Undergraduate Honors Theses (archives)

These are examples of Economics Honors theses. Theses are posted with their permission of the author. This is not a reflection on the quality of their work. All work is © 2009-2019 by the individual authors. All rights reserved.

2018-2019

• "U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America: An Empirical Inquiry" - Basil Farooq Abdur Raquib
• "Violations of Neoclassical Economic Theory in the NBA Labor Market" - Jordi Adoumie
• "Measuring Income Inequality in Pakistan: Constructing Distributional National Accounts" - Ali Ahmed
• "The Resilience of Islamic Banks in the Wake of Crises: Comparing Islamic and Conventional Banks in the MENA Region" - Nuh Bahemia
• "Analyzing the Effects of School Spending on Student Achievement" - Anoop K. Baliga
• "Does Sexual Harassment Affect Labor Market Choices?" - Aakash Bhalothia
• "Does Inflation Targeting Reduce Exchange Rate Pass-Through?" - Gabriele Buontempo
• "Trump, Tariffs, and Tweets: How Trade Negotiations and Presidential Communication Impact Auto Manufacturers" - Yann Decressin
• "The Effect of Wildfires on Labor Markets: A California Case Study" - Martha Fiehn
• "Priced-Out: The Impact of Home Prices on the Age of Homebuyers" - Matthew Forbes
• "Analyzing Factors in Political Systems that Affect Fiscal Prudence: An Empirical Study" - Tianlang Gao
• "Understanding the Opioid Epidemic: How Pain Management Policy Contributed to Opioid Mortality" - Thea Hanson
• "The Effect of Play Style on NBA Revenues" - Jake Harrison
• "Medicaid Expansion Under the Affordable Care Act and Household Financial Outcomes" - Angel Yin-Hua Hsu
• "Public Debt and Economic Growth: Is There a Change in Threshold Effect?" - Xinruo Hu
• "Does a Causal Relationship Between International Trade and Travel Really Exist? Evidence from the U.S. and Its PTA Partner Countries" - Danlin Huang
• "Leaving the Nest: The Effect of Moving Out on Victimization Rates Among Young Adults" - Eugene Hui
• "Always in Motion is the Future: The Accuracy of Historical CBO Debt Projections" - Ammar Inayatali
• "Does Political Instability Lead to a Culture of Individualism?" - Baran Iscen
• "The Effect of Weather on Stock Trading" - Dasol Jeong
• "Investigating Peer Effects on Student Choices to Continue Foreign Language Enrollment" - Hoyun Kim
• "Effects of Minimum Wage Increase on Employment in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Korea" - Hyunah (Julia) Kim
• "Incentives, Demographics, and Biases of Ethical Consumption: Observation of Modern Ethical Consumers" - Laura Kim
• "The Effect of New BART Stations on Housing Prices" - Kasha Clark LaRoche
• "Demographics and the Implications for Voter Participation in US Counties" - Julia Lewis
• "School Shootings and Academic Achievement: A Look at the 2014 Isla Vista Killings" - Frankie Lin
• "Institutions and Missing Women: Evidence from Qing China" - Shaoyu Liu
• "How Internal Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape of the United States: An Empirical Study" - Jaya Mantovani
• "The Effect of ACA Medicaid Expansion on Ambulance Demand" - Sam Melville
• "Death Rates in California Prisons Post Realignment" - Devin Montgomery
• "The Impact of Infrastructure and Access to Markets on Lange Values in Rwanda" - Zain Nanji
• "Acquiring Economic Stability: M&A Activity as an Automatic Stabilizer for Unemployment" - Caroline Newman
• "Differences in Industry Responses to Monetary Policy Shocks: A Study of Industry Financials, Equity Prices, and Valuation" - Javier Bravo Nieto (winner of 2019 Mark A. Schimbor award for outstanding thesis)
• "The Role of Autonomy and Information in Patient-Physician Clinical Decision-Making" - Anoeil Odisho
• "Competition, Public Funding and Innovation: The Case of the Pharmaceutical Industry" - Carlos Paramo (winner of 2019 Mark A. Schimbor award for outstanding thesis)
• "The Effect of School Quality on Prices versus Rents" - Isaac Pariser
• "A Potential Crisis or a Profit Machine: An Analysis of the Subprime Auto Lending Market" - Sahil Patel
• "STEMinism: Evaluating the Attitudes of Middle-School Girls Towards their STEM Abilities in an All-Female Environment" - Alexis Polevoi
• "Comparing Automation and Income Inequality in the United States: Impact of the Automated Teller Machine" - Daniel Rosales
• "Smooth or Lose: Natural Disasters and Child Outcomes in Vietnam" - Leon Sim
• "The Impact of Education on Social Equality Beliefs in East Africa" - Somara Sabharwal
• "Differences by Race and Gender in Persistence Rates After Taking Introductory Classes in Economics and Computer Science" - Sakthi Ponnuswamy
• "Solving Pandora's Matrix: A Search Theory Model" - Anirudh Viswanathan
• "Asymmetric Cross-Price Elasticities of Private Label and National Label Organic Product" - Mitchell James Wong
• "E-cigarettes and Cigarettes: Complements or Substitutes?" - Juliana Zhao
• "The Effect of Teachers' Unions on Educational Outcomes" - Simon Zhu

2017

• "State Feedback Control in Macroeconomic Policy", Polina Alexeenko
• "Does Stop and Frisk Deter Crime? Evidence from the Aftermath of Floyd vs. City of New York", Nathaniel Barlow
• "Offshore Deposits and Tax Policy", Asha Bharadwaj
• "The Income Elasticity of Demand for Health Insurance", Sarah Goodman
• "The Impact of Race and Effort on Social Preferences in an Experimental Setting", Allison Green
• "Smoking Cessation Success and Labor Market Productivity", Daniela Grinblatt
• "Social Dynamics in Lending Opinions", Hengyu Kuang
• "The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in Creating Racial Disparities in Sentence Length", Kenny Lo
• "Capital Mobility Incentives: Foreign Direct Investment and Shareholder Protection Under Periods of Financial Distress", Carlos Ramos de la Vega
• "Breaching the Zero Lower Bound: Are Negative Interest Rates an Effective Monetary Policy Tool?", Daniel Saedi
• "Analyzing Bitcoin Price Volatility", Julio Soldevilla
• "The Assessment on Free Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific Area", Caren Suciono
• "Analyzing the Expenditure Share of Smoking in China", Shu-hui Wee
• "Capital Expenditures and the Heterogeneous Response of Equity to Monetary Policy", Michael Wei
• "Assessing the Impacts of State Regulations on the Usage of Alternative Financial Services", Lucas Zhang

2016

• Regression Discontinuity Designs with Multiple Assignment Variables, Yizhuang Alden Cheng
• Mind the Gap: Early Consequences From Medicaid Expansion Decisions, Sowill Chu
• The Monetary Policy Effects of Sweden's Transition Towards a Cashless Society, Therese Dalebrant
• Unconventional Monetary Policy Spillovers: Evidence from Emerging Markets, Tejas Dave
• The Earned Income Tax Credit and Educational Attainment for its Recipients: Evidence from Personal Level Data of the Current Pop, Timothy Han
• A Detailed Look into Peer to Peer Lending, Kyle Jackson
• Decriminalizing Indoor Sex Work: Effect on Quantity of Transactions, Andrea Kwan
• Effects of Board Gender Diversity on Firm Performance and Director Compensation in India, Christopher Siantar
• Understanding Public Transit Ridership Through Gasoline Demand: Case Study in San Francisco Bay Area, Hansen Sun
• The Relative Value of Draft Position in the NBA, Adhiraj, Watave

2014-2015

• Multi-Unit Uniform Price Auction Applied to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Giovanni Castaldo
• How Does Foreign Aid Affect Political Stability?, Jeffrey Chao
• Who Cares About the Neighborhood? Gentrification and Educational Outcomes in Oakland Unified School District Elementary Schools, Sanat Daga
• Land Reform, its Effects on the Rice Sector, and Economic Development: Empirical Case Study in Taiwan, Li Duan
• Reexamining Ferguson: The Effect of Police Officers on Arrests by Race, Bhargav Gopal
• An Analysis of Global Homicide Patterns, Rachel Hart
• Traffic Jams in Japan: Does Public Transit Have an Impact?, Gordon Heaton
• Impacts of India's Rural Workfare Program on Child Development, Anushah Hossain
• Trade Specialization and the Occupational Wage Distribution: Evidence from OECD Countries, Trace Levinson
• Potential Methods of Structural Estimation of Loewenstein's Anticipatory Utility Model, Saul Rosen
• A Study of the Microfinance Penetration Imbalance in India, Avika Saraf
• Travel Mode Choice Since the 2007 Beijing Public Transit Fare Reform: A Study of the Effect of Crowding and Thermal Comfort, Diwen Shen
• Firm Size Effects on Targeted Prizes to Incentivize Innovation in Neglected Tropical Diseases, Jodi So
• Evaluating Demand for Courses at UC Berkeley, Matthew Symonds
• The Effect of the 2008 Great Recession on Child Poverty in California: A Fixed Effects Model, Laura Tsui
• The Cost of Punishment: Fairness in High-Stakes Ultimatum Games, Kent Van Donge
• Illegal File-sharing & The Film Industry, Daren Zhang
• An Analysis of the Effect of Income on Adult Body Weight in China, Ruizhi Zhang
• Trends in Income Distribution in China and Implications on Migrant Workers, Shuhan Zhou

Fall 2013

• The Impact of Postgraduate Education Attainment on Legislators' Progressive Voting Patterns, Andrew Chang
• Returns to School: A College Athlete's Perspective, Alex Dombrowski
• An Analysis on the Effect of Old Age Dependency Ratio on Domestic Saving Rate, Jinwoo Hyung
• Possible Causes and Implications of Seasonality of Birth, Carmen Ng
• A Model of Exchange Rates in Iceland, Andy Pham
• Does the Implementation of Affirmative Action in a Competitive Setting Incentivize Underrepresented Public School Applicants' Performance?, Dounia Saeme
• Explaining Regional Disparities of China's Economic Growth: Geography, Policy, and Infrastructure, Zhengyun Sun

Spring 2013

• The Synergies of Hedge Funds and Reinsurance, Eric Andersen
• The Effect of Children on Voter Turnout, David Arnold
• When Unemployment Strikes - Age, Income, and Sector Factors, Noa Dreymann
• The impact of presidential approval rate and unemployment rate in imposition and outcome of the United States sanctions, Yooseon Hwang
• Isolating the School Quality Premium in Housing Markets, Arman Khachiyan
• The Greek Tragedy: How the Euro Failed to Promote Greek Bilateral Trade, Paul Matsiras
• Islamic Finance and Banking in the Great Recession: A Comparison of Profitability with Conventional Banks, Muhammad Memon
• An Exploration of Renminbi-USD Exchange Rate: China's Foreign Exchange Intervention, Ching Wai Ng
• Homeowners Insurance Market in Texas with Catastrophic Effects: Market Competition, Supply and Demand, Jingting Yi
• Inequality does cause underdevelopment: Comprehensive analyses of the relationship, SooSun Tiah You

Fall 2012

• The Bigger the Better? An Analysis on the Effect of Conference Size on NCAA Football Team and Conference Profit, Trevor Abbott
• The Role of Asset Prices in Monetary Policy, Shuonan Chen
• Measuring the Non-Observed Economy: A Survey-Based Study of Demand in the Korean Prostitution Market, WonSoon Kim
• China's Influence on the World's Iron Ore Market: A Supply-Side Perspective, Lingxiao Ou
• Pirates Acting for the Public Good: An Experimental Study, Seung-Keun Martinez 
• Stock Price Forecasting Using Information from Yahoo Finance and Google Trend, Selene Yue Xu

Spring 2012

• Food for Thought: Evaluating the Impact of India’s Mid-Day Meal Program on Educational Attainment, Stephanie Bonds
• The Implication of the Exchange Rate Floor in Current Times, Shuangshuang Chen
• Testing for Robustness in the Relationship between Fatal Automobile Crashes and Daylight Saving Time, Joseph Crawley
• Do Individuals "Strategically Divorce" To Maximize Marital Settlements?, James Fan
• Comparing Active and Passive Fund Management in Emerging Markets, Klemens Kremnitzer
• Market Efficiency: Is the NFL Betting Market Efficient?, Alexander Kuper
• Magnitude Statements in Abstracts: A Content Analysis and Evaluation of Information Clarity, Marston Litvinsky
• The Financial Impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on Small vs. Large US Public Companies, Stephen Primack
• Predicting the Effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, Adrienne Sabety
• The Effect of Sports Participation on GPAs: A Conditional Quantile Regression Analysis, Andreas Santucci
• Monetary Policy in the Eurozone: Evaluating the European Central Bank’s interest rate decisions, Tejasvi Srivangipuram
• The Value of Pace in the NBA, Tim Xin
• Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Purchasing in Cambodia, Hongyu Zhang (Schimbor Prize for Best Thesis recipient)

Fall 2011

• The Impact of Microfinance Loans On Children's Educational Attainment In Rural Thailand, Evelyn Hytopoulos
• Analyzing the Determinants of Contract Renegotiation: A Case Study of Eighteenth- Century British Turnpike Trusts, Hannah Markee

Spring 2011

• The Impact of Changing East Asian Trade Dynamics on Japanese Growth, Rahim Dharssi
• Measuring Cultural Fluency in Berkeley Unified School District: Steps Toward an Effective Parent Involvement Strategy, Sachi Takahashi-Rial
• Stock Market and Consumption: Evidence from China, Leslie Hau
• Impact of Rural-to-Urban Migration on Agricultural Commodity Inflation in China, Kan Liu
• The Temporal Component of Reference Point Determination, Mikaela Aziz
• Persistent Discrimination in Residential Mobility Between Cities and Suburbs: Flight from Minority Suburbs Succeeds Flight from , Jeanette Ling
• Religion and Economic Development - A study on Religious variables influencing GDP growth over countries, Wonsub Eum
• Stock Market Repurchases: The Undervaluation and Negative Outlook Theories, Tammy Tieu
• Housing Wealth and Consumption in the Chinese Urban Economy: Evidence from Micro-Data, Yizhou Jin (Departmental Citation & Earl Rolph Prize recipient)
• True Value in the NBA:An Analysis of On-Court Performance and Its Effects on Revenues, Harrison Li
• NAFTA and Female Labor Market Outcomes in Mexico, Emily P Tsitrian
• To Host or Not to Host? A Comparison Study of the Long-Run Impacts of the Olympic Games, Anita Mehrotra
• The Role of Contractionary Monetary Policy in the Great Recession, Charlie Deist
• The Costs and Returns to Medical Educationn, Nicholas Roth
• Online Sports Gambling: A Look into the Efficiency of Bookmakers' Odds as Forecasts in the Case of English Premier League, Jasmine Siwei Xu
• The Effect of Drug Decriminalization in Portugal on Homicide and Drug Mortality Rates, Daniel Reuben Yablon

Spring 2009

• An Examination of International Drivers of Educational Achievement, Benjamin Bruno Johnson
• Voter Uncertainty and Economic Conditions: A Look into Election Competitiveness, Christopher V. Lau
• The Economics of Signing Petitions: Social Pressure versus Social Engagement, Diane Alexander
• Testing the Efficient Markets Hypothesis: A Behavioral Approach To the Current Economic Crisis, Iulia Stefan
• Nuclear Proliferation and the Deterrence of Conventional War: A Proposal, Justin Pollard
• Changing Endowment Sizes and Prices of Giving in Ultimatum Games, Kevin Haas
• Selective Beliefs over Preferences, Luke A. Stewart
• Difference of Percentiles: A New Look at the Ability Bias, Paul Lewicki
• The Effect of Mass Transit Systems on Price of Condominium in Bangkok, Peson Sirikolkarn
• The Sour Side of Today’s Housing Market: Testing internal relationships and understanding the composition of today’s market, Peter Lewicki
• The Impact of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments on Listed United States Companies, Richard Schimbor
• The Transformation of the Demographic Differential Between the U.S. Military and the U.S. Population, Ryan Moffett
• Not Just a TRIP! Two Cases of Business Strategy and Economic Incentives to Patent in Beijing, Shelley Jingyi Jiang
• The Effect of Fertility Levels on The Educational Attainment of Children in Uganda, Tara Roach
• Unionization and Incentives: Evidence from the Field, Thomas Winberry
• Education and Wage Differential by Race: Convergence or Divergence?, Tian Luo
• Job Security and Productivity: Evidence From Academics, William Leung
• A Survey of the Ratio of Mortgage Assets to Total Assets and Its Relation to Regulation, Yelena Bakman

Current Thesis Examples (Fall 2019-present)