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Ray C. Battalio Awards

The Ray C. Battalio Award is granted to an outstanding doctoral student in behavioral economics. The award and provides them with funding to support the costs of conducting experimental research.

In the last two years we have unfortunately been unable to grant the Dr. John Van Huyck Endowed Fellowship on a regular timeline. In response, the committee has decided to give this year’s award to two students. We are very pleased to announce that the Ray C. Battalio Fellows are Valon Vitaku and Andy Cao.

Valon Vitaku is a rising 5th year student whose research focuses on how differential information presentations may alter outcomes of societal institutions. Through laboratory experiments he has shown that such alterations can affect overall traffic efficiency, satisfaction with the allocations of students to regional schools, and the willingness of consumers to take on additional insurance contracts.vitaku

Andy Cao is a rising 5th year student whose research focuses to study policy-relevant issues related to crime and corruption. He has used experimental methodology to examine how news coverage of hate-motivated mass shootings impact the audiences attitudes towards the shooter and victimized group and the types of influences that motivate individuals to join committees that allocate public funds. In empirical analyses, he has examined whether social media rhetoric (i.e., “Chinese virus” tweets) can incite anti-Asian incidents.

Congratulations, Valon and Andy! We look forward to seeing the research that will be conducted as a result of this fellowship.