CESR Seminar and Brown Bag Series

For more information on the seminar presentations, or if you would like to attend the presentation, or to meet with any of the speakers, please contact Dan Bennett or Dan Silver.

For more information on the brown bag presentations, or if you would like to attend the presentation or be added to our list for announcements, please contact Michele Warnock.
 

CESR Fall Brown Bag Series

The CESR Brown Bag Series for Fall 2025 will run September 8 through December 15, 2025.

Mondays
12pm – 1pm
VPD and Zoom
 

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Seminar | Ideology and the Allocation of Ideas: Causal Evidence from Editor Rotations with Tom Y. Chang and David H. Solomon

Calvin Wright | USC Marshall School of Business

Monday, September 8
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Abstract: We investigate how journal editors’ ideological orientations affect publication decisions. Using campaign finance and other publicly available data, we impute the political leanings of journal editors and train a natural language processing (NLP) model to quantify the ideological slant of an article based on its text. Leveraging editor rotations as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in editorial control, we demonstrate that editorial ideology shapes the composition of content in published in academic journals. By differentiating between horizontal (taste) and vertical (quality) effects, this analysis illuminates the ways in which partisan gatekeeping potentially influences the evolution of scientific discourse.

Bio: Calvin Wright is a PhD candidate in Finance and Business Economics at USC’s Marshall School of Business. His research interests include Corporate Finance, Political Economy of Finance, Behavioral Finance, Law and Finance, Judicial and Regulatory Decision-Making, Corporate Governance, and Ideological Bias in Economic Institutions.

Hilary Bekker | University of Leeds

Monday, September 15
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

*Joint with USC Schaeffer Institute’s Behavioral Science and Policy Initiative

Jessica Schoenherr | University of Georgia

Monday, September 22
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Jeremy Burke | USC CESR

Monday, September 29
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

*Joint with USC Schaeffer Institute’s Behavioral Science and Policy Initiative

Amie Rapaport and Dan Silver | USC CESR

Monday, October 6
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Eric Chyn | University of Texas

Monday, October 13
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Marty Sliwinski | Penn State University

Monday, October 20
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Adam Osman | University of Illinois

Monday, October 27
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

*Joint with Economics

Simone Schaner | USC CESR

Monday, November 3
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Evan Sandlin | USC CESR

Monday, November 17
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Natasha Quadlin | UCLA

Monday, December 1
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Seminar | The Long Division: How the Politics of Education Became Partisan

David Houston | George Mason University

Monday, December 8
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Bio: David M. Houston is an Assistant Professor of Education in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. He is also the academic program coordinator of the Education Policy program, the director of EdPolicyForward: The Center for Education Policy, and a university affiliate faculty in the Schar School of Policy and Government. Prof. Houston studies K-12 education politics, governance, and public opinion. His research has appeared in academic outlets such as the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and the Harvard Educational Review. It has also been featured in media outlets such as Chalkbeat, Education Week, The 74 Million, and Vox. This work has been supported by the Fordham Institute, the Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Wallace Foundation, and the W. T. Grant Foundation. Prior to his position at Mason, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He earned his Ph.D. in Politics and Education from Columbia University, where he studied in both the Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis at Teachers College and the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of Arts and Science. Before pursuing his doctorate, he taught first and second grade in New York City.

 

Seminar | Economics of Abortion Access and Lack of Access

Diana Foster | University of California, San Francisco

Monday, December 15
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom

Abstract: In recent years, access to abortion in the United States has shifted dramatically—shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and the June 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended federal protections for abortion. For some, these changes have made abortion more accessible and affordable; for others, legal access has become nearly impossible. This talk explores the emerging landscape of abortion access and costs—what it takes to obtain an abortion today and the economic consequences for those who are unable to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Bio: Diana Greene Foster, PhD, is a demographer and professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She led the United States Turnaway Study, a nationwide longitudinal prospective study of the health and well-being of women who seek abortion including both women who do and do not receive the abortion. She is leading a study of the health, legal and economic consequences of the end of Roe in the United States and a Turnaway Study in Nepal. She was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow and is the author of over 130 scientific papers as well as the 2020 book, The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having – or Being Denied – an Abortion.

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