Department of Economics, Finance & Quantitative Analysis
About the Research Seminar Series
The EFQA Research Seminar Series showcases the cutting-edge research and scholarly contributions of Kennesaw State University faculty, alongside invited scholars and practitioners from leading institutions and organizations. Through presentations, discussions, and the exchange of ideas, the series promotes intellectual engagement, highlights emerging research, and strengthens connections within the broader academic community.
Designed primarily for faculty, researchers, graduate students, and other academically engaged audiences, the seminar series provides a forum for exploring new methodologies, sharing research findings, and discussing timely issues in economics, finance, quantitative analysis, and related disciplines. By bringing together diverse perspectives from both KSU and beyond, the series fosters collaboration, encourages scholarly dialogue, and supports the advancement of knowledge across fields.
Upcoming Events
Aysu Ozel
Assistant Professor of Quantitative Analysis
Department of Economics, Finance and Quantitative Analysis
Title: "The Value of Modeling Enrollment Dynamics in School District Design"
Description: How can school districts plan as student enrollment changes over time? This talk explores the value of incorporating multi-year enrollment projections and uncertainty into optimization models that support long-term school district design decisions.
Thursday, October 8
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Burruss Building, 384
Research Abstract: Public school district design decisions, such as opening and closing schools and determining attendance boundaries, are long-term commitments that are difficult to reverse. Yet, student enrollment levels shift from year to year, and enrollment shifts are inherently uncertain. Large enrollment shifts can cause overcrowding or underutilization. Over the years, advances in optimization modeling have significantly improved decision-making in school district design, yet current practice typically relies on static enrollment estimates or, infrequently, deterministic multi-year projections. A natural question arises: what are the costs and benefits of further advancing school district design optimization by explicitly modeling uncertainty? Informed by school district practices, we develop a framework to explore this question. We formulate a series of optimization models whose treatment of enrollment dynamics progressively increases in sophistication from static point estimates to deterministic projections to probabilistic scenarios. We compare these approaches via a comprehensive computational study with district geographies and enrollment trajectories derived from historical data across a range of district sizes, locales, and enrollment trends. Given the nature of enrollment dynamics and the timeframe of design decisions, incorporating multi-year deterministic projections tends to consistently produce large benefits, with relatively limited additional gains from including probabilistic scenarios concentrated primarily in districts experiencing enrollment growth. Growing districts with sufficient resources can use stochastic optimization to alleviate the negative educational and financial impacts of overcrowding by incorporating uncertainty through a modest set of scenarios. For districts facing enrollment declines, deriving marginal value from stochastic optimization requires sophisticated probabilistic scenario generation beyond observed practical capabilities. If budgetary limitations prevent investing in the level of technical expertise required for stochastic modeling, as is likely for districts with declining enrollment, incorporating standard deterministic projections (which districts periodically generate for general planning purposes) can provide substantial improvements over a typical static approach.
Serena Rhee
Department of Economics, Finance and Quantitative Analysis
Title: "Firm Responses to Employment Quotas: Evidence from Bunching and Policy Implications"
Description: Do disability hiring quotas achieve their goals? Drawing on evidence from South Korea, this talk explores the benefits and unintended consequences of policies designed to expand employment opportunities for disabled workers.
Friday, November 6
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Burruss Building, 380
Research Abstract: Employment quotas are a prevalent policy to promote hiring of disabled workers, yet they may impose additional costs on firms. Leveraging South Korea’s multi-tiered noncompliance penalty schedule, we use a bunching framework to identify firm responses to employment quota. We find significant but highly heterogeneous bunching across notches and firm wages, demonstrating substantial variation in adjustment costs. We develop a structural model of firm, using bunching elasticities to calibrate firm-side cost parameters. Simulations reveal that while quotas increase disability hiring, aggressive mandates can trigger a contraction in firm scale. Designing quotas to account for firm-side adjustment cost structures can mitigate these distortions.
