CESR Events Archive

Monday, January 27
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: This paper examines the adoption and diffusion of a computer-assisted learning (CAL) platform. Using a large-scale randomized control trial involving over 1,600 teachers and 50,000 students in 188 low-performing public schools in Lima, Peru, we evaluated three treatments: (i) school-wide workshops, (ii) workshops for selected teachers, and (iii) workshops plus personalized coaching for selected teachers. Treated teachers and their students showed significantly greater engagement with the platform compared to non-treated teachers; teachers who received both workshops and coaching had significantly more students connecting regularly and completing exercises than those who only received workshops. At endline, treated teachers reported having more information, more knowledge, and more favorable attitudes about technology. Treatment effects were heterogeneous by gender, age, digital skills, and attitudes towards technology. In schools where only selected teachers were treated, we also find positive spillovers among non-treated teachers. Platform use declined markedly in subsequent years, but supplementary workshops were significantly more effective at boosting utilization for teachers who had received our interventions. We conclude that scalable low-cost training programs can significantly improve the adoption of technology by teachers.

Bio: Ofer Malamud is Professor of Human Development and Social Policy and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Malamud is an economist focused on education policy from an international perspective. His research is concentrated in three substantive areas: educational investments over the life course, the role of technology in the formation of human capital, and the effect of general and specific education on labor market outcomes. He has studied these topics in a wide range of institutional settings across countries such as Chile, England, Israel, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Scotland, and the United States.

Malamud is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the CESifo Research Network. He also serves as a research consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Before joining Northwestern, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Monday, February 3
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: Older adults with low income face a complex set of decisions regarding safety net programs and have particularly low take-up rates. We examine how means-tested public health insurance for working-age adults affects their choices once on Medicare. We find that people in low-income areas of Medicaid expansion states choose the Medicaid supplement more often than their non-expansion state counterparts; use more healthcare; and spend less out-of-pocket. Higher Medicaid supplement take-up increases Part Dand LIS take-up through automatic enrollment. Our results suggest that Medicaid exposure before 65 causes meaningful behavioral responses among the lowest-income beneficiaries when they age into Medicare.

Bio: M. Kate Bundorf is the J. Alexander McMahon Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and a core faculty member at Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy.  She is an economist, and her research focuses on public and private health insurance and health care provider markets.

Tuesday, February 4
11am – 12pm
TCC 227 and Zoom
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Abstract: This paper estimates the degree of substitution between personal and small business credit for U.S. entrepreneurs between 2009 and 2018 using a novel, individual-level dataset. We identify the effect of business credit supply shocks by exploiting geographic variation in the market share of large banks, which sharply reduced credit supply to small businesses after the 2008 financial crisis. This contraction decreased total business credit by$13,572 per firm in our sample, and we find that entrepreneurs on average were able to substitute for about 68% of this decline with personal credit, driven by mortgages. However, entrepreneurs with subprime credit scores, below-average income, and high credit utilization do not meaningfully substitute lost business credit with personal credit. Thus, we find that the personal financial characteristics of entrepreneurs play an economically important role in overall access to external finance for small businesses.

Bio: Jialan Wang is an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Research Associate at the NBER. She holds a B.S. in mathematics from Caltech and a Ph.D. in financial economics from MIT, and has previously held positions at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St Louis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Wharton School. Her research focuses on household finance, behavioral economics, and fintech. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, and Journal of Financial Economics.

Monday, February 10
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: What are the long-term political consequences of economic crises? We assess the enduring impact of the Great Recession on U.S. political outcomes. In line with prior work, we employ a difference-in-differences approach, leveraging geographic variation in unemployment shocks. Contrary to claims that major recessions primarily boost anti-incumbent, far-right candidates, we find that counties more severely affected by the recession experienced a sustained increase in Democratic vote shares, particularly in Congressional elections. These effects persisted through 2022. Probing mechanisms, we demonstrate that these results are unlikely to be due to persistent economic decline, demographic changes, shifts in candidate ideology, or fiscal compensation spending. Instead, survey evidence suggests that the recession lowered expectations for upward mobility, likely increasing support for redistribution and thereby benefiting Democratic candidates. Our findings expand the literature by showing that (i) severe economic shocks do not necessarily favor right-wing populists, and (ii) major downturns can continue to influence electoral outcomes long after direct economic consequences have subsided.

Bio: Dr. Hilbig graduated from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2022. and is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. His research lies at the intersection of Comparative Politics and Political Economy. He examines how economic transformations, such as labor market shifts, the transition to renewable energy, regional inequality, and housing crises, shape politics in established democracies. His work leverages a range of research designs and data sources, including natural experiments, large-scale surveys and administrative data. Previously, He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University.

*Thursday, February 20
*1pm – 2pm
VPD 302 and Zoom
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Abstract: It has long been known that people report to have strong distaste for inflation. This is evident from analyzing direct survey reports on preferences for inflation, as well as indirectly, by showing a relationship of inflation with subjectivewellbeing and voting behavior. Most recently, it is argued that inflation caused a wave of anti-incumbent election results in Western democracies in 2024. Analyzing rich data form the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative panel survey, we find that people with indexed income understand the relationship between their income and inflation but still show a strong distaste for inflation. Other population groups who gain from inflation, such as holders of debt with fixed interest rate, also show strong distaste for inflation. Since Shiller (1997), the leading explanation for inflation aversion rests on workers failing to appreciate that inflation is behind their nominal wage increases. However, our results imply this reason cannot be the sole explanation for the pervasive inflation distaste, as it is prevalent among non-workers, and among those who know their income is inflation protected. We then discuss evidence that people misinterpret the meaning of inflation, in particular, people conflate inflation with a decrease in real income and with negative (real) economic outcomes more generally. We show, experimentally, that hearing the term “inflation” causes people to more negatively evaluate their and the country’s financial situation.  The misunderstanding of inflation has several implications for how we interpret people’s reported distaste for inflation, which has implications for macroeconomics and political economy. It can also be a piece in the puzzle to explain the “vibecession” conundrum posed by the economic data of 2023-2024, where increasing real incomes and good overall economic indicators coexisted with persisting negative perceptions of the economy.

Monday, February 24
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: Recent work argues that the American mass opinion space is organized not only by an overarching left-right dimension (e.g., liberal-conservative ideology, Democrat-Republican partisanship), but also an orthogonal anti-establishment dimension involving conspiratorial, populist, and Manichean thought. I apply this two-dimensional framework to the study of multiple U.S. elections between 2020 and 2024, examining the relationship between left-right and anti-establishment orientations over time and estimating the relative effect of these orientations on attitudes toward political candidates and various political issues. First, I find that, while distinct anti-establishment and left-right dimensions emerge across time, they increasingly depart from the orthogonality observed in 2020––by 2024 there is a moderate correlation. Second, I find that the relative magnitude of the association between each dimension and attitudes toward various issues and candidates changes over time. For example, prior to 2020, beliefs about the safety of vaccines were correlated only with anti-establishment orientations; by 2024, the correlation with left-right orientations was just as strong. Anti-establishment orientations also differentially distinguish presidential candidates over time.

Bio: Adam Enders is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville. He is also an instructor in the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research at the University of Michigan where he teaches advanced methodology courses on measurement and scaling techniques.

Monday, March 3
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: Lifecourse epidemiology has long recognized the importance of intergenerational influences on health. However, the direction of these influences is typically described as flowing downward, from one generation to the next (e.g. from parent to child). A rapidly growing body of scholarship from economics, sociology, and public health has begun to consider the reverse – that is, whether the socio-economic status and resources of adult children flow ‘upward’ to influence the outcomes of their older parents. I will present both quasi-experimental and observational evidence on the impacts of adult child socio-economic status (e.g. educational attainment) on older parents’ health and wellbeing from across global settings. I will also touch on extensions of this work to other dimensions of social policy that might directly target young and middle-aged adults, with potential spillover effects on middle-aged and older parents.

Bio: Jackie Torres is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at UC San Francisco. Her work examines the social determinants of health and health inequities, with a specific focus on the health of middle-aged and older adults. Her work triangulating evidence on socio-economic and psychosocial determinants of dementia risk with observational and quasi-experimental approaches is supported by an R01 and a recently awarded P01 by the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Torres received her PhD from UCLA, was a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society scholar at UCSF and UC Berkeley, and was recently awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government to scientists and engineers in the early stages of their research careers.

Monday, March 10
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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*Cohosted with Behavioral Science & Policy and Social Psychology

Abstract: In this presentation, I use data from the Big Three, the Personal Finance Index, and new information from the ECB’s Consumer Expectations Survey to document very low levels of financial literacy in the United States and around the world. Looking at the data from a personal finance approach, I show how financial literacy affects financial decision-making – from managing assets to debt and debt management – and the consequences of low financial knowledge for individuals and society as well. I discuss the implications of my findings for policy and programs, including the importance of teaching personal finance in high school and college and the new Initiative for Financial Decision-Making (IFDM) at Stanford University.

Bio: Annamaria Lusardi is Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and the Director of the Initiative for Financial Decision-Making, a collaboration between SIEPR, the Graduate School of Business (GSB), and the Economics Department at Stanford University. She is also Professor of Finance (by courtesy) at the GSB. Previously, she was University Professor at The George Washington University and, before that, she was the Joel Z. and Susan Hyatt Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, where she started her academic career.

Monday, March 17
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM; also Ecological Momentary Assessment) is a powerful tool for capturing fluctuations in behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. However, the frequent assessments in ESM studies are also associated with unique methodological challenges that can impact the validity of findings. Fortunately, the growing popularity of ESM has led to an acceleration in related methodological research in recent years. In this talk, I will present recent work and ongoing research projects that aim to improve the measurement of daily life experiences. First, I will discuss research on ESM data quality and quantity, including their assessment and impact on research outcomes. I will then explore the role of ESM study design in shaping data quality and quantity, and present work on optimizing sampling frequency, questionnaire length, and the use of incentives to boost participant engagement. Finally, I will zoom in on the topic of measurement in ESM studies and discuss current practices in questionnaire design and validation, associated challenges and resources, such as the ESM item repository.

Bio: Dr. Gudrun Eisele is a postdoctoral research fellow funded by the Research Foundation Flanders in Belgium. She works at the Center for Contextual Psychiatry at KU Leuven. Her main research interests lie on the improvement of self-report data collection with a focus on ambulatory assessment.

Thursday, March 20
12pm – 1pm
RGL 100 and Zoom
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Abstract: This paper investigates the costs to firms of providing various workplace amenities. Surveying hiring and human resources managers as representatives of their firms, we conducted a series of stated preference experiments to estimate the costs associated with offering different amenities such as telecommuting, schedule flexibility, paid time off, paid family leave, and shift work arrangements. Our findings reveal that providing these amenities entails significant costs to some firms, with considerable variation across firm.  The median firm in the sample considers offering telecommuting opportunities as a small cost while a subset of firms would not be willing to offer telecommuting opportunities unless they could correspondingly reduce wages by 52%.  We find that the median cost of permitting complete schedule flexibility to workers is especially costly to firms as is providing 12 weeks of paid family leave.  This study highlights the economic implications of workplace amenities for firms, offering a detailed analysis of the financial burdens involved in enhancing working conditions.

Bio: David Powell is a Senior Economist at RAND with research in labor economics, health economics, and econometrics.  His work explores the value of workplace amenities to employees, the impact of workplace injuries, and the key factors behind national shifts in labor force participation. Additionally, David investigates the causes and evolution of the opioid crisis, examining its broader effects on both the labor market and households. His methodological contributions include advancements in synthetic control estimation, quantile estimation, and difference-in-differences techniques.

Monday, March 24
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: Work capacity is a measure of health expressed in relation to the functional demands of the work environment. Specifically, it is the capacity to perform a job or set of jobs, and represents the interaction between an individual’s cognitive, physical, psychomotor, and sensory abilities and the demands of the job. However, existing data do not allow direct comparisons between functional abilities and occupational requirements. The long-term goal of this research is to examine how functional abilities shape work capacity, interact with early-life human capital, and influence employment opportunities across local areas and industries, shaping independence and healthy aging.

Building on our previously published conceptual framework, this work-in-progress refines our work capacity measure by integrating self-reported abilities with objective performance tests, aligning them with occupational ability requirements from the O*NET database. To address potential self-report bias (e.g., overestimating one’s own abilities), we fielded a Fall 2024 survey among ~4,000 UAS respondents, collecting self-reported functional abilities alongside six cognitive performance tests. These tests allow us to construct two measures of bias, which will be incorporated into our individualized measures of work capacity.

This talk will present the proposed measurement approach and examine the extent of bias in self-reported abilities, discussing implications for assessing work capacity at older ages.

Bio: Italo Lopez Garcia is a Senior Economist/Research Scientist at USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). A labor and development economist, he studies human capital development across life stages. He co-leads NICHD-funded RCTs in Kenya and Chile on early childhood interventions for disadvantaged children. His research also examines how older U.S. workers make health and labor decisions affecting cognitive health. In an NIA-funded study, he explores job demands and work capacity at older ages. He employs RCTs, quasi-experimental methods, and structural models.

Monday, March 31
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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*Cohosted with Behavioral Science & Policy and Social Psychology

Abstract: The results of randomized trials testing promising interventions are often unstable. To understand why past successes do not necessarily predict future success, we focus on unassessed variability in four features of intervention implementation: fidelity, context, targeted participants, and implementers. Replication and continuous improvement require knowing what occurred, specifying fit with the intended intervention (implementation fidelity), and uncovering misfits (stumbling points). The hope is that by operationalizing a process theory into an activity set, interventions will yield theory-specified changes in trajectories toward desired outcomes. The reality is that process theories may apply only in specific contexts or populations and successful delivery of the intervention activity set may require that implementers have a particular set of beliefs or skills. Mismatches between the operationalization of a theory into an intervention and the contexts of implementation, the targeted participants, and implementers tasked with delivering the intervention can significantly affect implementation fidelity and hence failures to replicate. We concretize our discussion by focusing on a decade of delivery of the Pathways-to-Success program, a brief, manualized, universal social and behavioral intervention delivered by 8th-grade teachers during the school day with quality-of-implementation support. Pathways-to-Success supports student academic outcomes (GPA, grade retention). Controlling past academic trajectories, students in classrooms receiving Pathways-to-Success with higher implementation fidelity have better academic trajectories. We assess fidelity from observational coding using videotapes of each Pathways-to-Success 45-minute session and describe the associations between school contexts, features of participants and implementers, and fidelity across a decade of delivery in public schools in four states including about n=300 classrooms and n=6,000 children.

Bio: Dr. Oyserman’s research explores how subtle contextual changes can shift mindsets, influencing the perceived meaning of behaviors and situations, with significant downstream effects on outcomes such as health and academic performance. She conceptualizes these underlying processes through theoretical and experimental work, translating them into real-world interventions. A key focus is on cultural differences in affect, behavior, and cognition, as well as addressing racial, ethnic, and social class gaps in school achievement and health by revealing how seemingly “fixed” group differences often stem from malleable situational factors. Collaborating with an interdisciplinary team at the USC Dornsife Mind & Society Center, she publishes widely, with most of her work accessible online. Dr. Oyserman holds a PhD in psychology and social work from the University of Michigan, and previously served at The Hebrew University and the University of Michigan, earning honors such as the W. T. Grant Faculty Scholar Award and a Humboldt Scientific Contribution Prize, and recognition as a Fellow of several prestigious psychological associations.

Tuesday, April 1
1pm – 2pm
TCC 227 and Zoom
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Abstract: Recent challenges in designing and implementing health technology are fundamentally sociotechnical, arising from the interplay between human, social, and technical factors. A persistent challenge in digital health is sustaining user engagement, as evidenced by high dropout rates in mobile health apps and low adherence to interventions. This talk explores the intersection of behavioral science and design for health, focusing on the role of preferences, choice, and optimization in digital interventions. Through examples from my research on weight management, alcohol reduction, and smoking cessation, I will illustrate how the field can leverage behavioral insights in conjunction with novel methodologies, such as data science techniques and personalization, to design better health technology. Maximizing the potential of health technology requires integrating behavioral science with a sociotechnical perspective to improve engagement and effectiveness. By doing so, we can develop more effective interventions that promote long-term engagement, behavior change, and health.

Bio: Michael Sobolev, PhD, is a behavioral scientist and technologist specializing in behavioral design and data science for health and wellness. He earned his PhD from the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2017. Over the next five years, he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Computer and Information Science at Cornell Tech and Northwell Health in New York City. In 2022, he moved to Los Angeles to establish the Behavioral Design Unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he applies behavioral science to drive innovation in healthcare. During this time, he also served as a visiting scholar at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics at USC. Beyond academia, Dr. Sobolev works with startups and nonprofits to design and implement consumer-facing products that improve health and well-being.

Monday, April 7
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: This paper extends Schuh (2018) by demonstrating that daily micro transactions in the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC) contain reliable estimates of consumption and income that cover high percentages of U.S. data, forecast them well in real time, and match payday effects as well as pay cycle borrowing from other transactions data. Annual estimates of a benchmark PIH model of consumption using DCPC data match the literature well, rejecting the model due to excess sensitivity. Novel daily estimates of the MPC from expected income are qualitatively similar but an order of magnitude smaller, most likely due to the lower frequency of daily income. Relative to other transactions data, the DCPC is: 1) more representative; 2) publicly available; 3) continuous measurement; and 4) flexible real-time implementation.

Bio: Dr. Scott Schuh is an Associate Professor of Economics at West Virginia University, specializing in macroeconomics and monetary economics. Before joining WVU in 2018, he spent 26 years with the Federal Reserve, including as the founding Director of the Consumer Payments Research Center. He also served as a staff economist for President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and taught at Boston University, Boston College, and Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Schuh’s research focuses on macroeconomics, household finance, banking, payments, FinTech, productivity, housing, and more. He has co-authored two books and published over 40 scholarly articles.

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 (MPH)

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, February 6
9am – 1am US Pacific Time
VPD 203 and Zoom
Please check your email for the Zoom link

BIO: I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Barcelona and a researcher at the Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB). As an applied microeconomist, my research focuses on family economics, health, and labor economics. A significant part of my work also incorporates genetic data into economic analysis.

Thursday, March 6
9am – 10am Pacific Time
Zoom
Please see your email invite for Zoom Meeting

Bio: Daniel E. Adkins, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry and Chair of the Graduate Program in Statistics at the University of Utah. An interdisciplinary quantitative methodologist, he integrates advanced statistical techniques from the social and behavioral sciences (e.g., structural equation modeling, causal inference) with genomic methodologies (e.g., GWAS, polygenic scoring, and epigenomics) to investigate how social environments interact with genetics to shape health and behavior. Dr. Adkins received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning the Howard W. Odum Award for Excellence, and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in statistical genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research—supported by major grants—has produced more than 80 peer-reviewed publications across disciplines, appearing in Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, Nucleic Acids Research, Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Demography, Social Forces, Sociological Theory, and Sociological Methods & Research. His current work examines the interplay of genetic factors and social structure in shaping health and behavior across the life course.

Thursday, April 3, 2025
9am – 10am US/Pacific Time
Zoom Invite

Bio: Elsje van Bergen (on Google Scholar) is Associate Professor in biological psychology at the VU Amsterdam (the Netherlands), where she leads her lab in educational genetics. This academic year, she is based at the University of Oslo (Norway) as a Visiting Professor. Her lab’s interdisciplinary research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of individual differences in learning, particularly the interplay between genetic and environmental factors on skills such as reading and math. She has received numerous international awards and prestigious grants, including an ERC.