People
Director and Research Scholars of the CRER
- Howard J. Wall - Director and Chief Economist
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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 Scholar
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Tawni H. Ferrarini, is the associate director of the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise, the director of the Economic Education Center, and the Robert W. Plaster Professor of Economic Education at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. She provides K-12 educators with training in teaching economics, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship, and works with the university’s chief entrepreneurship officer to establish and fund various entrepreneurship accelerators.
In her role as the Sam M. Cohodas Professor at Northern Michigan University (1998-2018), Dr. Ferrarini served as the university’s ambassador across 15 rural and remote counties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, specializing in connecting various center entities to entrepreneurial activities attempting to spur rural economic development through markets with an emphasis on international trade.
Dr. Ferrarini publishes in economic education, technology, and education journals. She is a co-author of Common Sense Economics (2016), Economic Episodes in American History (2019), and Teachers Can Be Financially Fit (2020). 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 Scholar
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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 Scholar
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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.