The Department of Economics in Elon University’s Martha and Spencer Love School of Business has named senior Emma Leonard ’25 the annual Best Economics Thesis Award winner.
The Department of Economics in Elon University’s Martha and Spencer Love School of Business has awarded its 2025 Best Economics Thesis prize to Emma Leonard ’25, with classmate Cole Meixell ’25 receiving honorable mention.
Leonard, an economics and statistics double major from Richmond, Va., combined quarterly U.S. labor data from 1990-2019 with an instrumental-variable model to show how unexpected Federal Reserve rate hikes ripple through the workforce. Her study finds that men are more likely to lose jobs outright, while women, particularly Black and Hispanic women, leave the labor force entirely, deepening existing inequities.
“The quality of Emma’s thesis is far beyond that of an undergraduate,” said Brandon Sheridan, associate professor of economics. “We are all very proud of her persistence and success.”
Meixell, an economics major from Newtown, Pa., built a novel 2017-2024 dataset from commercial-bank filings and websites to gauge the impact of credit-card cash-back programs. He reports that the incentives boost banks’ interest income and slightly raise consumer rates without increasing household debt.
Both seniors co-edited Issues in Political Economy and presented their findings at the Eastern Economic Association conference and at Elon’s Spring Undergraduate Research Forum.
Leonard will serve as a research assistant with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, while Meixell will earn paralegal certification before applying to law school.