Sarah’s Academics
I’m pursuing a PhD in Economics at Georgia State University. I am in my fourth year, and I defended my dissertation proposal in August 2008. My fields of focus are Experimental Economics and Environmental Economics, but I am also interested in development and public economics. I plan to finish the program in 2010 (to be on the academic job market in fall 2009).
Here is my CV.
My dissertation will be a three-essay piece. Each essay is placed in one of my main areas of interest: behavioral, development, and environmental applied microeconomics. The essays are:
· The Girl Scout Cookie Phenomenon: Peer Pressure in Grassroots Fundraising – this essay uses an economic experiment to examine how people influence each other in social and strategic ways in a setting where charitable contributions are being elicited.
· Reconsidering Enduring effects of the Conservation Reserve Program – this essay examines parcels that have left the CRP to determine whether they are less likely to return to farming (compared to parcels that have not been in the CRP), to see whether having been in the CRP has had enduring effects on land use.
· Formal and Informal Credit in Rwanda – this essay will use a data set gathered in Rwanda in 2002 to examine people’s use of formal and informal credit, and develops a theoretical model of the purpose that informal credit serves as a vehicle for social capital.
In Spring 2009, I will be teaching Econ 2100 (The Global Economy) section 005, TuTh 11am-12:15pm, and I will be the Teaching Assistant for Prof Petrie’s Econ 8120 (Optimization and Partial Equilibrium Analysis). Students in both courses should feel free to contact me with any questions (my email address is sarah (dot) jacobson (at) gmail (dot) com—obviously, turn that into a real email address). Information on both courses will be conveyed through uLearn.
My research advisor is Professor Ragan Petrie. At the moment, we’re working with data from Rwanda on risk preferences and credit usage, and data from Peru on risk and time preferences. Papers we have written in the past:
A paper I wrote with Professor James Alm (published but not peer reviewed):
Papers I’ve written for classes:
· “Do People Really Know and Use Marginal Tax Rates? An Experimental Design,” Fall 2006.
· “Child Labor and Intrahousehold Bargaining,” Fall 2005. This was submitted as fulfillment of a requirement for my MA in Economics, with Ragan Petrie as my advisor.
Here’s my Econ 9520 “Teaching Seminar” Spring 2006 website my team made up on Academic Dishonesty.