The Department of Economics in พรพรศศโs Martha and Spencer Love School of Business has named senior Emma Leonard โ25 the annual Best Economics Thesis Award winner.
The Department of Economics in พรพรศศโs Martha and Spencer Love School of Business has awarded its 2025 Best Economics Thesis prize to Emma Leonard โ25, with classmate Cole Meixell โ25 receiving honorable mention.
Leonard, an economics and statistics double major from Richmond, Va., combined quarterly U.S. labor data from 1990-2019 with an instrumental-variable model to show how unexpected Federal Reserve rate hikes ripple through the workforce. Her study finds that men are more likely to lose jobs outright, while women, particularly Black and Hispanic women, leave the labor force entirely, deepening existing inequities.
โThe quality of Emmaโs thesis is far beyond that of an พรพรศศ,โ said Brandon Sheridan, associate professor of economics. โWe are all very proud of her persistence and success.โ
Meixell, an economics major from Newtown, Pa., built a novel 2017-2024 dataset from commercial-bank filings and websites to gauge the impact of credit-card cash-back programs. He reports that the incentives boost banksโ interest income and slightly raise consumer rates without increasing household debt.
Both seniors co-edited Issues in Political Economy and presented their findings at the Eastern Economic Association conference and at Elonโs Spring Undergraduate Research Forum.
Leonard will serve as a research assistant with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, while Meixell will earn paralegal certification before applying to law school.