Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP)

Assisting faculty and staff to engage in research and scholarly & creative endeavors

Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) / Archives for economics

Faculty Research Connects Entrepreneurship and Deregulation

Amanda Deerfield, assistant professor of economics, and Sriparna Ghosh, visiting professor of economics, presented research at the Association of Private Enterprise Education in Las Vegas, Nevada, in April. Deerfield’s research in “Examining the Relationship Between Economic Freedom and Ridesharing Legislation” found that states with less economic freedom take longer to pass ridesharing legislation. Her research was supported by a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.

A second paper, co-authored by Deerfield and Ghosh, found that states with greater occupational licensing requirements have lower rates of entrepreneurship. Both research papers have implications for policy-makers concerning how to encourage entrepreneurship by improving regulatory conditions.

SMCM Student Research Projects Generating Steady Interest

The team of student and professors working on vCalc projects

The team of students and professors working on vCalc projects

A grant jointly funded by the Maryland Industrial Partnerships program and vCalc LLC in 2016 continues to generate steady interest at vCalc.com. St. Mary’s College of Maryland was awarded $97,361 to support student projects for vCalc.

The Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program promotes the development and commercialization of products and processes through industry/university research partnerships. MIPS provides matching funds to help Maryland companies pay for the university research. Projects are initiated by the companies to meet research and development goals.

vCalc (see 90 second YouTube video here) is a fast-growing calculator, equation and dataset library that helps users create, collaborate and quickly calculate. Topics range from complex scientific equations to practical everyday equations. vCalc has hundreds of calculators and thousands of equations created by engineers, professors and students from around the world.

The St. Mary’s research team developed equations for vCalc.com in math, chemistry, psychology, physics, and economics during the summer of 2016. The team was composed of students Caleb Svobodny, Austin Schlegel, Daria Vaseneva, Emma Skekel, Tyler Jones, Caroline Robertson, Savannah Bergen and Chris Lynch. Professors Emek Kose, Josh Grossman, Richard Platt, Randolph Larsen and Shizuka Nishikawa supported the project.

Kurt Heckman, president of vCalc, recently reported that several of the calculators created by SMCM students posted at vCalc.com are generating significant regular traffic to the site, including Savannah Bergen’s Characteristic Polynomial of a 3×3 matrix, which regularly gets used over 1,000 times per month, and Emma Skekel’s chemistry calculator to compute Kp from Kc, which sees 1,700 page hits per month, with an average time on page of 12 minutes and 38 seconds! According to Heckman, “that’s terrific engagement, and clearly an indication of how useful this calculator has become to chemistry students”.