Sam Joy Poteet, a rising third-year ARE PhD student, is the 2025-26 recipient of the Sidney Hoos Award, given to the best second-year paper in the PhD program of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. According to her adviser, Professor Ali Hill, "Sam had a really unique and novel research idea, looking at the effects of FEMA flood zone mapping on land development, and ultimately looking at how it impacts the effects of a large hurricane. We have hopes that someday this will be an AER."
In the summer before the second year of ARE's Graduate Program, students begin their second-year econometrics projects, also known as the second-year paper. Students select an economic question that interests them and craft an empirical paper under close faculty supervision. A good empirical paper requires three components: a concise, sensible, and relevant research question or hypothesis to test; reasonably good data; and an experiment, event, or set of circumstances that give the data a chance to answer the question asked. Identifying a good question is a non-trivial exercise that takes time and effort. Over the course of the second year, students work with a faculty advisor to meet specific deadlines, and the top second-year paper wins the Sidney Hoos prize.