Fellows

 

BB&T Fellowship

Website: http://poole.ncsu.edu/index-exp.php/economics/bbt-program

About the BB&T Program for the Study of Free Markets and Institutions

The BB&T Graduate Fellowship provides dissertation support for a graduate student writing in the area of capitalism and free markets. The Fellowship is awarded through the Poole College of Management's BB&T Center for the Study of Free Markets and Institutions. The Center was established to respond to the desire to create the deeper understanding for the moral foundations of capitalism needed to resolve the disconnect between the perception of capitalism as an immoral economic system and the higher economic standard of living it produces. The Center's creation evidences BB&Ts and the College's commitment to advancing capitalism's moral principles and promotes the College's vision of being recognized for excellence in management education. The Center's mission is to communicate the moral foundations and economic benefits of free markets and institutions to a broad audience, including the Poole College of Management, the University community and the general public. 

Current BB&T Fellows

Haiqing Zheng

Haiqing Zheng is s a current BB&T Fellow in the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

Haiqing earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and a Master’s degree in economics from Kansas State University. When she was a master’s student, her research focused on forecasting inflation in a low-inflation environment.

Her current area of interest lies in financial econometrics, quantitative finance and empirical market microstructure. Haiqing is now working on volatility modeling and liquidity risk measuring using high frequency financial data.

Lei Ji

Lei Ji just passed her dissertation final exam and will graduate in December 2010. She is now a visiting assistant professor at Old Dominion University, and is on the job market seeking a permanent position.

Lei Ji is from China and grew up in Guangzhou. She received a BS degree in International Finance from Sun Yat-Sen University. After that she worked as a journalist for one year, and then came to North Carolina State University to earn her PhD. 

Her research interests reside in the areas of growth theory and international economics. Her secondary fields are macroeconomics, economic development and econometrics. Her dissertation focuses on a global view of economic growth and its policy implications. Her work in progress includes labor-income inequality, the dynamics of the world income distribution, and two empirical works related to her dissertation.

USDA National Needs Fellowship

Website: http://www.poole.ncsu.edu/gradecon/admissions-financial-aid/assistantships-fellowships/usda-national-needs-fellowship/

About the USDA National Needs Fellowship

The USDA Fellowship Program is designed to train scientists in forest products marketing and management. The U.S. forest products industry is facing a number of critical issues, including an array of environmental and legislative concerns that will require the specialized training offered by the fellowship program. These issues include the long-run sustainability of forest resources, price risk management, environmental concerns and regulations (such as the role of forests in reducing nutrient and other run-off to the nation’s surface waters), land use management, the role of non-consumptive forest use in managing forests, and domestic and international trade policies that affect forest products marketing and management.  The program offers comprehensive training in economic theory and econometrics as well as specialized training in fields chosen by the fellows and their graduate committees.

 

Current USDA Fellows

 

Kole Swanser

Kole Swanser is a current USDA National Needs Fellow in the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

Kole earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Carleton College and a Master’s degree in Economics from Montana State University. Prior to pursuing his PhD at NC State, he worked as a consultant, providing financial and risk management education to farmers and ranchers and conducting economic research for state and federal agencies.

His current research interests include agricultural and natural resource issues related to political economy, pricing, crop insurance, and risk management.

 

Casey Wichman

Casey Wichman is a current USDA National Needs Fellow in the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

Casey grew up in Western New York and earned a Bachelor’s degree with honors in economics from Ithaca College in May 2009. As an undergraduate, Casey was involved in research pertaining to the EPA’s Clean Air Interstate Rule and the environmental externalities associated with grass-fed beef production.

Also a recipient of the University Graduate Research Fellowship, Casey began the doctoral program in economics in the Fall of 2009. He intends to specialize in environmental and resource economics with specific interests in market-based incentives for pollution control, the role of deforestation in climate change, resource sustainability and recreation demand.

 

Previous USDA Fellows

 

Kevin Furlong

Kevin Furlong is a past USDA National Needs Fellow in the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

Kevin is a native of Virginia, and grew up in the Washington D.C. area. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from Virginia Tech University in 2005. He is interested in applied micro economics in the natural resource and agricultural fields.

Currently, Kevin is working on modeling the risk of natural resource losses, examining structural changes in consumer demand systems, and exploring discrete choice methods.

 

Boris Zhukov

Boris Zhukov is a past USDA National Needs Fellow in the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

Boris was born and raised in Novosibirsk, Russia -- the third largest city in the country. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Goucher College in 2002.

His research interests include dynamic modeling of the energy sector. Currently, Boris is working on oil field unitization and pollution havens.

 

Tim Hamilton

Tim Hamilton is a past USDA National Needs Fellow continuing in the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

A native of Massachusetts, Tim earned his Bachelor's degree in economics and finance from Bentley College in Waltham, MA. Immediately following graduation he began the PhD program here at NC State. Tim is now completing his fourth year of the program, focusing on research in the area of environmental and natural resource economics. In particular, his interests include environmental inequality, environmental justice, and resource sustainability.

NC State, the Triangle area and the USDA National Needs Fellowship program have offered an ideal opportunity for Tim, as he is involved in research with the US Forest Service and the TREE seminar series, a cooperative program between NC State and Duke University that brings together graduate students, professors, and government researchers.

 

Jake Brimlow

Jake Brimlow is a past USDA National Needs Fellow and alumni of the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

Jake grew up in Northern California and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from California State University, Chico. His research as a graduate student at NC State focuses on exploring the determinants and effects of voluntary conservation of ecosystem services by agriculture landowners. Specifically, Jake's work seeks to identify the effect of the USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) on agricultural land values, which may be able to help improve the efficiency of the program as well as the enrollment mechanism.

As a USDA National Needs Fellow, Jake was involved in current and relevant research, working side-by-side with economists at the Southern Research Service (USFS). The work attempted to value ecosystem services from non-federal forests and grasslands by examining markets in which those services were traded.

After completing his PhD, Jake returned to California State University, Chico as an assistant professor at the College of Agriculture.

 

Chris Moore

Chris Moore is a past USDA National Needs Fellow and alumni of the graduate program in economics at NC State University.

He received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Elon University in 2000 and his Doctorate in Economics from NC State in 2008 with concentrations in econometrics and natural resource economics. Chris is currently employed as an economist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Chris' past professional experience includes working as an economist with Triangle Economic Research (TER) in Durham, NC. TER is a private consulting firm that specializes in non-market valuation with applications in natural resource damage assessment.

Chris' graduate research included a non-market valuation study under the direction of the US Forest Service. The study was designed to guide policy regarding our national forests and a parasitic insect that is threatening Eastern and Carolina Hemlock trees throughout the Eastern United States.

Past and Current Work

 

Dale K. Graybeal

Dale K. Graybeal is a past USDA National Needs Fellow and alumni of the economics graduate program at North Carolina State University.

Prior to entering NC State, Dale earned a MS in statistics (1989) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia and a MS in environmental sciences and engineering (1995), also from Virginia Tech. At NC State, he completed a PhD in economics with a co-major in statistics.

Dale's research interests are varied. His dissertation research involved the application of recently developed methods in Bayesian data analysis and the use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation (MCMC) for the estimation of hierarchical statistical models. This is a rapidly growing area of statistics with great potential in applied econometric modeling. The MCMC methodology allows for the estimation of complex models that have been extremely difficult to use in the past. Furthermore, because MCMC is a simulation method, the results are eminently suitable for policy simulation, sensitivity analysis, and the evaluation and comparison of alternative empirical models.

Currently, Dale is involved with a number of research topics including: contracts and tournaments in the broiler industry, structural change in forest product manufacturing industries, precision agriculture, recreational site choice, and the effect of risk of catastrophe on timber harvest decisions in the southeastern U.S.

His work in precision agriculture won the 2000 "Best Graduate Student Paper Award" from the Southern Agriculture Economics Association. Dale's future plans include a continuation of his efforts to explore the use of simulation-based empirical methods for the construction and comparison of models based on observational (i.e., non-experimental) data. Long term, he is interested in understanding the potential and the limitations of quantitative analysis in social science research and policy analysis.

Past and Current Work

 

Robert Huggett, Jr.

Robert Huggett, Jr., is a past National Needs Fellow and alumni of the graduate program in economics at NC State University.  Prior to earning his PhD in economics at North Carolina State, Robert earned a BBA in Marketing from James Madison University in 1991. Robert's current research involves environmental and resource economics, decision-making under uncertainty and risk, the economics of wildfire and natural resource accounting.

Currently, Robert is employed as an economist with the U.S. Forestry Service Southern Research Station located in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Past and Current Work

 

Elizabeth Murphy

Elizabeth Murphy, also a past National Needs Fellow and alumni of the doctoral program in economics at NC State University, earned her BS in Agricultural and Applied Economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 1999. While earning her doctorate in economics from North Carolina State University, she interned as a research assistant at the Economics of Forest Protection and Management Unit at the Southern Research Station in Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. Elizabeth is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Oklahoma State University. Her research interests focus on environmental economics, particularly areas of water quality, wildlife and the use of economic incentives in environmental policy.

Past and Current Work