Spring 2021 Undergraduate Research Winners Announced

May 17, 2022
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The Department of Economics is happy to announce the winners of the Spring 2021 Undergraduate Research Prizes. Each term, the department awards two prizes:

  1. The Peter Sinclair Undergraduate Research Prize for longer research papers, typically those submitted to EC481, our capstone research project course;
  2. The Short Undergraduate Research Prize, for shorter papers on any topic in economics.

For Spring 2021, the Peter Sinclair Undergraduate Research Prize is awarded to Colin Moran, for his paper, "Predicting Private Donations to Ontario's Elementary Schools." In this paper, Colin evaluated and compares models to predict how much elementary schools raise in private donations using the school's standardized test scores and census data on the neighbourhood surrounding the school. He found that the key predictor of school fundraising is student enrollment, in addition to a school's religious affiliation and the ethnic diversity of the neighbourhood. This information will be very valuable to schools and boards who are looking to understand what determines a school's private fundraising efforts.

Colin is a 2021 graduate of the Economics and Financial Management program. After completing his degree, he started a job in the financial industry in Toronto. It's also Colin's second time winning the prize!

There were four runners-up for the prize:

  1. Philip Downie - "The National Hockey League's Canadian Effect"
  2. Shane Morgan - "Investigating the Effects of Trade Openness on Income Inequality"
  3. Mark Tasker - "How Does Canada's Debt-to-GDP Affect Economic Growth?"
  4. Matt Palucci - "The Intelligent Investor: A Canadian Guide to Investing in Education"

The Short Undergraduate Paper Prize was shared by two students:

  1. Tristan Penrose-Woodruff for his paper, "Do Right to Carry Laws Cause or Prevent Violent Crime?" The paper starts with the ambiguous effects on crime of allowing more guns in society: on the one hand, it creates more opportunity for gun-related crime, but on the other guns can also help prevent such crimes so the total effect is an empirical question. The paper reviews the literature and concludes that the effect of Right To Carry laws is that they likely increase violent crime. 
  2. Lauren Wilk for her paper, "Canada's Monetary Policy Approach in Response to COVID-19." The onset of COVID-19 brought with it a significant economic contraction, and one way to counteract that is through monetary policy. The paper outlines the goals of Monetary Policy in Canada, in addition to the specific measures used to counteract the negative economic effects of the pandemic. 

Tristan is a fourth-year student finishing the Economics and Financial Management Program. Next academic year, he will start a Master's program in Economics at Queen's University. Lauren is a fourth-year student in the Honours Economics program with the Legal Studies option. Her plan for the future is to write the LSAT and attend law school in order to pursue a career in corporate law. 

There was one runner-up prize:

  1. Abraham Fernandez - "Does Improved Access to Legal Abortion Reduce Crime?"

Congratulations to these students for their outstanding work. It's also important to highlight that while we pick a few specific winners for these prizes, all fo the submissions we receive every term are excellent, and deserv lots of recognition even outside of these prizes.