Jacob Austin Alberry

Major: BS in economics

Hometown: Woodbridge, VA

Plans after graduation: Alberry plans to go into the financial services industry to gain real-world experience before returning to academia for a graduate degree.  

Favorite George Mason memory: “In Intermediate Micro, we wrote short essays on seminal papers in economics, such as The Use of Knowledge in Society by Hayek, or The Lighthouse by Coase. I attribute this to opening my eyes outside of a strictly modelling perspective within economics.”

Freedom of exploration

As an economics student, Alberry loved the freedom of exploration of courses like Money and Banking (ECON 310), Design and Analysis of Experiments (ECON 445), Financial Economics (ECON 421), and International Money and Finance (ECON 420), and says the topics of these courses are “like peeking under the hood of a strange and universally complex car.” His undergraduate thesis was on AI collusion, its impact on economics, and the questions its sudden rise raised. “Both have impacted me, primarily through the direct applications through market analysis and critical thinking of sentiment analysis during paper trading events and my own trading behaviors, and the latter getting in depth with the theory of economics as a discipline when approached towards new and emerging questions.”