Dear Friends of the Department,
Welcome to our 2026 spring newsletter! We are pleased to update you on our latest news and invite you to engage with us through our online publication and more.
This spring semester we had a very successful hiring season. We hired three new Associate Professors: John Conlon, Lorenzo Magnolfi, and Brad Setzler. John’s expertise is behavioral/experimental economics, Lorenzo’s is empirical IO, and Brad’s is labor economics. We also hired three new Assistant Professors: Hoang Nguyen, Kim Sarnoff, and Chenping Yang. Hoang’s expertise is econometrics, Kim’s is behavioral/experimental economics, and Chenping’s is macroeconomics. The department also welcomes Jared Heeter as our new department manager.
There is also sad news. Professor John Kagel passed away in January and Professor Emeritus Rick Steckel passed away in March. John joined the department in 1998 and was a University Chair Professor. Rick joined the department in 1974 and retired as a Distinguished University Professor. Both of them made pioneering contributions in their respective fields.
Since last spring, three of our faculty members have had their research papers either published or newly accepted in the Top 5 journals in economics. Congratulations to Kyle Dempsey, Gabriel Mihalache, and Myles Wagner on their accomplishments! For more details, see publications link.
In April, the department hosted the Midwest Economic Theory Conference and the Midwest International Trade Conference. In May, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and the department had a one-day research workshop in Cleveland. This spring, our PhD candidate Shivam Agrawal’s paper was selected by the Centre for Competition Economics as one of the three prize-winning papers. Tamar Oostrom’s research (the link between declining churchgoing and increased mortality) was featured in Ohio State News. Bruce Weinberg was featured in an NBC4 news article: “Why are prices still high at the grocery store?” Finally, Alex Hollingsworth has been elected as a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board!
In AY25-26 the department had 12 PhD students on the job market. Most of them found good jobs. They are placed at academic positions, consulting firms, and government research institutions, either domestically or internationally. This spring we admitted 21 PhD students. 19 of them have financial support, with 15 being offered fellowships.
Other 2025–26 award recipients include the following graduate students: Acadia Hall and Harrison Youn received the William Green Fellowship. This fellowship is awarded to students whose work contributes to the interests of working people and their families. Sukgyu Shin was awarded the G.S. Maddala Prize in Econometrics. Harrison Youn has received the Tom Kniesner and Debbie Freund Award. Xinyu Li received the Keith Robinson Graduate Student Research Prize. Jhongyi Huang has received the Professor J. Graham Smith Memorial Prize in Applied Economics. Vaasavi Unnava received a Graduate Associate Teaching Award (GATA) from the Graduate School. This is the University’s highest recognition for exceptional GTAs.
Linh Nguyen and Yixuan Li received Departmental Graduate Associate Teaching Awards (GATA) and Dian Gu and Haoran Wang received Departmental Citations for Excellence in Teaching (DCET) for their exceptional work as GTAs. Linh Nguyen, Suha Kim, and Gokce Dogan have been awarded the Larry and Shelia Kantor Award in recognition of their service to their fellow graduate students in the department. Dr. Kantor received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics at Ohio State.
Congratulations to all!!
Finally, the department has moved from Arps Hall to the newly renovated Bricker Hall, which is located in the center of the campus! We are very excited about this move!
STAFF SPOTLIGHT:
Jamie Cunningham is the Career Counselor for the Department of Economics, where she helps undergraduate and graduate students explore career paths, secure internships, prepare for graduate school, and build professional skills for long-term success.
ALUMNI HIGHLIGHTS:
Alumni, Megan Gordon, based in Washington, DC, US, is currently a Strategic Operations Program Manager at Apple, and a member of OSU’s Economics Advisory Board!
We also feature a story about our Economics Advisory Board.
We hope that you will enjoy reading our newsletter. And as always, we encourage you to consider donating funds to help support our departmental activities or serve as a mentor for a current Economics student. Please also follow the department’s LinkedIn page.
We want to hear from you! Please complete this short survey to update us on your career and personal accomplishments. We look forward to including some brief alumni updates in our next newsletter. https://osu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6JBQskXq10ZMYNo