FACULTY
Dr. Alexandra Bernasek
Professoralexandra.bernasek@colostate.edu
C 315 Clark Building
970.491.3321
970.491.2925 (Fax)
Teaching Statement
As a teacher I seek to connect with my students in a way that motivates them to want to learn. I try to share my enthusiasm for economics with them. I expect them to work hard and I set an example by working hard myself and being prepared for class, often bringing in information from outside sources to supplement the assigned readings for the course. I have high expectations of myself and of them. At the same time I support the students in their learning and work with them to help them succeed. Each class is different and some things that work with one group of students don’t work as well with another group. I am always amenable to making changes in a course if I think it will help the students succeed in the course. I seek to create an environment in the classroom that is characterized by respect, trust, intellectual curiosity, and caring. I encourage students to participate actively in class and incorporate discussions into every class. Regardless of the subject matter or the level of the class I require students to use and develop their critical thinking skills. I strongly believe that economics must be relevant to the real world and I make connections between theory and real world problems, issues, and policies. I want students to take something lasting away with them after a class, so I tend to emphasize a few key ideas rather than a lot of small details. In the end whether students become professional economists or not my goal is to challenge them to think about the economy and the study of the economy in meaningful ways.
Research Statement
My research is the area of gender and economics. As a feminist economist I use the lens of gender to understand issues of power in the economy that affect the well-being of individuals and society. My research is micro based and has focused on issues of credit for self-employment, risk taking, and investment. I have done work on the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and women’s self-employment and access to credit. I have also done work on women’s work in the informal sector in Indonesia and women’s experience with maternity leave in Malaysia. A long term research interest of mine has been gender and risk aversion. I have done work on women and financial decision-making especially as it pertains to saving for retirement. My current research interests include the influence of evolutionary psychology on risk preferences of women and men and differences in the access to credit of women and minority business owners compared with their white male counterparts.
Recent Work
“Evolutionary Psychology, Gender and Risk Taking” (with Steven Pressman), under review at the Journal of Socio-economics, December 2008.
“Gender, Race, and Credit Rationing of Small Businesses” (with Nara Mijid) under review at Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, December 2008.
“Financial Risk Taking by Age and Birth Cohort” (with Nancy Jianakoplos), Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 72, No. 4, 2006: 981-1001.
“Banking on Social Change: Grameen Bank Lending to Women”, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 16, No. 3, Spring 2003: 369-385.
"Are Women More Risk Averse?" Economic Inquiry Oct 1998 Vol XXXV (coauthored with Nancy Jianakoplos).