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 Evan Sandlin.
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 Seminar & Brown Bag Series
The CESR Seminar & Brown Bag Series will resume Monday, January 27, 2025 and conclude Monday, May 5, 2025.
Mondays
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Adam Enders | University of Louisville
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.
Francisco Perez-Arce | USC CESR
*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.
Jacqueline Torres | University of California, San Francisco
Monday, March 3
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Annamaria Lusardi | Stanford
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.
Italo Lopez Garcia | USC CESR
Monday, March 24
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Daphna Oyserman | USC
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.
Scott Schuh | West Virginia University
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.
Sarojini Hirshleifer | University of California, Riverside
Monday, April 14
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Kate Orkin | Oxford
Monday, April 21
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Aprajit Mahajan, University of California, Berkeley
Wednesday, April 23
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Fernanda Márquez-Padilla | El Colegio de México
Monday, April 28
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Abstract: We estimate the labor and health effects of the menopause transition for U.S. women. Using data from the NLSYW and the SWAN and applying an event study methodology which exploits the individual-level variation in the time of menopause, we find that women undergoing this transition have a lower probability of employment of almost 20 percentage points, and a higher probability of working part-time if they remain employed. We do not find significant impacts on their monthly earnings or hourly wage. Regarding health, we find that menopause increases the probability of having osteoporosis and bone fractures but does not have a significant impact on the probability of being diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. We also find that the probability of taking hormones to treat symptoms increases throughout the menopause transition, as expected. However, such increase in hormonal take-up is concentrated among white and highly educated women, which highlights the unequal access to treatment—and probably different menopause experiences—associated with traditional markers of socioeconomic status.
Bio: Fernanda Marquez-Padilla is Assistant Professor of Economics at El Colegio de Mexico. She is an applied microeconomist and her work mainly focuses on the intersection of development and health economics. Her research explores the effects of policies on health, development, and wellbeing, and she has also worked on the socio-economic determinants of health. In some of her other work she has also studied newborn health and determinants of birth outcomes, fertility, patient behaviour, and youth obesity. Prior to joining El Colegio de Mexico, she was an assistant professor of economics at CIDE. She received a PhD in Economics from Princeton University
Katherine Levine Einstein | Boston University
Monday, May 5
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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*Cohosted with Economics
Social-Science Genetics Seminars
Our next seminar will be announced soon!
Conferences
CIPHER 2025
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
2025 PacDev
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.