Hina Usman, UCI economics Ph.D. candidate, has been named one of two inaugural winners of the San Francisco Federal Reserve’s Unlocking Our Potential graduate student essay contest. Awarded by the Fed’s Economic Research Department, the honor recognizes the applied microeconomist for work that examines whether insecurity fuels racially motivated crimes in the U.S. Joining Usman in receiving the award is Aina Krupinski Puig, economics Ph.D. candidate at American University.  

“These essays help shed new light on the impact of gender and racial inequities, which have a real economic cost for every American,” said SF Fed Research Director Sylvain Leduc. “We applaud these students’ contributions to this important area of scholarship.”

Does economic insecurity fuel racially motivated crime?
Hina Usman, UCI

In her research, Usman focuses on how policies and economic factors can impact the ways in which marginalized people—including minorities, incarcerated individuals, and women—can integrate more fully into mainstream society.

In her essay with coauthor Usman Ghaus, Hina models how economic insecurity affects racially motivated crime. She noted, “The focus of this study stems from a common belief in popular media that non-natives steal jobs from natives and negatively affect the economy.”

Beginning with unemployment data to determine existing levels of economic insecurity, the authors compared how the incidence of hate crimes following September 11, 2001, differed according to levels of economic insecurity. County-level data suggest that those counties with higher unemployment experienced more hate crimes compared to more economically secure counties with lower unemployment.

Usman will present her work to the SF Fed remotely. Usman completed her undergraduate degree in economics in 2016 at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan and she began her graduate study at UCI in 2017. She’ll be spending this year refining her research as she works toward completing her doctoral dissertation and preparing to enter the job market in January 2023.

For a video spotlighting Usman’s research, and to learn more about Puig’s winning work, visit https://www.frbsf.org/our-district/about/sf-fed-blog/graduate-students-offer-insights-into-economic-inequality/.

-courtesy of SF Fed Blog