Tales from the Archives: Zicklin Profs Report on Recent Research

Zicklin News spoke with faculty members who recently completed year-long fellowships that enabled them to focus exclusively on their research. Here’s what we learned.

Xi Dong (associate professor, Bert W. Wasserman Department of Economics and Finance): “I spent a summer doing research for a paper on how anomalies and stock markets are linked together in the global markets. Together with my co-authors, I developed a new theoretical framework, tested the theory in an international setting, interacted with faculty at Yale University, and presented the work at Washington University in St. Louis. I’m currently writing up my paper, which will be submitted to top finance journals.”

Ted Joyce (professor, Bert W. Wasserman Department of Economics and Finance): “I spent the year collaborating with CUNY researchers on an evaluation of CUNY’s Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) Program, which provides financial support, academic advising, career counseling, and tutoring services to encourage students to finish their degrees. Unlike similar support programs, SEEK accepts first-year students with substantially weaker academic preparation than students accepted as part of the regular freshman cohort. Nonetheless, we found that SEEK students were considerably more likely to stay in college and graduate within six years than their non-SEEK counterparts. Our results will be published in the Peabody Journal of Education at Vanderbilt University.”

Romi Kher (associate professor, Lawrence N. Field Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation): “I was conducting research at Cornell University in their behavioral economics lab. We ran experiments exploring decision-making under risk and uncertainty at the intersection of religiosity and poverty. One result that I found particularly interesting was when we asked Cornell students to gamble on certain possibilities, one being getting a grade of F in a course and another on the classic Russian roulette game. Students were more willing to gamble on Russian roulette—in other words, an F was perceived to be worse than death!”

Ana Valenzuela (professor, Allen G. Aaronson Department of Marketing and International Business): “I spent my year at ESADE in Barcelona, Nova University in Lisbon, and Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I was developing a meta-analysis of 20 years of work on algorithmic aversion, which is the tendency of humans to reject or distrust recommendations made by an algorithm, even when the algorithm has been proven to outperform human judgment; for example, patients preferring a medical diagnosis from a human physician rather than from an AI because they believe an AI would neglect their uniqueness. I also presented my analysis at different institutions around Europe and Asia.”

Categories: Faculty, News, Research