Inaugural Econometrics Research Symposium shows a new way to 'better make observations of your world'

Justin Jackson, discusses his project with Center for Regional Economic Research Director Howard Wall at the Econometrics Research Symposium. Photo by Omar Yasin.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Gary W. Rollins College of Business hosted its inaugural Econometrics Research Symposium on Thursday, Dec. 5, where students examined data sets of real-world issues and trends.

Dr. Howard Wall, the director and chief economist of the newly founded UTC Center for Regional Economic Research and a professor of practice in the Department of Finance and Economics, hosted the symposium.

Attendees viewed various poster presentations on topics ranging from racial discrimination in fast food prices to infant birth rates to the determinants of salaries in the National Basketball Association.

“Econometrics is the application of statistics to economic questions,” Wall explained. “You use data and try to figure out relationships between variables. It’s a lot of techniques and ways to best put together a model to figure things out.”

Before joining UTC, Wall was a professor of economics and director of the Center for Applied Economics at Lindenwood University in Missouri. Prior to his time there, he spent 12 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he was a vice president and regional economics adviser.

Wall said that the econometrics poster boards highlighted the students’ ability to understand the world around them using data and trial and error.

“This is the most important class of your life because you’re learning how to understand the world, not just with data,” Wall said. “You’ll observe something, you’ll try to understand it and you might think, well, maybe this and that happened—but maybe there’s something else explaining both, which is what you’re always constantly doing in econometrics. So you really learn how to better make observations of your world just by this.”

Stella Buselli, a senior at UTC majoring in economics with a minor in anthropology, examined racial discrimination in the fast food industry. She found in her research that in impoverished areas, fast food chains will lower their prices of entrees below their base rate to take advantage of communities with fewer options.

“I think (the data) definitely highlights some issues that we have going on, especially based on socioeconomic factors,” Buselli said. “It helps us go further by trying to eliminate those issues that we have based on the data.

“There’s lots of data out there, lots of different stories, and to have the skill to be able to use data to figure out the actual story—I think that’s super important.”

Trevor Lewis, a senior majoring in mathematics: actuarial science, said he enjoyed learning from Wall about how these data sets apply to the real world and how to build these models.

“He did a good job of giving an overview of the model and the process of how you go about building one of these models,” said Lewis, whose project was titled “How Data Drives Insurance: Does Seniority Predict Claim Cost?”

“I think it’s really applicable to the real world,” Lewis continued. “He did a really good job of making that well-known. We looked at different questions that are related to the real world and data sets that were just really interesting.”

Wall said he wants his students to learn more than just applying statistics to economics, which is what econometrics examines. He wants to change the way his students look at the world.

“I want the students to learn something,” Wall said. “You’re going to be amazed at how much you know at the end.”