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Congratulations to Undergraduate Award Recipients

The Department of Economics is proud to recognize Owen Graham O’Regan for receiving a PEAK Experience Award and Alexander Beaudry and Taber Skiba for receiving the Undergraduate Research Initiative Awards for Fall 2021.

PEAK Experience Award

 PEAK Awards (short for Project-Based Exploration for the Advancement of Knowledge) are a progressively structured sequence of opportunities designed to support learners as they continue climbing to new heights of achievement in undergraduate research and creative endeavor throughout their Northeastern journeys.


Owen Graham-O’Regan, CSSH’23, Major: Economics/Mathematics

Changing Laws or Changing Norms? The Impact of Female Leadership on Intimate Partner Violence in India

This project will provide the first quasi-experimental evidence of how women’s political leadership affects intimate partner violence. Despite the adverse consequences of intimate partner violence, there is little consensus on what policies help prevent it. This project explores a possible means of combating intimate partner violence, building upon recent research that suggests female leaders create numerous positive outcomes for female constituents. By exploiting quasi-random results of close elections between candidates of opposite genders, we study the channels through which women’s political representation in Indian state legislatures may affect the risk of intimate partner violence for women in their districts.

Undergraduate Research Initiative (URI) Awards

The Undergraduate Research Initiative (URI) encourages undergraduate students in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities to carry out research and other creative activities in collaboration with, or under the close supervision of, faculty members with relevant research expertise.


Alexander Beaudry
CSSH ’23, Economics

Project: Community Policing in the United States

Community policing as a focus in police reform in the United States stems from the reaction of the nation after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. These highly publicized cases as well as the many more less known events catalyzed a breakdown of trust between police departments and the public, leading to protests across the country. Calls for action including “defund the police” and negative sentiment towards police officers have increased in the past 18 months. This project evaluates expectations, budgets, and outcomes related to two police departments in Massachusetts to assess the conditions and key factors limiting community policing’s effectiveness and the social cost of policing. 

This project builds on foundational research presented at the Justice Studies Association Annual Meetings in spring 2021.


Taber Skiba
CSSH ’23, BS Economics
Interest: Development Economics, Economics of Conservation


Project: Price of Water

The focus of this project is on the siloed approach to water access and perception of availability and its impact on overuse and sustainability. The analysis highlights contemporary economic basis of water pricing and provides an evaluation of the tie between economic outcomes and well-being. The findings are expected to support interdisciplinary and inter-temporal evaluation. 

This project builds on foundational research presented at the United States Society for Ecological Economics in spring 2021. 

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