Journal of Undergraduate Research

Robert Buss and Dr. Scott Condie, Economics Department Introduction In recent years, high frequency trading has increased trade volume significantly. High frequency traders employ various algorithms in order to maximize their individual profit. Supporters of high frequency trading claim that high frequency traders provide the market with more liquidity, while opponents assert that such trading […]

Kramer Quist and Dr. Richard Evans, Economics Optimal labor income taxation research has long relied on simplifying assumptions regarding the convexity of policy maker decisions in order to make the associated calculus of variations optimization problem analytically tractable. Furthermore, researchers have assumed that taxable agents have simplistic distributions of ability few degrees of heterogeneity. We […]

Bryan Seegmiller and David Sims, BYU Economics Department Introduction It has been well-documented that the latter half of the 20th century and the early 21st century has seen vast upheavals in the societal roles of males and females in Western society. One noted result of this gender revolution is the striking change in college gender […]

Carla Johnston and Dr. James McDonald, Economics Department Introduction Does happiness depend on income? What puts people at risk to become “heavy smokers?” Do gender and wage affect job promotion? The answers to these varied questions have one thing in common: they employ grouped or categorical data. Happiness is often reported on cales of 1 […]

Thomas Kelemen and Dr. Michael Ransom, Economics Over the past twenty years, the Denver Regional Transit District has developed an extensive light rail public transit system in the Denver, Colorado metro area. This development was motivated, at least in part, by severe highway congestion on important highway routes to downtown Denver. In a recent analysis, […]

Val Lambson and John van den Berghe Download the report

Roy Roth and Dr. Scott Condie, Economics Department Hidden limit orders have been increasingly important in asset markets over the past several years. These orders are hidden in the sense that they are not displayed or announced in any way until another order is sent to the market that trades with the hidden order. Traditionally, […]

Joshua Witter and Dr. Joseph Price, Economics Department Introduction I was awarded an ORCA grant to research the unique health insurance market that the children of teen mothers face. I became concerned that these children may not have equal access to private insurance coverage and as a result were at risk of being uninsured or […]

Ryne Belliston and Kerk Phillips, Economics Introduction Immigration issues create tough political problems for policy makers. Whether or not to allow workers from low wage countries to migrate to high wage countries is a source of constant domestic and international political debate. Japan is a country facing an aging population and low birthrates, and thus […]

David Beheshti and Richard Evans, Economics Introduction Since the collapse of the Bretton-Woods Agreement in 1973, inflation rates have been steadily decreasing in most of the developed world. At the same time, countries have become increasingly open to international trade (see Figure 1). A possible explanation is that openness to trade and inflation are negatively […]