CESR Events

Series resumes Monday, January 26, 2026

Monday, May 4
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Abstract:  This paper leverages data from the Baby’s First Years study – a randomized control trial that provided unconditional monthly cash transfers to low-income mothers with young children – to assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including its disruptions and government responses, on children’s early home environments. It also assesses whether pandemic-driven family-process changes might have been responsible for the absence of treatment group differences in developmental assessments taken when study children were four years old. Our results suggest that the pandemic’s disruptions generated few and mostly short-lived detrimental impacts on most aspects of family functioning. Pandemic financial supports appeared to produce more persistent decreases in material hardship.  Taken together, the collection of family process measures did not appear to have played an important role in the absence of treatment group differences in children’s age-4 developmental outcomes.

Bio: Greg Duncan is an American economist and Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine, as well as an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He spent more than two decades at the University of Michigan, where he worked on and ultimately directed the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data collection project, a landmark longitudinal study that since 1968 has gathered economic, demographic, health, behavioral, and attainment data from a representative sample of U.S. individuals and households. Using these and related data, his research has focused on economic mobility and the long-term effects of childhood poverty, particularly among low-income families, examining how early childhood conditions, family environments, peers, neighborhoods, and public policy shape children’s life chances. His work has highlighted both the harmful effects of economic deprivation and the benefits of income supports for working families. More recently, his research has explored the role of early academic skills, self-regulation, and health in shaping long-term success, and he is involved in a randomized trial studying the impact of income supplements on infant development. His contributions have earned him numerous honors, including the 2013 Jacobs Research Prize, as well as election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Tuesday, June 29
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Abstract:

Bio: Rosanna Smart is a senior economist at RAND, where she codirects both the RAND Drug Policy Research Center and the Gun Policy in America initiative, and serves as a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Her work in applied microeconomics focuses on health behaviors, illegal markets, drug policy, and the causes of gun violence. She studies topics such as substance use patterns, cannabis market changes, and the effects of medication supply disruptions, while also researching gun policy impacts across communities and identifying ways to reduce violence. Her research has appeared in leading journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and PNAS, and she holds a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA.

Monday, July 13
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Monday, July 20
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Monday, July 27
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Thursday, June 4
9am – 10am Pacific Time
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)

Abstract: Socioeconomic outcomes exhibit substantial heterogeneity across individuals. Personality traits—relatively stable patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving—may shape human capital accumulation and economic behavior, thereby contributing to differences in socioeconomic outcomes. However, estimating their causal effects is challenging, as early-life environments may both shape personality and independently influence later outcomes. This interdependence makes it difficult to isolate causal effects using conventional observational approaches. In this paper, we exploit random within-family genetic variation as a source of exogenous variation to study the causal relationship between personality traits and socioeconomic outcomes. A recent genome-wide association study identified genetic markers associated with the Big Five personality traits (Schwaba et al., 2025). We construct polygenic indices (PGIs) for participants of the Dutch Lifelines Biobank, whose administrative tax records allow us to measure a rich set of socioeconomic outcomes. A key challenge is that these PGIs may affect outcomes through channels other than personality, such as education and cognitive ability. To address this concern, we combine two complementary approaches: controlling for PGIs associated with alternative pathways and implementing a GWAS-by-subtraction strategy. Our results advance our understanding of the causal relationship between personality traits and socioeconomic outcomes.

Bio: Leandro Carvalho is an Associate Research Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California’s Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). His research spans social genomics, behavioral economics, and development economics. In social genomics, he studies how socioeconomic, behavioral, and health outcomes are causally shaped by the interplay between genetics and environment. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and others. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University and is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—where, despite extensive research, he has found no credible evidence that genetics determines soccer ability.

Tuesday, May 12
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Wednesday, May 27
11am – 12pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Monday, June 8
11am – 12pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom