People
Director and Research Fellows of the CRER
- Howard J. Wall - Director and Chief Economist
Howard Wall is the director and chief economist of the Center for Regional Economic Research and a professor of practice in the Department of Finance and Economics. He joined UTC and the Rollins College of Business in January 2024.
Before joining UTC, Dr. Wall was a professor of economics and director of the Center for Applied Economics at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. Prior to that, he spent 12 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he was a vice president and regional economics adviser. At the St. Louis Fed, he was responsible for briefing the bank president and others on local economic conditions, coordinating the St. Louis Fed’s Beige Book and Burgundy Books, drafting speeches for the bank president, and managing the regional economics group.
Dr. Wall's main research interests are applied econometrics and the intersection of macroeconomics and regional economics. His research has been published in scholarly journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, International Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Urban Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and the Journal of Regional Science.
Dr. Wall is a native of upstate New York and received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton (1984) and his M.A and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo (1986, 1989).
- Tawni Hunt Ferrarini - Research Fellow
Tawni H. Ferrarini is with the Stavros Center for Economic Education at Florida State where she conducts research and brings market-based economics programs to Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Prior to these activities, she served as R.W. Plaster Professor of Economic Education and Associate Director of the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University.
Earlier in her career, at Northern Michigan University, she chaired the economics department, served as an endowed chair of private enterprise, and directed a Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship. Her research and writing focus on economic freedom, institutional analysis, public choice theory, and the roles of entrepreneurship and innovation in prosperity. Current projects examine the heterogeneous effects of economic freedom on labor markets and the adoption of innovation among small and medium enterprises in agriculture. In addition to peer-reviewed publications, her scholarly work includes program development, curriculum development, and co-authoring widely used texts, including Common Sense Economics (4th ed., 2024). She earned her doctorate in economics in 1995 from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied economic history under the 1993 Nobel Laureate Douglass C. North.
- Ruben Hernandez-Murillo - Research Fellow
Rubén Hernández-Murillo is a quantitative analytics senior associate at KeyBank in Cleveland, Ohio. He is an economist experienced in a wide variety of topics including applied microeconomics, spatial econometrics, forecasting, banking, regional, and public economics, among others.
Prior to joining KeyBank in 2022, Hernández spent twenty years as an economist in the Federal Reserve System: Seven years as a senior policy economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and 13 years as an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
His research has appeared in the Journal of Public Economics, International Economic Review; Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking; Regional Science and Urban Economics; the International Journal of Industrial Organization; and elsewhere. In addition, he has published a wide array of policy analyses and commentary in Federal Reserve publications.
Rubén received his undergraduate degree from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (1995), and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester (1998 and 2001).
- Bento Lobo - Research Fellow
Bento Lobo is the UC Foundation Professor and First Tennessee Bank Distinguished Professor of Finance in the Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He also serves as the head of the Department of Finance and Economics.
Dr. Lobo’s recent research includes analyses of the effects of broadband availability and speed on local economies, the financial value of a college degree, and the economic impact of fiber optic and smart grid infrastructure in Chattanooga and Hamilton County. His research interests also include financial globalization, valuation and monetary policy and asset markets. His research has appeared in the Financial Review, The Journal of Macroeconomics, Review of Financial Economics, Empirical Economics, Education Economics, Journal of Applied Finance, Telecommunications Policy, Information Economics and Policy, the Journal of Investing, and elsewhere.
Dr. Lobo received his B.A. in economics from St. Xavier’s College (Bombay, India), his M.M.S. in finance and accounting from the University of Bombay, and his M.A. in economics and Ph.D. in financial economics from the University of New Orleans. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and served for 11 years on the board of directors of the CFA Society of East Tennessee.
- William Plank - Research Fellow
William Plank is EPB’s first Community Economist and is a member of the IMPLAN Certified Economist roundtable. In his role at EPB, Plank examines the implications of energy and communications technologies on the regional economy of Hamilton County and Chattanooga and other local communities.Plank’s academic background includes a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an associate’s degree from Chattanooga State. He was also part of the first cohort of IMPLAN’s Certified Economist program, equipping him with a blend of utility experience and regional economic modeling skills. Plank was recertified with IMPLAN in 2025 and holds certifications in applied econometrics and economic measurement from the National Association of Business Economists (NABE).