Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland competition goes to two BGSU students

Two BGSU business students took first and second place at the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) of Cleveland Undergraduate Research Poster Competition held in Cleveland. Junior, Luke Jacob Marcus, who is earning an economics degree, and Mike Shackleton, a senior specializing in finance and accounting, conducted research projects under the guidance of finance Assistant Professor, Dr. Liuling Liu. 

Here’s a summary of the two winning finance projects as described by the students themselves.

Luke Jacob Marcus

Project title: Can Skyscrapers Predict Recession?

Project abstract: The purpose of this project was to examine the predictive power of the skyscraper on recession and see if there indeed exists a “skyscraper curse”. I use quarterly data from NBER (2009) to identify the occurrence of recessions and collect skyscraper and additional macroeconomic indicators published by the FRED database. Since 1976 there have been a recorded 5 recessionary periods and 3 world record skyscrapers built. I run a logistical regression and find that record skyscrapers have a statistically significant predictive power on the probability of a recession occurring. The results are robust with both a static model and a model lagged by a single quarter.

Michael Shackleton

Project title: Bank Regulations and Financial Market Development

Project abstract:

The goal of this project was to analyze the impact of bank regulations on financial market development. I conducted a cross-country study to examine how bank regulations affect bank credit availability, stock market development, and bond market development in country. I was particularly interested in how bank regulations affect banks’ competitive power relative to other capital markets.  

This was the first time our finance students participated in this annual FRB Cleveland event.