UC Berkeley Economics Commencement 2021

[Music] uh [Music] oh [Music] greetings everyone and welcome to the department of economics commencement for the class of 2021 i'm alyssa fula hi i'm anthony casasos and i'm jay park we are all economic speed advisors and we will be around seas for today's event before we begin we want to provide a few instructions on how to get the most out of the virtual commencement experience our commencement website econ.berkeley.edu commencement has everything you need including a downloadable commemorative program where you can find our overview for today's virtual ceremony as well as listings of all of our graduates for the class of 2021 we encourage you to download a copy for yourself and save as a keepsake at this same website you will also find slides of our graduates video messages submitted by you and your loved ones and a kudo board for our community to send in messages of congratulations to each other please feel free to add to the kudo board at the end of the program and although we can't be together in person we can definitely celebrate with each other virtually to start we would like to take a moment to recognize that berkeley sits on the territory of the hu chun the ancestral and unseated land of the tuceno oloni the successors of the historic and sovereign verona band of alameda county this land was and continues to be of great importance to the alone people we recognize that every member of the berkeley community has and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land since the institutions founding in 1868. consistent with our values of community and diversity we have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible the university's relationship to the native peoples by offering this land acknowledgment we affirm indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold the university of california berkeley more accountable to the needs of american indian and indigenous peoples we know many of you are spread throughout the world on the line of other peoples and would like to take the time to acknowledge that ancestral history as well and now it is my honor to introduce professor david card chair of the department of economics to begin our ceremony for today thank you jay and thank you to the peer advisors for their contributions to our advising offices this year hello everyone and welcome to our virtual celebration for the class of 2021 i am really glad to welcome all of our graduates and their families and friends we hope this event will give the graduates their family and their friends and those of us from the department as well an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of all our remarkable graduates i will give some short introductory remarks to open the event and then we will proceed to the program and to our guest speaker to the graduates i know that you have learned a lot and accomplished many things during your time at cal some relating to your courses but many relating to other things that are equally or even more important you have every reason to be proud of what you've been able to do i also hope that you're grateful to your friends and family to your teachers in elementary school in high school to your mentors and guides and to everyone else who helped you to get you where you are today and to those family members friends and other supporters you should take pride in the achievements of the graduates and in your own role in helping helping them to get where they are today the students we are celebrating today are graduating from the economics department of the university of california berkeley with a degree in economics of all the majors in all the universities around the world it's hard to beat that those of us who teach and work here think of berkeley as simply the best university in the world of course berkeley is renowned for its contributions to research and knowledge including 22 nobel laureates so far five of which that's almost a quarter have been in economics but berkeley is also an amazing teaching university where world-class researchers share their knowledge and passion with students who are talented and hardworking and eager to take advantage of what berkeley has to offer and throughout its history we're all proud of the fact that berkeley has demonstrated its commitment to making that knowledge and training available to all kinds of students last october was 150th anniversary of women being admitted to berkeley next year 2022 is the 100th anniversary of the graduation of ida louise jackson one of the first african-american students to graduate from berkeley and the first black public school teacher in california if you want to read an inspiring history of a berkeley graduate someone who contributed to her community and to berkeley all through her life look her up on wikipedia there's also a great interview with ms jackson in the bancroft library with regard to the excellence of a berkeley economics degree my own completely unbiased view is that economics is the best possible field of study it deals with questions of enormous importance provides a powerful framework for thinking about those questions and also equips you with the tools for assessing evidence for and against different arguments at the same time economics gives you practical knowledge and skills that are immediately valuable when you enter into the real world to me that puts economics right in the goldilocks zone between the abstract and the practical between thinking and doing and between having a good job that you can love and earning a good living and the two pieces together berkeley plus economics really add up to something special economics has many exceptional teachers offering courses that are intellectually exciting demanding mind-expanding and our students talents and curiosity and dedication bring out the best in all of us who teach here and in one another leading to an education that that is unmatched anywhere we really look forward to seeing you back in berkeley live and in person as soon as possible and hopefully after that on a regular basis in the meantime congratulations on graduating from the best department in the world's best university and best wishes and now it is my great honor and pleasure to be able to introduce our keynote speaker for today's event professor susan athe professor athey is the economics of technology professor at stanford graduate school of business and one of the most prolific and influential economists of today susan earned her bachelor's degree in 1991 at duke university majoring in economics math and computer science i ventured that she was one of the first of these triple majors of which we now have quite a few at berkeley and her work since then has really been at the intersection of those three fields she got her phd at stanford then had jobs at mit and harvard before moving to stanford susan has many important papers on a huge range of topics including theory and application of auction theory market design methodology for showing causality and most recently many papers on learning and prediction problems a look at our many papers shows dozens in top economics journals in top statistics journals and in top outlets for computer science so she is truly weaving those three topics together and at the same time she's also working on many important applied problems including most recently several papers on the covid uh pandemic susan's amazing achievements have been widely recognized among the many rewards she has received she earned the john rates clark prize in 2007 which is awarded by the american economic association to the most influential economist under the age of 40. and just a few weeks ago she was nominated to be the next president of the american economic association i venture that that she is the youngest person to have ever been nominated for that role on top of all this susan is a great and inspiring lecturer and teacher and i'm just thrilled to be able to introduce her today and so glad that she's agreed to give this talk so without further ado may i present professor susan athey thanks so much for having me here today it's a huge honor to be here with you today to celebrate your graduation with you i got my own start in economics as an undergraduate i grew up near washington dc where i had a summer job working for a company that sold computers to the government through procurement auctions there were aspects of this these auctions that gave firms an incentive to manipulate the process and made things inefficient we sat around and complained about it but didn't have much to do about it when i got back to college i met an economics professor who worked on procurement and i told him about the problem well he didn't just complain about it he actually did something with my research assistants he wrote a paper about the problem and ended up testifying before congress to try to get the regulations fixed seeing that was incredibly inspirational to me it made me realize there was this tool economics research that could give me the power to actually make a difference in that way i was bitten by the bug and i've been really grateful ever since that i've been fortunate enough to have found my way and worked my way into a place where i could make a difference like that as a professional economist some economists stay at arm's length from the problems they study and that's appropriate and has some advantages but personally i'm a doer i want to fix things and economics turned out to be a great discipline to allow me to do that despite my love for economics i've actually gotten the chance to wear a lot of hats in my career in academics i've published and taught in statistics computer science operations research marketing and strategy i've developed statistical software i've worked closely with governments in a number of policy issues like designing competition policy or designing auction-based pricing systems for natural resources in tech firms as chief economist i worked on problems ranging from designing a b testing experimentation platforms to strategy acquisitions and policy and i now serve on a bunch of corporate boards as well as non-profit boards across all these experiences i've been continually surprised and pleased at how valuable the economist toolkit can be when hard decisions arise and i wouldn't trade my training for any other in my view economics can contribute to business and policy decision making in a couple of big ways first framing a problem that is breaking it down into components that can be analyzed second is understanding incentives in equilibrium how do we think a firm will respond to regulation or what's a stable industry structure third laying out the trade-offs that arise both trade-offs that arise intrinsically as well as the result of people or firms responding to their incentives finally a really big part of what economists do is figuring out how to measure the key parameters that matter for business or policy decisions even in settings where we don't have randomized experiments in controlled environments to help us estimate the key numbers we need to know to make good decisions so how is all this played out well in in a recent um a recent bit of work that i did around the pandemic i had to start by thinking about how to frame a problem when the pandemic hit i was part of a group of economists who were called on to provide advice about investing in vaccines our team broke the problem into components some of the big components included just estimating what the value of vaccination was and particularly the value of accelerating access the value of speed and we needed to understand that to figure out the value of building more manufacturing capacity with unprecedented speed in advance of knowing whether these vaccines would even work in terms of understanding incentives and equilibrium we needed to think about what would motivate firms to make unprecedented and risky investments such as repurposing existing capacity away from some profitable use in an environment where prices were actually far below the social value of the vaccine at least 100 times less and we also had to step back and think about the incentives countries had to cooperate and collaborate in situations where there'd be a lot of political pressure for countries to serve their own citizens first another part of the economist toolkit came in thinking about trade-offs in this case between equity and efficiency the motivation rich countries had to take huge risks with billions of dollars that might end up bearing no fruit at all that motivation came apart from making their citizens happy governments were motivated to serve their own citizens first but that's unfair and it may not be the most effective way to end the pandemic on the other hand if getting to serve their own citizens first motivated countries to build more capacity than they would otherwise that can actually help the world get vaccinated a lot faster and everyone might be better off in terms of the time it takes to finish vaccinating the world but the order might be unfair now do we wish that maybe rich countries might build extra capacity and share it with the places in the world where it has the greatest impact on ending the pandemic do we wish that things would be more fair of course but if governments decide to do not to do that there can be an efficiency equity trade-off economics helps set up the framing for the discussion of that kind of trade-off but it doesn't tell you how to resolve it nor does it tell you how to navigate all of the political and bureaucratic constraints that might get in the way of achieving the best outcomes finally economics helps a lot with using data to quantify the magnitudes of different economic parameters in the vaccine case understanding the cost of reduced economic activity or the value of a portfolio of vaccines when some fail i have to say i was surprised of course everyone we talked to everyone in government understood that vaccines would be good but relatively few especially early in the pandemic had actually put numbers on it and really absorbed how much larger the benefits were than the costs well how did all this work out obviously the jury's still out we had more influence in some countries than others and in most cases political and bureaucratic constraints prevented the officials we interacted with from moving quickly enough or aggressively enough and some of the international institutions didn't get enough funding and didn't get funding fast enough from in terms of donations however i'm pretty sure more capacity was built than would have been without our efforts and any way we moved the needle was of course worth it to me and our team so this is all ways that the economics toolkit applied in this you know very important moment in time and and it was a moment as being professional economists who had expertise in some of the related areas that we were called upon and given the privilege really to contribute to making a difference in this case i hope that many of you listening today will bring the berkeley economics education you've obtained into the workplaces that you enter and not just the part about maximizing profits in the short run i hope you'll be able to use your education to frame debates and decisions about issues such as the societal impact of the technologies you're working on i hope you'll use your skills to try to measure both the benefits and the harms of technologies and services and that you'll guide organizations to understand the trade-offs and be responsible towards any harms an education like the one you've just received that you've worked so hard for it's not just an investment in yourself it's also society's investment in you it's a privilege and i hope that you take the opportunities you have in front of you to change the world for the better economics has a special role to play in framing problems understanding incentives identifying trade-offs and using data to measure the factors that guide decisions the pandemic has taught us that we can't take for granted that institutions are prepared for our problems or that we will be ready to use theory and data to guide responses but in the years ahead you will have moments where you will see that there is a problem you can contribute to something you might be able to do personally to make things better and i challenge each of you to feel empowered by the education you've gotten and embrace those moments and the power that you have to make that difference thank you thank you susan for your words of encouragement and for being a part of our commencement ceremony the next portion of our program will feature our graduate and undergraduate award recipients for 2021 i'm pleased to introduce professor andres rodriguez clark who will announce our graduate awards thanks alisa for 2021 four outstanding graduate students have been honored with awards the first award is the elio j swan price the elio jane swan price is awarded for the best performance in the year of the p in the first year of the phd program elio j swann was a graduate student teaching assistant and instructor in the department of economics at uc berkeley from 1932 to 1941. he then went on to a career at the san francisco federal reserve bank where he eventually served as president he retired from the bank in 1972 after 31 years of service the elio jaswan prize is awarded to yuki ito up next is the george break price in public finance this price is awarded to the students with outstanding performance in the public finance field courses the price was established in honor of george brake a leading figure in public finance and a professor in the economics department for 40 years the george break price in public finance is awarded to kai zen our next graduate award is the public policy prize this prize is awarded to a student performing research in subjects that include but are not limited to public finance regulation health transportation and education the public policy research prize is awarded to christina brown who is a 2021 phd graduate today the journal of development economics prize is awarded in recognition of outstanding work of research in development economics its goal is to support students in their dissertation writing the journal of development economics prize is awarded to dina rousseau who is also graduating today and finally our outstanding graduate student instructor award winners the outstanding graduate student instructor award recognizes graduate student instructors who have been selected by the department based on teaching evaluations for their excellence in teaching we have 13 honorees this year including aditi and sushil who are graduating today i'm pleased to announce the following list of awardees joshua archer kevin dano sri conchala michael law carl mcpherson aditi ramu krishnan [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you congratulations on well deserved awards congratulations everyone thank you professor rodriguez clark and huge congratulations again to all of our graduate award recipients next i'd like to introduce professor martha only who will announce our undergraduate awards thank you anthony hi everybody congratulations again on your graduation i'm very proud of you um it's an exciting day we have three undergraduate awards that i'm going to announce and the first award that i'll announce is the goldman award the steve goldman prize and departmental citation is awarded to the top undergraduate student in recognition of outstanding achievement in the department of economics the goldman prize fund was established in memory of professor steve goldman who joined the berkeley faculty in 1966. he was a micro theorist devoted mentor to many students a good friend and strong supporter of academic excellence the recipient of the steve goldman memorial prize and departmental citation for 2021 is lila rose and glinder congratulations lila is completing her degree in three years and during her time at berkeley she researched regulatory rebound air pollution under professor meredith fowley after graduation she'll be working as a researcher for professor heather sarsons at the university of chicago booth school of business congratulations lyla the next undergraduate award is the mark schindler prize in economics this prize is awarded to the honors student who writes the most distinguished undergraduate thesis in economics the award was established in memory of mark shimbor who passed away in 2012. mark earned a degree in economics with honors from the university of california berkeley in 1967 the mark shimbor prize in economics enables the department to make note of mark's legacy as an honors student and to recognize the spirit in which the prize was established in celebration of excellence in the study of economics the mark shimbor prize for the best economics honors thesis for 2021 is anthony swaminathan anthony's thesis titled macroeconomic volatility at the zero lower bound evidence from the oecd examined whether interest rates below zero present greater macroeconomic volatility in terms of gdp growth rates and inflation contrary to the conventional wisdom which is that that when we go below the zlb that we will have greater volatility anthony found that oecd countries have not experienced greater volatility when they hit the zero lower bound that's an important finding for for policymakers anthony graduated in december 2020 and since then he's been working as an ra for professor yuri gordonko anthony's on track to have his thesis published in an economics journal and he will start his phd work in economics at duke university in the fall congratulations anthony the final undergraduate award for today is the bowman prize the thomas e bowman prize for student support in economics is awarded to the student who embodies the spirit of a cow education a well-rounded course of study and extracurricular activities that support a commitment to public service the award was established in honor of thomas e bowman who graduated from uc berkeley with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1947. the award is funded by the better business bureau of oakland in recognition of tom's many years of service the 2021 recipient of the thomas bowman prize is monsi hartaku muncie is being honored for her work as student director for bridging berkeley a math mentoring program through berkeley's public service center that matches traditionally underserved middle school students with uc berkeley students she was also involved with berkeley consulting the oldest consulting group on campus as one of the account managers for berkeley consulting she led efforts that resulted in a one hundred thousand dollar endowment to the university to support need-based financial aid after graduation monsieur will be will be pursuing a career in credit training congratulations monsie congratulations everybody i hope you have a fabulous commencement weekend um go out there make the world a better place make us proud go beers thank you professor olney and congratulations again to all of our award recipients it is now my pleasure to continue our virtual ceremony with a message from one of our fellow graduating seniors please join me in welcoming our undergraduate commencement speaker hal lynn wong during her time at uc berkeley hal lin was the editor-in-chief of berkeley's blue and gold yearbook club dedicated to recording highlight moments for berkeley students hal lin was also one of the founding members of the global leadership organization at berkeley where she helps students enhance their projects people time management and public speaking skills she is an economics department honors student and her research focuses on ways to advance the social economic status of first-generation chinese immigrants after graduation hal lin will join deloitte in their san francisco office as a global tax consultant hal lin would like to dedicate the speech to all the 2020 and 2021 graduates for their hard work and resilience during this difficult time thank you so much for joining us for this virtual commencement from all around the world my name is holly wang and i'm very honored to speak to you today although you can only see my professional attire on the top like you all i'm also wearing pajama pants on the bottom so no shame in that it's really hard to believe that we have been in a global pandemic for more than 400 days now i still remember celebrating two days of cancer classes back in march last year because i was really not ready for my econ 140 midterm 400 days later of cutting my own banks making pies and learning tick tock dances here we are celebrating the end of the journey of being the undergraduates in the economics department in the last 400 days i've learned many lessons i have seen real world applications of many economic theories that we have learned in class for example i've learned that consumers do you make rational choices when they purchase unless we're talking about toilet paper in a pandemic and market participants are rational actors who are interested in maximizing their utilities unless we're talking about buying gamestop stocks in the last 400 days i've learned to appreciate more i appreciate the opportunity to sleep in my childhood bedroom again in my 20s i enjoyed the sliced fruits provided by my mom i appreciate social media platforms like facebook zoom and even among us that helped me maintain a close relationship with my berkeley friends even when we were physically apart i appreciate my classmates who are willing to turn on their camera and microphone in a breakup room and appreciate my professors who tried their best to make virtual learning engaging i appreciate the good health and safety of my loved ones and appreciate even more the people who are not scared of voicing their opinions and supporting anti-hate crime movements with real actions there will be more and more 400-day chapters in our lives and it is up to us to decide what we want to make out of them although it is terrifying to think about what the future beholds just remember you are a part of the class of 2021 who experience protests wildfires power outages and a global pandemic during their college career but still manage to persevere and thrive what can we not accomplish congratulations graduating class of 2021 i wish you all the best in your future endeavors and go base thank you helen for that amazing speech before we conclude we would like to take a moment to pause and honor the many lives affected by the current pandemic as we celebrate our resilience we also want to recognize that the ways in which we have been impacted by this pandemic are varied diverse and disparate we offer this space for a moment of reflection for all those who need thank you and now please welcome back professor david card to close our commencement thank you traditionally at this point in the ceremony we would invite you up to the stage instead we ask that you celebrate this milestone wherever you may be and know that the faculty and the staff and the alumni are joining you in spirit so will the candidates for doctoral degrees please rise as they are able by request of the governor of the state of california by authority of the regents of the university of california and at the command of the chancellor of the university of california berkeley i hereby confer upon you the degree of doctor of philosophy and economics [Applause] now candidates for the bachelor degree please rise as you are able by request of the governor of the state of california by the authority of the regents of the university of california and at the command of the chancellor of the university of california berkeley i hereby confer upon you the degree of bachelor of arts and economics in accordance with berkeley tradition you may now move your tassel from the right to the left side congratulations congratulations class of 2021 congratulations class of 2021. we made it hey everybody fabulous fabulous fabulous you have graduated from the university of california berkeley with a degree in economics we are so incredibly happy for you and so proud of you you have worked so hard it's been wonderful it's been a little weird the last year just to say but hey talk about the memories you'll be able to share with your kids and your grandkids about the year that you had i missed you all would be wonderful to see you all i would love to meet all of your parents and and congratulate them and share stories about you so can't do it individually but know that that my heart is with you and wow what a ride it's been so enjoy your day congratulations we will meet again take care of yourselves congratulations class of 2021 you rock it's not easy to get a degree in economics at berkeley you did it well done i got to know a lot of you in 100a and psych and econ and i can say at least for myself it was a lot of fun i love teaching people how economists think it will help you in every area of your life and i love teaching people some of the things that have turned out to be wrong about how economists think and how economists are rethinking those things in all my classes i end the semester with a bit of career advice first you need to know that happiness in your career is a huge element of happiness in your life second the place where career happiness lies is at the three-way intersection of three sets of things the things you are good at the things you love and the things you believe make a difference in the world you don't have to know where that intersection lies for you just use it as a guide as you chart your course if you commit yourself to finding happiness in your career you will get there let me at my congratulations to this year's graduates our phd students have done remarkably well by themselves uh it's hard to think of another department with equally impressive placement so congratulations i think our undergraduates have done well also despite the covet related difficulties of getting internships despite other departments not ours cutting back on graduate admissions so congratulations as well our professors have most of them learned how to use zoom excluding some of the older members of the faculty perhaps uh we should agree that everyone will be back in five years for an in-person unzoomed post-covered uh reunion um and until then congratulations again congratulations you've made it after years of hard work you're finally ready with your dissertation and your job and moving on uh with interesting adventures to come it's been for me a pleasure to have been a at least a small part of your work way through berkeley and uh i really hope that you carry special and happy memories of your time here of course i i'm sure you will remember uh your beautiful time at the shoto room and at the glorious evans hall but more importantly your friendships uh the relationships you established with the faculty and the staff and the very special berkeley spirit the department at the university of the city and that you will carry the spirit on in the many things that will that still lie ahead ahead for you i wish you a lot of happiness and i i also hope that we keep in touch [Music] congratulations of 2021 from the economics department high economics class of 2021 please accept my most sincere and heartfelt congratulations on a job well done i am so proud of you and look forward to following your exciting careers as you walk into a bright future so i have a very simple message for you which is congratulations on your graduation and on being members of the best class uh ever in the history of the best department of the best university uh in the world so let me fill in the details there the best class ever berkeley draws from a wider part of the world population every year we're getting increasingly well educated before they come to cal and then with the advancement of knowledge there's more to learn every year you are graduating from cal knowing more having more skills than any class uh before you uh the best department economics is in this perfect place it's both a general set of skills mind-expanding skills uh and the best tradition of kind of liberal arts education but also skills that are practical that are employable that are really important to decisions that you'll face in your own life and that we face as a society finally the best university well duh we are the best in terms of traditional sort of research and teaching no one is better than berkeley but then there's also the public side of berkeley ever since our founding we've sort of on berkeley has understood that serving everyone inclusion upward mobility diversity are not impediments to excellence they're essential to excellence and that we need to always strive to do better on those dimensions so when you add that extra side of berkeley it's just completely unrivaled so congratulations on your utterly awesome achievements congratulations berkeley economics class of 2021 you should be so proud of all that you've accomplished over these past few years i know that we're really proud of you and it's been such a pleasure and honor to work with you teach you and get to know you over these last few years congratulations also to your family and friends and loved ones who are celebrating with you today and without whom you wouldn't be where you are as well i know for many of the the family and friends you've been supporting and cheering on our graduates since they were born so once again congratulations berkeley economics class of 2021 you're going to go on to do great things and we're we're going to be thinking about you and rooting for you in the years to come congratulations again hi all ray hawkins here first and foremost congratulations on your graduation well done indeed with the fire seasons and the pandemic yours has been a truly unique berkeley experience your presence in this graduating class is a testament to your creativity and resilience i very much enjoyed exploring new ways of learning with you and i'm looking forward to the impact that you will all have both here and abroad in the coming years for those of you who are in my courses it was a personal pleasure and a professional privilege to be your instructor and to the class of 2021 more generally my best wishes for your continued success in life and wait for it and gold

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Length: 43min 21sec (2601 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021