commercial fisheries, taking a new theoretical approach to the question of how harvesters choose the optimal duration of fishing trips. Keita was recently recognized for his work in this area at the 2017 North American Association of Fisheries Economists (NAAFE) Forum (featured here). Keita previously earned a BA in Policy Studies at Kwansei Gakuin University, an MS in Enviornmental Science at Hokkaido University, and an MA in Economics at the University of British Columbia.
Special thanks to the selection committee: Professors Jacques Lawarrée, Mu-Jeung Yang, and Jing Tao.
