Ana Dammert

2023 Department of Economics Research Support Award

2022 International Research Seed Grants, Office of the Associate Vice-President (Research and International)

2021 Faculty of Public Affairs Bursary Research Grant

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Ba M. Chu

2020 NSERC Discovery Grant

Simulation-based Methods for Large Dynamic Latent Variable Models with Unobservable Heterogeneity

Professor Ba Chu has been awarded a $90,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for his study entitled “Simulation-based methods for Large Dynamic Latent Variable Models with Unobserved Heterogeneity.” The grant will be distributed over a five-year period.

“In science and engineering, one often needs to study the behaviour of complex dynamic systems through latent variable models. Most of the time, the systems under study are large,” wrote Chu, citing global-scale numerical weather prediction in one example. “Current research endeavours should be focused on creating new methods with high scalability to estimate these large-scale latent variable models. In this proposal, I propose a new research agenda in this direction, which builds upon my recent work in time series and panel data econometrics.”

Chu notes that applications of latent variable models with time series/panel and network data are ubiquitous in many areas, including econometrics, biology, ecology, epidemiology, neuroscience, signal processing, and various fields.

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Zhiqi Chen

2019 SSHRC Insight Grant

Consumer Protection in the Age of Internet Commerce and Big Data

Last year, Canadians spent more than one billion dollars online. But along with that growth comes an increase in the commercial use of personal data and misleading pricing practices by Internet retailers.

Professor Chen has received $72,950 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to look at consumer protections within the e-commerce marketplace. He intends to conduct an analysis of the interactions between the collection and use of personal data by Internet firms and consumer’s privacy concerns, with the assumption that “privacy has intrinsic value which differs among consumers.”

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Louis-Philippe Beland

Public Affairs Research Excellence Chair (Assistant level)

Professor Beland uses sound research designs to provide insight into important public policy issues touching public and labour economics. One of his research interest is externalities to traffic.  Congestion levels have been increasing in most urban cities in Canada and the United States. The most obvious reason that traffic congestion is increasing widely is population growth. This is a serious concern since congestion levels are expected to continue to increase.

In his research, Professor Beland has documented various externalities to traffic, including the negative emotional cues associated with unexpected high traffic and its link to domestic violence. He also documented the cost of traffic on the work of first responders. His work shows that traffic slow down the time of arrival to an incident and show serious consequences. Some of his future work will study additional costs of traffics.

2022 SSHRC Insight Grant

Determinants of Health

This research project encompasses several distinct studies aimed at investigating various factors affecting health capital and their subsequent impact. The first paper delves into the effect of governors’ political parties (Democrat vs. Republican) on infant health outcomes in the U.S., examining the outcomes by various demographic factors. The second paper explores the impact of police violence on infant health outcomes in the U.S., particularly focusing on in utero exposure to police-involved shootings. The third paper analyzes the introduction of opioids on traffic fatalities and infant health outcomes in the United States, utilizing cross-state variations in OxyContin’s entry and marketing policies. Each study contributes to our understanding of how policy and politics shape health capital and, subsequently, human capital.

2020 SSHRC Insight Development Grant

Traffic, Judges and Immigration Decisions

This research project aims to investigate the economic consequences of traffic congestion, specifically focusing on whether morning traffic affects the productivity of judges in the United States and their immigration adjudication decisions. The study builds on existing research demonstrating that judges can be influenced by various emotional cues, such as significant events or external factors. Additionally, it recognizes the growing body of literature linking traffic congestion to negative mental health outcomes, including stress and aggression. The project intends to combine immigration adjudications with local traffic data in California from 2008 to 2015 to analyze the impact of unexpected high traffic faced by judges during their morning commute. By examining deviations from a judge’s usual traffic patterns and considering various judge characteristics, the study seeks to uncover whether traffic congestion affects judges’ productivity and the outcomes of immigration decisions. The research aims to shed light on an understudied aspect of traffic’s impact on work productivity, which is particularly relevant in urban areas, and may have important policy implications for traffic management.

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