Departmental Honors

Requirements
Each spring the department nominates several of our graduating seniors for departmental honors. The college makes the final decision as to which students will receive honors. To be nominated by the department, there are two formal requirements;

• GPA: Your departmental GPA must be at least a 3.7. You must have this GPA when you begin your senior year and at the end of the senior year. Your departmental GPA includes all of your grades in economics courses and the required statistics and mathematics requirements.

• Senior Honors Thesis: You must also receive a grade of at least A- in W4999 Senior Honors Thesis. This is a year-long course which you may substitute for your senior seminar requirement.

Senior Honors Thesis

• The senior honors thesis is a full year course and you will not receive a grade until you have completed both semesters. If you complete both semesters then you will have also satisfied your senior seminar requirement in the department. If you do not complete both semesters then you must take a senior seminar to graduate as a major and the course W4999 Senior Honors Thesis will be removed from your transcript.

Topic
• Your chosen topic should be one that you have a genuine interest in studying and one that you have spent some time thinking about during your time at Columbia. The topic can be one that arose from a class or an assignment that you have already completed here or from a work or research experience that you have had recently. For example, suppose that you took an environmental economics course where you learned about the numerous ways that the government can intervene in a market to correct the distortion caused by an externality (e.g. pollution). A starting point for the topic of your senior thesis might be the study of the success or failure of one or more of these government interventions in a particular market.

• During the spring semester of your junior year you should begin to think formally about the topic. One good idea would be to read a little background material on the topic (e.g. your class notes or a book that generated your initial interest). By the end of the spring semester you should be able to write a couple of paragraphs about the topic and why it interests you and you should be able to speak with a faculty member about your proposed topic.

Advisor
• You will work one-on-one with your senior thesis advisor. He or she will have the primary responsibility for advising you on your work as well as establishing a schedule for you so that you can complete your thesis on time. He or she will also grade the final paper.

• You may work with any member of the economics department, the Barnard economics department and the economics and finance division of the business school. At the beginning of the process (in the spring of your junior year) when you speak with the director of the honors program, he or she will ask you if there is a faculty member that you would like to work with. To answer this question you have to be familiar with the faculty members and their interests. Ideally the topic that you have chosen was generated in a class at Columbia so that one natural choice would be the professor of that class. Another ideal situation would be one where the idea arose from working with a professor as a research assistant. In less than ideal circumstances you can check the Faculty Information page as well as the personal websites of the faculty to see who might be interested in your topic. Please pay particular attention to those faculty members that you are already familiar with. Faculty members are more likely to work with a student that they know than one that they do not know. Finally the director of the honors program might be able to suggest some names when you come in to speak with him or her.

• Once you have a list of names of possible advisors you should either contact those advisors directly or provide the list to the director of the honors program. Hopefully we will be able to match you up with your advisor before the end of your junior year.

Timeline for the Senior Honors Thesis
Spring Semester Junior Year
• Choose a topic that you would like to study
• Think of possible advisors
• Speak with the director of the honors program

Summer between Junior and Senior Years
• Begin background reading on your topic

Fall Semester Senior Year
• Again speak with the director of the honors program
• Register for the senior honors thesis
• Speak with your advisor early in the semester to set up a schedule with your advisor. Please note that the schedule that you establish with your advisor is independent of the schedule outlined here. The schedule here pertains only to your correspondence with the director of the honors program.
• Midterm of fall semester: you should submit a one page proposal for your thesis topic and a bibliography (not necessarily complete) to the director of the honors program
• End of fall semester: you should submit a 5 page summary of your work to date to the director of the honors program

Spring Semester Senior Year
• In mid-April, you must submit a bound copy of your senior thesis to the director of the honors program. The exact date will be established during the spring semester.

Prizes

The department awards 3 prizes annually: the Parker Prize and two Romine Prizes.

Sanford S. Parker Prize
• The Parker prize is a cash prize ($2500) that is awarded to a member of the graduating class who majored, joint majored or concentrated in economics that is planning on attending graduate school in economics. Any student that intends to pursue a Ph.D. in economics within two years of graduation is eligible. However the department may give preference to students that will be attending graduate school in the year following graduation. The award is announced at the annual award ceremony held in the rotunda of Low Library during the week of graduation.

• To be considered for this prize you must notify the director of undergraduate studies in the spring semester of your senior year of your intention to pursue a Ph.D. in economics.

• Please note that all students thinking of going to graduate school in economics should mention this to their faculty advisor as early as possible. In addition please read the graduate school section of the FAQ page for more information about graduate school in economics.

David Estabrook Romine Prizes
• The two Romine Prizes are cash prizes ($300 each) that are awarded annually to two members of the graduating class who majored or joint majored in economics. One prize is awarded to the student that wrote the best paper in a senior seminar. The other prize is awarded to the student that wrote the best senior thesis. The awards are announced at the annual award ceremony held in the rotunda of Low Library during the week of graduation.

• To be considered for the prize awarded to the best paper in a senior seminar you should speak with the instructor of your senior seminar. He or she will decide whether to nominate you for the award. If you are nominated by your instructor then you will submit a copy of your paper to the director of undergraduate studies.

• Please note that in the spring semester the deadline for choosing the prize recipients is before the end of the semester. So if you are in a spring seminar and would like to be considered for this prize then you should speak with your instructor no later than the first week of April about the possibility of being nominated. At that time your instructor will be able to tell you when the deadline is for submissions of papers to be considered for the prize. The deadline is late in April but prior to the end of classes.

• All students that write a senior honors thesis are automatically nominated for the Romine prize.

2006 Honors Recipients

Back row: Alphan, Shuky, Aaron, Zack, Svetoslav
Front row: Tesia, Stanley, Laura, Ady, Venkat

Ady Barkan
Diagnosing Tuberculosis in India: An analysis of three strategies
Advisor: Miguel Urquiola and Susan Elmes

Shuky Ehrenberg
A question of Rank: An Empirical investigation of law school rank maximizing strategies, with a focus on admissions decisions
Advisor: Eiichi Miyagawa

Alphan Kirayoglu
Convertible Bond Valuation. Incorporating Credit Risk using Credit Default Spreads
Advisor: Pierre-Andre Chiappori

Zack Luck
Bigger Houses or Bigger Cities? Exploring the Link between the Preferential Tax Treatment of Owner-Occupied Housing and Urban Sprawl
Advisor: Dan O'Flaherty

Aaron Maczonis
The American Pastime and the American Way: Talent Valuation and Baseball’s Double Output Quandry
Advisor: Sunil Gulati

Paasha Mahdavi
Consumer Demand for Fuel Efficient Automobiles
Advisor: Graciela Chichilnisky and Kate Ho

Krishna Rao
Incentives to Self Report: Regulatory Treatment of “Voluntary Disclosures
Advisor: Alex Pfaff

Laura Rosner
In Search of Spillovers: the Effect of FDI on Domestic Firm Productivity in the Czech Republic
Advisor: Shari Spiegel

Svetoslav Roussanov
The Currency Board Arrangement: Removing Barriers to Economic Growth rather than Being One. Evidence from Bulgaria
Advisor: Bruce Preston

Tesia Sommer
The Large Market Advantage? An Economic Inquiry into the financial structure of the MLB and NFL
Advisor: Sunil Gulati

Stanley Tan
Bully in the Playground? The Implications of UEFA Champions League Revenues on Competitive Balance in Domestic European Soccer Leagues
Advisor: Sunil Gulati

Venkat Vaikuntanarayanan
An Investigation into the Effect of Corruption on Total Factor Productivity and GDP Growth Rates
Advisor: Christian (Kiki) Pop-Eleches

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