Alena F
- Research Program Mentor

PhD candidate at University of Oregon

Expertise

General Economics, Econometrics, Statistics, Microeconomics/Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, Public Economics, Environmental Economics, Development Economics

Bio

Hi! My name is Alena and I am a first year PhD student at the University of Oregon. I am passionate about economics and its approach to problem solving and research and look forward to the opportunity to get other interested young people excited about the field. For fun, I like to play piano, hike, and do pretty much anything outside.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Behavioural economics: effects of nudges

Explore a topic that has been fundamental in the disciplines of psychology and behavioral economics: the role of framing and incentives in informing choices. Much of economy theory is founded on the principle that consumers act as rational agents, but behavioral economics explores the validity of this assumption. Set up an experiment, survey, or collect data from online sources to better understand how small changes in language used in advertisements/informational brochures, framing, or the use of positive vs. negative incentives can affect decision making and preference ordering.

Health Outcomes: effects of minimum wage policies

While minimum wage policies are a hot topic in American public policy discussions, economists have primarily focused on their employment effects. Although economists tend to prioritize efficiency concerns, the discipline is evolving to emphasize the importance of other types of outcomes as well. This project would challenge you to model the estimated effect of these outcomes by finding data on minimum wage policies, health outcomes, and control variables and using R, Stata, or another statistical programming tool to explore your results by implementing quantitative methods and generating a written report.

Coding skills

R, Stata, a little bit of Python and Matlab

Languages I know

Spanish, intermediate (formerly fairly fluent, definitely le

Teaching experience

I am a graduate employee (GE) at University of Oregon for my PhD program, so I have been required to teach discussion sections and hold office hours. Most of the courses I have taught have been intro-level micro and macroeconomics classes, but this past quarter I also had the opportunity to GE for a Sustainability Economics course where I mentored students through the essay writing process during my office hours and graded reading responses.

Credentials

Work experience

PATH (2023 - Current)

Health Economics Intern: TyVacc Project

Education

Denison University

BA Bachelor of Arts (2022)

Economics

University of Oregon

PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate