Commenting on current events to a radio audience of close to one million? Live? They got this.
Students in the Federal Reserve Challenge class (ECON 460) taught by Aaron Pacitti, Ph.D. participate throughout the semester in a national competition for undergraduate economics majors run by the Federal Reserve. As part of the class this year, the seniors in the honors seminar also got a chance to join their economics professor during his weekly appearance on the WAMC program “The Roundtable.”
Pacitti has been part of this panel discussion on current events every Friday for the past five years (Vera Eccarius-Kelly, Ph.D. from political science participates on Thursdays). This semester he brought a couple students a week to the local NPR affiliate’s offices in Albany where they sat in on the live-mic show and weighed in on politics and economics along with guests such as David Soares, Albany County district attorney; Heather Mulligan, president of the Business Council of New York State; Judith Enck, former EPA Regional Administrator; and others.
Students prepped by reading the Wall Street Journal before the red “On Air” light flicked on in the studio. Colin Sanderson ’24 said it was a challenge to not think about the thousands of listeners tuning into the live program, while Amanda Huber noted that there were “no right or wrong answers” but rather the opportunity for panelists to analyze a current event and share their own views.
Participating on the radio panel was hardly the only achievement by the class this semester. Siena fielded a team to compete against other colleges from around the country in the annual College Fed Challenge. Teams analyze economic and financial conditions and formulate a monetary policy recommendation, modeling the Federal Open Market Committee.
Siena’s presentation team of Sophia Conte, Laura Crouth, Lucas Helms, Marco Psyllos, and Colin Sanderson, led by project manager Elizabeth Shamlian, argued that falling inflation rates and low unemployment—coupled with the effects of past interest rate increases, the possibility of a government shutdowns, the resumption of student loan payments, and geopolitical instability—warranted a pivot in policy.
“The team suggested that the Fed should stop raising interest rates and provide forward guidance about lowering them to allow for a ‘soft landing,’ where inflation rates fall without triggering an increase unemployment and inducing a recession,” explained Pacitti.
The research team of Lauren Brochhagen, Amanda Huber, John Lapinski, Matthew Quinn, Thomas Ragone, and Serge Shishik managed the data and created the presentation slides.
Although the team did not advance to the highly competitive second round, the semester delivered unique, high-impact learning experiences.
“We collectively had the same goal: to learn from each other,” said Ragone. “This was not a competition for us. We fed off each other’s ideas and incorporated each other’s knowledge into our plan.”
Conte said the seminar participants “welcomed the opportunity to be part of something we could do in the workplace.”
“This was very practical experience,” she said. “We were all working toward figuring something out and we all had a role to play.”
Quinn added that his classmates “are the best people I’ve ever met.”
“The number of viewpoints people brought to the able was astounding,” he said. “Economists are not social animals by nature but we worked together, did it well, and achieved something in a field that tends to be somewhat static in its workflow.”