Name: Paula Ferreira
Class Year: 2027
Major: Economics

Internship Organization: Social Sciences & Humanities Research Program at BMC
Internship Title: Economics Research Assistant
Location:  Remote

What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!

This summer I worked as a research assistant for Professor Minuk Kim in the Economics Department at Bryn Mawr. Our project looks at how US tariffs affected American consumers’ purchasing behavior across different counties. My work has been a mix of things. A big part of it was data gathering and cleaning such as pulling employment data from the BLS, agricultural sales data from USDA’s NASS database, farm income data from the BEA, and tariff schedules from trade policy databases, then getting everything into a format that could actually be analyzed together at the county level.

I also replicated tariff exposure measures from existing papers on the topic, which meant digging into other researchers’ code and methodology to understand exactly how they constructed their variables and whether their approaches fit our question. Most recently, I helped build and compare different ways of measuring how exposed each county was to tariff shocks and ran regressions to see whether more exposed counties showed different income trends after tariffs hit.

Why did you apply for this internship?

This summer I wanted to do something different and more intellectually challenging than what I had done before, and the further I got into my econ major, the more I realized research was something I genuinely enjoyed. During my spring semester, I took International Trade with Professor Kim so when I found out that his summer research project was focused on tariffs specifically, it felt like a great opportunity to go deeper into something I was already curious about.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

My favorite part has been feeling genuinely challenged and engaged. Working through large datasets and picking up new coding skills pushed me more than I expected, and seeing what the patterns in the data were actually telling us about a real world problem made it all feel worth it

Working remotely for the first time? What has that experience been like for you?

This was my first remote internship and honestly it worked really well for me. My past experiences had very structured office days that weren’t always the most productive, so having the flexibility to work on my own schedule this summer was an amazing change. I learned pretty quickly how to manage my time and stay on track with deadlines without someone looking over my shoulder, which felt like a useful skill to build. Being remote also meant I could spend the summer in Chicago, which made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. I could run my code, draft a memo, and then head out to explore the city or spend time with friends and family. It was a really nice balance.