STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
IRENE CARACIONI
Irene Caracioni will be joining the Federal Reserve for a prestigious two-year research assistantship following her graduation in May.
One of the Department’s many outstanding students, Irene Caracioni, will be completing her undergraduate degree in May with an impressive triple major in economics, math, and Spanish. She has already accepted a two-year research assistantship starting in July with the Federal Reserve Board, where she will be working in the Research and Statistics Division’s Capital Markets Section.
Irene has done extensive work as an undergraduate with Dr. Dietrich Earnhart’s Center for Environmental Policy. She had the opportunity to present some of their joint research (on environmental justice in the implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act) in New Orleans last fall at a Southern Economics Association Conference. To the extent that such environmental injustice reflects broader societal inequities, their study empirically examines the spatial and temporal pattern of SDWA violations by communities’ drinking water treatment facilities between 2010 and 2021. The research statistically assesses the relationship between drinking water violations and community socio-economic factors using the Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe Drinking Water Information System database; the American Community Survey database; and is supplemented with additional data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Another fascinating line of research she is pursuing involves the extent to which party size may influence the amount of restaurant food waste per consumer.
Irene added that that an additional very important project she had been involved with included work with Dr. William Duncan on a special project at the Institute for Policy and Social Research reviewing data from the Kansas Department of Commerce on its registered apprenticeship program in an effort to develop more rigorous ROI analyses.
As for some of her favorite classes during her days in and around the Department, she pointed to econometrics with Dr. Shahnaz Parsaeian and health economics with Dr. David Slusky as being among the most memorable.
A member of a special Economics Department Undergraduate Committee and former co-president of the KU Economics Club, Irene’s lengthy list of campus activities also included a stint as a Math Department teaching assistant. Her multiple honors include the prestigious John Ise Award; an Undergraduate Research Award; and having been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
"The Econ Department always has something fun going on, whether it's presentations by visiting professors, Economics Club meetings, or the Econ Café," she said.
Irene recently returned from a special KU Honors Program Spring Break trip to London, an opportunity subsidized in part thanks to the generosity of the late Carol Drever Pimental. Ms. Pimental was an Economics Department alumnus (Class of 1962) who in 2017 established a special fund to help underwrite study abroad programs for economics majors.
She said that she has not yet decided for certain about whether graduate school may be in her future, but noted that she was very much looking forward to the next two years working in the Washington, DC area for the Fed.