CESR Events Archive

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.

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

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

Abstract: Decision aids are interventions designed to support people to make decisions well. In healthcare, multiple decision makers are involved in making the same decision but each with their different experiences and goals. This setting requires the researcher to analyse the healthcare context from these different perspectives, identify components to ensure the efficacy of the decision aid to enable proactively people’s reasoning, and assess ways they can be integrated within a healthcare pathway to support people’s engagement with the decision. This talk draws on 30 years’ experience of investigating patient decision aids and their integration within healthcare pathways to support shared decision making practices. It makes explicit the agency, and need for support, of all decision makers within the shared decision-making process.

Bio: Hilary Bekker is Professor of Medical Decision Making in the School of Medicine, University of Leeds, UK. She is a Chartered Academic Psychologist (British Psychological Society), with a PhD Decision Making and Prenatal Diagnosis (University of Leeds, UK) and MSc Health Psychology (University College London, UK).

Her expertise is in using decision science and health service research to understand people’s decision making about healthcare, and to design complex interventions helping patients and professionals make informed decisions individually and together (MIND-IT) between options within healthcare pathways. All her research, education and leadership activities are carried out with inter-disciplinary, multi-professional colleagues and teams.

Her decision science expertise is fundamental to over 160 peer-reviewed publication (‪Hilary Bekker – ‪Google Scholar), 50 patient decision aid and shared decision making interventions, and UK and international health policy. She is a steering group member of the International Patient Decision Aids Standards (IPDAS) Collaboration.

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

Abstract: Every time the Supreme Court loses one member and gains a new one, the Court’s overall approach to some areas of the law shifts. We argue that putting a new justice on the Court breaks institutional friction in the Court’s policymaking process and signals the opportunity for legal change. Enterprising lawyers who seek to shift the Court’s policy in their preferred direction should see that signal and attempt to exploit the change for their own gain, approaching the Court with legal arguments that suggest the time is right to alter the legal status quo. Using an original dataset of attorneys’ citation patterns in merits briefs between the 1984 and 2014 Supreme Court terms, we examine if attorneys’ arguments change when a new justice joins the bench. We find that it does.

Bio: Jessica Schoenherr is an assistant professor at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on American political institutions, with a particular focus on the U.S. Supreme Court. She has published work in the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics, among other outlets.

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

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

Abstract: Measured financial knowledge declined by 15 percent in the U.S. between 2009 and 2021. We propose one possible explanation: an increase in smartphone responses on web-based surveys. Using within-individual variation in device type in a representative internet panel, we first demonstrate that when respondents use smartphones, they are more likely to choose “don’t know” and less likely to answer questions correctly than when they respond on a desktop, laptop, or tablet. We then conduct an experiment where respondents are randomized into completing a survey on a smartphone or another device and find remarkably similar results. Leveraging randomized question placement, we find that the smartphone penalty is larger when questions appear later in the survey. We find similar results for a set of general knowledge questions. Back-of-the envelope calculations suggest that at least 28 percent of the decline in financial knowledge is attributable to expanded smartphone use.

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

Abstract: One persistent barrier to academic recovery in the wake of the COVID pandemic has been the rise of chronic absenteeism: the proportion of students missing 10% or more of the school year. Fifteen percent of our nation’s children were chronically absent in 2019 – this rose to 28% in 2022 and remains elevated at 24% as of 2024. Research to date has struggled to pinpoint the drivers of increased and persistent chronic absenteeism in a way that leads to effective interventions. We are conducting a mixed methods study including UAS panel members with K-12 children and teenage children of UAS panel members to better understand who is absent, for what reasons, and why chronic absenteeism has been so intractable. Initial results aligning interviews and survey responses reveal informative patterns that contribute to conversations around school policies and community efforts to get kids back to attending school in person. We invite discussion and feedback that might inform future steps of this study.

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

Abstract: This paper studies the ideology of government officials by examining the Indian Affairs office and systematically exploring the detailed writings and reports of bureaucrats charged with administering federal policy. The Office of Indian Affairs offers a powerful lens through which to study state ideology, given its long-standing authority over land, education, and legal governance of Native populations in the U.S. We digitize the agency’s archival records and use computational tools to conduct large-scale analysis on the strength of support for the organization’s assimilationist policies and goals among members of its workforce during the 19th and early 20th centuries. We document major shifts in ideological commitments that coincide with the entry—and eventual exit—of social reformers nominated for high-level agency positions by religious organizations. We find that ideology within the bureaucracy appears to moderate around the turn of the century despite the organization’s overall continued pursuit of major assimilation policies and goals, such as the promotion of farming and enrollment at off-reservation Indian boarding schools. To examine performance implications of ideology within the bureaucracy, we conclude with an analysis of land allotment policy after the passage of the Dawes Act. We provide evidence showing that the agencies with local staff who express greater past commitment to assimilationist goals carried out more land allotment immediately after Dawes became law.

Bio: Eric Chyn is an applied microeconomist whose research spans labor and public economics. His work focuses on understanding the long-run effects of government programs on children’s outcomes. His research has been published in leading academic journals in economics, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has been featured in national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. His dissertation research received the Dorothy S. Thomas Award from the Population Association of America (PAA) and the Dissertation Prize from the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) Global Working Group. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 2016.

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

Abstract: High-frequency cognitive assessments delivered via mobile devices and embedded within ambulatory methods—such as ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and daily diaries—are reshaping how we monitor and understand changes in brain health. These methods produce data streams can be transformed into dynamic features like learning rate, asymptotic performance, and intraindividual variability, offering a more sensitive and ecologically valid approach to detecting change. This approach addresses long-standing limitations of traditional cognitive assessments, including vulnerability to practice effects and poor sensitivity to early signs of decline. Drawing on findings from multiple studies, this talk highlights how daily experiences—such as stress, social engagement, and physical activity—affect cognitive performance in real time, and how short-term fluctuations, once dismissed as measurement error, are now understood as meaningful signals of cognitive resilience or risk. The presentation will also explore the implications and promise of these tools for aging and dementia research, with a focus on their potential to improve early detection and intervention strategies.

Bio: Martin Sliwinski is Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and the Gregory H. Wolf Professor of Aging Studies at Penn State, where he directs the Center for Healthy Aging. His research focuses on improving how we measure cognitive change to better understand aging and prevent dementia. Sliwinski has led the development of the Mobile Monitoring of Cognitive Change (M2C2) platform and other innovative tools that enable high-frequency testing of cognition in daily life using mobile technology. His work leverages ambulatory assessments and computational modeling to characterize dynamic patterns of cognitive function and their interactions with everyday experiences such as stress, social engagement, and physical activity. He co-leads the NIH-funded OMNI ADRD network, which is building open-access infrastructure for more scalable and equitable cognitive measurement across aging and dementia research.

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

*Joint with Economics

Abstract: Firms often cite financing constraints as barriers, yet lenders rarely innovate beyond debt products. While theory suggests debt may dominate equity due to adverse selection and moral hazard, these mechanisms are hard to isolate empirically. We design and test a microequity product with Egyptian livestock farmers using a two-stage RCT that disentangles selection from contract effects. We find strong demand, with many participants being “equity-only,”- willing to accept lower financing probability to avoid debt. This group shows advantageous selection with lower delinquency than borrowers willing to accept either contract. However, holding selection fixed, equity causes a relative drop in net revenue and related performance metrics—evidence of moral hazard. A set of currency devaluations eliminated this negative effect, demonstrating that moral hazard varies with context. Our findings suggest microequity can enhance financial inclusion by attracting new clients, but managing moral hazard remains a primary, context-dependent challenge

Bio: Adam Osman is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign and the co-Scientific Director of J-PAL MENA. He is a development economist whose work utilizes randomized experiments and economic theory to improve our understanding of which policies work best in improving the lives of the poor.  His work covers several topics including access to finance, private sector development, labor markets, international trade and transport frictions, with a special emphasis on issues that affect the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

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

*Joint with Economics

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

Abstract: Housing affordability and homelessness have become contentious political issues in many urban areas across the United States. Individuals may attribute homelessness to a variety of external causes, such as the lack of affordable housing options or unemployment, or internal causes, such as individual laziness. Homeless advocates have often lamented that individuals often have an inaccurate view as to what the causes of homelessness are. But does what individuals attribute homelessness to matter? Does it play any role in determining policy preferences? This paper uses data from the LABarometer, an internet-based probability panel of households in Los Angeles County, to examine what individuals view as the perceived cause of homelessness and if these attributions are determinant of policy preferences relating to homelessness. The results demonstrate that demographics, political affiliation, experiences with homelessness, and self-reported proximity to homeless individuals all play a role in determining whether individuals attribute homelessness to structural causes, mental-health and drug related causes, or intrinsic laziness. Furthermore, the paper shows that these attributions are strongly related to support for policy preferences that are logically consistent with the attributions even when controlling for the characteristics that determine these attributions. Overall, these results indicate that individuals tailor their policy preferences on homelessness to what they view as the perceived cause.

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

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

Abstract: This presentation draws from a book-length project on the causes and consequences of rising partisan conflict in K-12 education politics. My interest is less in the specific policy battles and political personalities of the day and more about the long-term transformations in American politics and school governance that have made K–12 education more susceptible to disputes that cut along party lines. I argue that our contemporary clashes over issues like pandemic-era school closures, systemic racism, and the rights of gay and transgender students are downstream of these larger structural changes. To be clear, political conflict over education is unavoidable in a large, complex, and diverse society. However, the contemporary American system of government has struggled to accommodate an increasingly partisan politics of education, resulting in less frequent federal legislation, greater reliance on executive action, increasing policy divergence between states along party lines, and heightened animosity across the political landscape.

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.

We’re excited to announce that CIPHER 2025 will be held at USC’s Capital Campus in Washington, D.C. on February 26 – 28.

In its seventh year, the Current Innovations in Probability-based Household Internet Panel Research (CIPHER) Conference continues to be the leading event for discussion, exchange, and learning about probability panels. The event again will bring together researchers and policymakers from the United States and beyond for a wide-ranging conversation about innovations, challenges, and opportunities in this field.

Conference Registration and Fees

CIPHER is free to attend in-person or virtually, but registration is required. To register for CIPHER and/or the UAS Data Use Workshop, please complete this form.

Location and Format

The joint conference will take place February 26 – 28 at USC’s Capital Campus in Washington D.C.The preliminary program is as follows:

• February 26: UAS Data Use Workshop
• February 27: CIPHER and Reception
• February 28: CIPHER

Dates: March 8, 2025 (Saturday)

Venue: University of Southern California – Taper Hall (THH)

UCLA and USC will host the 2025 Pacific Conference for Development Economics (PacDev)—the largest West Coast conference on Development Economics, and one of the leading Development Economics events in the United States. The conference brings together over 200 researchers from all over the world to present and discuss work that enhances our understanding of economic development, advances theoretical and empirical methods, and improves development interventions and policy.

Thursday, September 4
9am – 10am
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)

Bio: Kyle Bourassa is a Staff Psychologist in the Research Service of the Durham VA Health Care System and Senior Research Fellow and Affiliate Faculty at Georgetown University in the Department of Psychology. Kyle’s research focuses on understanding how stress and trauma affect health across the lifespan. His recent work has highlighted the role that inflammation and accelerated epigenetic aging might play in linking PTSD to poor health as people age. In addition to his work examining mechanisms of action, Kyle also studies how behavioral interventions might improve health among people who experience stress and trauma.

Thursday, October 2
9am – 10am
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)

Abstract: This paper investigates how genetic endowments influence lifetime earnings using a dynamic life cycle model and longitudinal data from a cohort tracked from birth to retirement. We examine genetic impacts on skill formation as well as choices of parental investments, educational attainment, and occupation.  A one standard deviation increase in the polygenic score for educational attainment raises lifetime earnings by 18.9%.  Although part of this effect is due to genetic endowments impacting skill formation, the majority is due to genetic endowments impacting choices.  Extending our analysis to include polygenic scores for additional traits reveals other channels through which they operate.  Furthermore, our estimates show that genetic endowments and investments are substitutes in the production of earnings during early childhood but are complements later in life, highlighting the crucial importance of early-life interventions to effectively mitigate genetic inequalities.

Bio: Dr. Weilong Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College. His work explores how genetic endowments and personality traits influence people’s choices in labour-market participation and household decision-making, with a focus on model-based approaches. Dr. Zhang earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, after completing an M.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Mathematics at Renmin University of China. His research has appeared in leading journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Labor Economics, Quantitative Economics, European Economic Review, and the Journal of Human Resources. He is also serving as an Associate Editor at the International Economic Review.

Thursday, October 23
9am – 10am
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)

Abstract: We estimate the causal effect of early-life access to healthcare services on epigenetic aging. Exploiting a quasi-natural experiment created by the introduction of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in 1998 and its expansion throughout the 2000s alongside Medicaid, we identify how early-life exposure to public healthcare coverage affects biological aging. These reforms generated substantial variation across states and over time in eligibility thresholds and the generosity of public health insurance for the poorest segments of the population. Using data from the Future of Health and Fragile Families study (N = 1,948), we apply an instrumental variables approach based on a fixed, nationally representative sample derived from the Current Population Survey to capture changes in policy generosity over time. An additional wave of eligibility reduced values of the epigenetic clocks PC GrimAge and DunedinPACE at age 15 by approximately 8% and 15% of a standard deviation, respectively, with the latter effect statistically significant at the 5% level. These results remain robust when we instrument observed health insurance coverage instead of eligibility, control for cell-type composition and ancestry-specific principal components and use alternative epigenetic clocks such as PhenoAge and Horvath. Heterogeneity analyses show that effects are driven primarily by females, with no discernible differences across ethnic groups. Overall, our findings demonstrate that access to healthcare during early life leaves a measurable and policy-relevant epigenetic imprint, highlighting the long-term biological benefits of childhood health insurance coverage.

Bio: Nicolau Martin-Bassols is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Economics at the University of Bologna. He obtained his PhD from Monash University’s Centre of Health Economics in 2022. He specializes in applied microeconomics and micro-econometrics, with a focus on health, labor economics, and social genomics. His research explores the impact of genetics, familial investments, and policy interventions on the construction of health and human capital, as well as economic disparities.

Thursday, November 6
9am – 10am
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)

Abstract: This presentation investigates the genetic architecture of two quintessentially human traits: language and migration. We uncover their genetic origins by bridging data from large-scale biobanks with evolutionary insights from ancient DNA.

First, we investigate the emergence of human language. To pinpoint when language capability evolved, we developed a novel evolutionary-stratified polygenic score method and applied it to nearly 40,000 individuals. Our results demonstrate that Human Ancestor Quickly Evolved Regions (HAQERs) are specifically associated with language, but not nonverbal skills. HAQERs evolved before the human–Neanderthal split, and show an unexpected selection pattern suggesting a reproductive trade-off between language and birth complications. Intriguingly, these language-associated variants appear more prevalent in Neanderthals and convergently evolved in other vocal-learning mammals.

Second, we examine the genetics of human migration. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in the UK Biobank, identifying numerous associated loci, reveal a significant SNP-based heritability (~5%), and pinpoint neurobiological mechanisms involving excitatory neurons. We find migration is genetically correlated with higher education, increased likelihood of bipolar disorder, and lower friend and family satisfaction. We validated these GWAS results across time and space. A polygenic score derived from our GWAS predicts migration distance in a contemporary US cohort and predicts inferred migratory movements in ancient human genomes from thousands of years ago. Strikingly, within the last few generations in the US, we observe a clear geographical shift where people with higher migration polygenic scores moved from the Northeast to the Southwest.

Together, these studies demonstrate the power of using an evolutionary lens to understand social traits, revealing how ancient genetic variants continue to shape the core behaviors that define modern humans.

Bio: Lucas Casten is a computational geneticist completing his PhD at the University of Iowa under the supervision of Dr. Jacob Michaelson. In January 2026, he will begin a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Dr. Elisabeth Binder’s group. His research seeks to understand how genetic variation influences human cognition and behavior. To accomplish this, he develops and applies novel methods that bridge evolutionary genomics and complex trait analysis, providing new insights into how ancient genetic changes continue to influence humans. Lucas’s previous work includes publications on the genetic architecture of neuropsychiatric conditions, focusing on comorbidities in autism and bipolar disorder.

Thursday, December 4
9am – 10am
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)

Abstract: In admixed populations, ancestry proportions can be estimated with genetic data, and such proportions can be associated with complex traits. The estimated effects in this design are a combination of “direct” genetic effects and “indirect” environmental effects that are confounded with ancestry. With family data, this effect can be partitioned into a between-family (indirect) and within-family (direct) effect. In his presentation, Visscher will share unpublished results from a collaborative research project with the Mexican City Prospective Study (Estudio Prospectivo de la Ciudad de México) to estimate direct effects of ancestry on complex traits, including height, liability to type 2 diabetes and educational attainment, from a sample of 17,000 families and 30,000 sibling pairs.

Bio: Peter Visscher is Professor of Quantitative Genetics at the University of Oxford and the University of Queensland. He is known for his research investigating the genetic basis of complex human traits, including common diseases. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of human trait variation. Visscher developed and applied statistical analysis methods to quantify and dissect the contribution of DNA polymorphisms to trait variation within families and in the population at large. He was one of the first to propose, advocate and show that genome and trait data can be used to predict individuals who are genetically at high risk of disease. The use of “polygenic risk scores” in health care is now being trialled worldwide.