Students win national research awards

Three Oberlin students have distinguished themselves in the Omicron Delta Epsilon Undergraduate Research Award competition. Omicron Delta Epsilon, the international honor society celebrating academic excellence in the field of economics, hosts this competition annually.

 

In a field full of excellent submissions, Shawn Lisann's paper, What Really Drives Effective Corporate Governance, was a standout entry, receiving second place overall and an award of High Distinction. As research mentor M. Udara Peiris notes, Shawn "tackles a question central to both academic finance and policy: Do stronger shareholder rights still translate into better firm performance?" To answer this question, Shawn rebuilt a long-neglected measure of corporate governance, "providing the first credible post-crisis update and . . . re-open[ing] a stalled empirical debate."  Dr. Peiris expects this database to become a benchmark for future governance research, and describes his paper as "the rare undergraduate paper that moves the research frontier."

 

Lisann's paper was not the only standout research originating on the Oberlin College campus. Nhi Le's paper, The Effects of Uncertainty on Residential Investment, reached the final round of judging and was awarded a rating of Distinction. Kseniia Borovkova's paper, "How the U.S. Natural Interest Rate has been Affected by the Global Savings Glut, Macroeconomic Uncertainty, and the Demise of Investment Banking, also reached the final round of eight papers.