Andrew Teodorescu is a senior double majoring in Mathematics and Economics. He was awarded a Fall 2019 Conference Grant, which he used to attend the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations.
On January 3, 2019, I attended the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) in San Diego, California to orally present my research (joint with Dr. Caroline Fohlin) on the Teapot Dome scandal. The ASSA is an umbrella of social science associations with member organizations typically in subfields of economics, and it hosts a three-day meeting each January to facilitate networking and the sharing of new ideas in economics research. I presented our work in a session titled “Political Economy in Historical Perspective,” one of five sessions jointly held by the Economic History Association and the Cliometric Society. One of the largest economics conferences in the world, the ASSA’s annual meeting this year assembled over 13,000 economists.
Image 1. ASSA 2020 was hosted at two hotels lining the marina in San Diego.
Titled “The Value of Cronyism: Insider Trading in the Teapot Dome Affair,” our paper studies the stock market reactions to the Teapot Dome scandal during the Harding administration of the early 1920s, in which oil industry moguls bribed a cabinet member for the illegal leasing of federal naval oil reserves. Using weekly stock price data, we find a significant response to public revelation of Sinclair Consolidated’s leases; however, we also find that insiders had incorporated most of the news into share prices prior to the surprise news break. Producing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we estimate that Sinclair’s top shareholders achieved considerable returns to their illicit activity—totaling around $242 million (inflation-adjusted) in the market value of their equity. Our results, which have implications about market efficiency in a legal insider trading regime and the distributional effects of insider trading under such a regime, contribute to the broader literature in finance, economic history, and political economy.
I first began working on this paper when I was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) grant at Emory in the summer of 2018. Having previously worked as a research assistant for Dr. Caroline Fohlin, Professor of Economics at Emory, I asked her to advise my independent SURE research project, to which she graciously agreed. In August 2018, I presented a poster at Emory’s annual SURE Symposium highlighting some early results of this paper. Our promising results led Dr. Fohlin and I to continue working on the project after the summer’s end: I enrolled in a research course in fall of 2018 under Dr. Fohlin’s supervision to collect more data and build out our analysis. Then, in March 2019, Dr. Fohlin shared a call for abstracts for EHA sessions at the ASSA meetings with me. We submitted our 1,000-word abstract in May and learned of our acceptance just a month later.
Image 2. Teodorescu presenting his poster at the SURE 2018 Symposium.
This was my first experience interacting with economics as a producer of research and not simply a consumer. ASSA 2020 was my first conference, and this paper was even my first working paper. The session that I presented in consisted of three 15-minute oral presentations, each followed by a 10-minute discussant presentation and a brief Q&A. Several comments and questions that I received from my assigned discussant and the audience were very insightful and have led my coauthor and me to think carefully about further revisions.
Gaining exposure to research and the academic economics profession early on in my undergraduate years has been essential in confirming my strong interest in pursuing a Ph.D. in finance or economics. I am grateful to Emory Undergraduate Research Programs for financial assistance via both the SURE grant and this conference grant. Producing research is difficult, and not having to sweat the financial obligations that are involved in this process allows one to focus on what is truly essential.
Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Conference Grants.
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