Spotlight on Eunice Shin ’26: Winner of the Mark A. Schimbor Prize in Economics

Eunice Shin (Berkeley Economics ‘26) is an economist fueled by her “sheer joy of understanding our world.” Whether that’s the societal impact of California’s criminal justice system or a satirical look at the supply and demand of attractive young men on campus, her writing is a testament to intellectual curiosity.

Eunice is this year's recipient of the Mark A. Schimbor Prize in Economics, an honor bestowed on the graduating honors student in the Economics major with the most distinguished honors thesis. Eunice’s paper, “Slave Trade’s Shadow: Historical Slave Exports and Nighttime Lights”, explores the long-term economic impact of the slave trade on ethnic homelands in Africa. She has presented her research at several prestigious gatherings, including the Harvard National Collegiate Research Conference and the Yale Undergraduate Research Association Conference (where she placed 3rd as a Social Science Research Recipient).

Eunice is a journalist, an activist, and a researcher driven to leave her mark on some of the most consequential public policy discussions. She asks herself how economics can help her understand the world, and her research helps us do exactly that.

She joins Berkeley Economics to discuss her research and ambitions.

Why economics, and more specifically, why Berkeley Economics?

I’m a social scientist at heart. When I started at Berkeley, I took a few courses in different fields to see what interested me the most. Taking the Introduction to Economics, Macro, and Micro courses at Cal, I was boggled by how unintuitive the concepts felt to me. But econ’s applications to real-world concepts are what really drew me in. I found it really interesting to try to explain human behavior with numbers, and the remarkable students and faculty enriched my passion for learning.

I’ve worked on different research projects as an undergraduate assistant through URAP, and collaborating with professors and faculty, such as Carolyn Stein, has been remarkably inspiring for my interests. All of the professors and GSIs here are incredibly distinguished in their respective domains, and unbelievably passionate about the concepts that bring our world together. Overall, I couldn’t have made it to where I am today without the amazing support network at UC Berkeley.

For those not yet familiar with your paper, why don’t you give us a quick TLDR? What question did you seek to answer, and what were your conclusions?

My paper is an extension of the work of Nathan Nunn, a Canadian economist at the Vancouver School of Economics. I took his 2008 paper about the long-term effects of slavery on modern-day GDP in African countries and looked at the impacts of slavery on a more granular ethnic homeland level. It aimed to answer the question, “Did more slave exports, by ethnic homeland, have an impact on modern-day GDP as measured through satellite nightlight data?” Satellite nightlight data, freely available through Google Earth Engine and measured with DMSP-OLS, acted as a proxy for GDP between the years of 2000 and 2013.

My paper found that the number of slave exports acts only as a modest predictor for average nightlight levels, but coastal proximity is strongly correlated with the level of lights per capita. Overall, the results point to geography, especially coastal access, as a much stronger predictor of modern luminosity levels than historical slave exports.

What led you to this topic?

I fell in love with research through my courses. Being introduced to different papers and research methods allowed me to think about how to interpret data in ways that could impact the real world. It felt natural to think about unique econometric techniques from there, not just synthetic control methods. I was originally inspired by Marco Gonzalez-Navarro’s paper on Subways and urban growth. I wanted to apply his methods to my interests. While taking his Development Economics class, Marco became my thesis advisor!

Can you tell us a little bit about your process? What made your approach different from those of existing studies?

Some background information on my research process: I wrote a paper last Spring and began attending undergraduate research conferences this year to present my work. Some conferences that I was invited to include the Harvard National Collegiate Research Conference, Yale Undergraduate Research Association Conference, the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, and the Orlando Annual Business Research Conference. Talking with other undergraduate researchers allowed me to broaden my horizons and include different perspectives in my approach.

Having the remarkable expertise of my professors and GSIs, specifically Joseph Shapiro and Jesse Kozler, was absolutely instrumental in my process.

Other than that, I think the thing that differentiated my approach from existing studies was the combination of so many different data sets, and a unique perspective on the current literature with the supplementation of nightlight data. The biggest obstacle was working with just 1 GB of memory in JupyterLab. To work around this, I used Google Earth Engine Code Editor quite often.

I first created a panel dataset with one row per homeland per year, containing the mean DMSP nighttime-light value for each homeland from 1992 to 2013. I then created yearly raster exports of nighttime light intensity over Africa from 1992–2013 using the DMSP-OLS “stable lights” data. I also used population data from NASA SEDAC’s GPWv4.11 Population Count dataset, available in Google Earth Engine, which provides gridded estimates of people per 30 arc-second cell based on censuses and population registers.

I mainly built upon Murdock-Gray’s Ethnographic Atlas (1999) with Nunn (2008)’s work for my results.

So you controlled for distance to the coast, which makes sense because regions that benefit from modern coastal trade were also exposed to slave exportation. Were there any variables you couldn't control that you wish you could have? What do you see as the biggest limitation to your methods?

I think the biggest limitation of my methods is a lack of data. It would’ve been really interesting to see what homeland night lights would’ve looked like without any slave exports. Perhaps I could construct a synthetic control in the future, looking at nightlight levels in a counterfactual world where the transatlantic slave trade never occurred. Until then, I’ll have to keep searching for data!

The historical implications of your research are fascinating. Do you see any modern applications?

Oh, I absolutely see modern applications to my work. I think that there is so much untapped potential for satellite nightlight data, and I know that my work is just one of many interesting applications.

I recently heard Daniel Markovits of Yale Law School give a keynote presentation arguing for learning for knowledge’s sake, and I think this is especially pertinent in the age of AI. I hope that we can all pursue education for the sheer joy of understanding our world more.

How do you feel about your findings? Were you surprised or disappointed by a null?

I was indeed surprised by the null result of slave exports on lights, but it made me more curious to find the reasoning behind these trends. I think my favorite result from the paper has to be Figure 2, where the differences in the growth of nighttime lights by homeland are very apparent. I’m honestly just grateful that all the hours I spent wrangling with the data in R paid off, and we’re able to see what all of these numbers imply.

What’s next for you? You recently graduated — congratulations. Do you plan to continue researching?

Thank you! I’m going to Korea for one year in August to spend some time with my grandfather. My honors thesis advisor, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, actually introduced me to a former PhD student of his, who is an assistant professor at Sogang University in Seoul. I will be coauthoring a research paper with Jaecheol Lee during my gap year. Then, I will be applying to PhD programs for either Economics or Public Policy. Fingers crossed, I would absolutely love to continue researching! I’m currently working on a project to continue my honors thesis research paper and look at DSMP nightlights in North Korea with Prof Rajveer Jat as my mentor, just for fun and to hone my econometrics skills.

I take it you’re interested in policy. Would you ever consider a government position, and are there specific economic issues you would like to influence?

I’ve been passionate about incarceration and criminal justice since my first research paper on the 1994 California 3 Strikes Law. Sebastian Puerta, my graduate student advisor in ECON 191, was a huge encouragement in utilizing the framework of social justice through research to make a difference in the world. I hope my career can echo the impressions that Berkeley Economics left on me!