Nick C.
Huntington-Klein
Assistant Professor of Economics,
Seattle University
nhuntington-klein@seattleu.edu,
(206) 296-5815
nickchk.com, Twitter: @nickchk, GitHub: NickCH-K
PDF version of this CV
My introductory textbook on causal inference and research design, The Effect: An Introduction to Research
Design and Causality, is now available. Please do check it out. Or,
even better, preorder
a physical copy from Chapman & Hall/CRC or Amazon! It’s pretty good
I think.
Also check out my straightforward and concrete supplemental Principles
of Micro book A
Step-by-Step Guide to the Principles of Microeconomics by Kona
Publishing!
Finally, you can check out my blog, which is mostly about econometrics,
at Some
Thoughts.
Please email me at nhuntington-klein@seattleu.edu for working PDFs if not linked.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. 2022. “Pearl Before
Economists: The Book of Why and Empirical Economics.” Journal of
Economic Methodology. Link.
Structural Causal Modeling (SCM) is an
approach to causal inference closely associated with Judea Pearl and
given an accessible instroduction in [Pearl, J., & Mackenzie, D.
(2018). The book of why: The new science of cause and effect. Basic
Books]. It is highly popular outside of economics, but has seen
relatively little application within it. This paper briefly introduces
the main concepts of SCM through the lens of whether applied economists
are likely to find marginal benefit in these methods beyond standard
economic approaches to causal inference. The most promising areas are
those where SCM’s causal diagrams alone offer significant value:
covariate selection, the development of placebo tests, causal discovery,
and identification in complex models.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. Forthcoming. “Linear
Rescaling to Accurately Interpret Logarithms.” Journal of
Econometric Methods. Link. arXiv
The natural logarithm transformation is an
important tool in statistical analysis. The standard approach to
interpreting a linear change of p in ln(X) is as a (1+p) proportional
change in X. This is an approximation that is only valid for small
values of p. In this paper I suggest the use of base-(1+p) logarithms
(linearly rescaling ln(X) by 1/ln(1+p)), where p is chosen ahead of
time. Then, a one-unit change in log1+p(X) is exactly equivalent to
a (1+p) proportional change in X. This method avoids an approximation
being applied outside its useful range, offers an easier way of
reporting exact interpretations, improves approximation quality when
approximations are used, produces a logarithm more similar to other
regression variables by making the change of interest a one-log-unit
change, and reduces error from the use of log(1+X) in cases where X can
be 0.
Huntington-Klein, Nick, Andreu Arenas, Emily
Beam, Marco Bertoni, Jeffrey R. Bloem, Pralhad Burli, Naibin Chen, Paul
Grieco, Godwin Ekpe, Todd Pugatch, Martin Saavedra, and Yaniv
Stopnitzky. 2021. “The Influence of Hidden Researcher Decisions in
Applied Microeconomics” Economic Inquiry. 59 (3): 944-960.
Winner, Economic Inquiry Paper of the Year 2021. Link.
CSUF
Working Paper PDF IZA
Working Paper PDF GLO
Working Paper PDF Replication
Files
Researchers make hundreds of decisions
about data collection, preparation, and analysis in their research. We
use a many-analysts approach to measure the extent and impact of these
decisions. Two published causal empirical results are replicated by
seven replicators each. We find large differences in data preparation
and analysis decisions, many of which would not likely be reported in a
publication. No two replicators reported the same sample size.
Statistical significance varied across replications, and for one of the
studies the effect’s sign varied as well. The standard deviation of
estimates across replications was 3-4 times the mean reported standard
error.
Huntington-Klein, Nick and Andrew Gill. 2021.
“Semester Course Load and Student Performance.” Research in Higher
Education. 62. 623-650. Link.
Working
Paper PDF. Replication
materials.
Many college students in the United States
take longer than four years to complete their bachelor’s degrees. Long
time-to-degree can increase higher education costs by billions.
Time-to-degree can be reduced if students take more credits each term.
While academic momentum theory suggests that additional credits may also
improve student performance, and there is a strong positive correlation
between course load and student performance, high course load may reduce
time investment in each course, giving high course load a negative
causal effect on performance. Concern about the negative impact of
course load on performance, especially for struggling students, may lead
to pushback against policies to reduce time-to-degree by increasing
course load. Using longitudinal data from a regional four-year
university with a high average time-to-degree, we find no evidence that
high course loads have a negative impact on student grades, even for
students at the low end of the performance distribution. This result is
consistent with a model where students substitute time away from
non-education activities when their course loads increase.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. 2021. “Human Capital
vs. Signaling is Empirically Unresolvable.” Empirical
Economics. 60: 2499-2531. Link. Current
Working Version. Old working
paper (less math).
Economists offer two main explanations for
the causal labor market returns to education. The first is human capital
accumulation: education improves ability. The second is signaling:
education allows high-ability students to distinguish themselves. A
major point of interest is the relative contributions of these effects.
I demonstrate the theoretical and empirical conditions necessary to
identify the relative contribution of the two models. Then, I review the
existing literature to evaluate whether the feasible set of empirical
estimates is capable of meeting those conditions and so informing
theory. Empirical evidence is capable of rejecting pure human capital
and signaling models, and usually does so. I argue that, for the general
question of relative contribution, necessary identification conditions
are not met, and partial identification bounds are wide. Two models with
different non-zero contributions of human capital and signaling cannot
be empirically distinguished, limiting the usefulness of human capital
vs. signaling as a framing for understanding the return to education and
for policy.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. 2020. “Instruments
with Heterogeneous Effects: Bias, Monotonicity, and Localness.”
Journal of Causal Inference. 8 (1): 182-208. Link.
Working
Paper PDF. Replication
files.
In Instrumental Variables (IV) estimation,
the effect of an instrument on an endogenous variable may vary across
the sample. In this case, IV produces a local average treatment effect
(LATE), and if monotonicity does not hold, then no effect of interest is
identified. In this paper, I calculate the weighted average of treatment
effects that is identified under general first-stage effect
heterogeneity, which is generally not the average treatment effect among
those affected by the instrument. I then describe a simple set of
data-driven approaches to modeling variation in the effect of the
instrument. These approaches identify a Super-Local Average Treatment
Effect (SLATE) that weights treatment effects by the corresponding
instrument effect more heavily than LATE. Even when first-stage
heterogeneity is poorly modeled, these approaches considerably reduce
the impact of small-sample bias compared to standard IV and unbiased
weak-instrument IV methods, and can also make results more robust to
violations of monotonicity. In application to a published study with a
strong instrument, the preferred approach reduces error by about 20% in
small (N about 1,000) subsamples, and by about 15% in larger (N about
33,000) subsamples.
Jilla, Anna Marie, Johnson, Carole E., and
Nick Huntington-Klein. 2020. “Hearing Aid Affordability in the United
States.” Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology. Link. Replication
files.
Substantial out-of-pocket costs for hearing
aids constitute a barrier to hearing health care accessibility for older
adults among whom prevalence of hearing loss is high. This study is the
first to estimate the proportion of Americans with functional hearing
loss for which out-of-pocket expenditures for hearing aids would be
unaffordable at current average costs and determine how affordability
varies by sociodemographic factors.
Huntington-Klein, Nick, and Andrew M. Gill.
2019. “An Informational Intervention to Increase Semester Credits in
College.” Series of Unsurprising Results in Economics 1:
1-17. Link. Working
Paper PDF. Replication
files.
Increased time to college degree completion
increases tuition and foregone earnings costs. Encouraging college
students to take more semester credits is a low-cost way to reduce time
to completion. We implemented an experimental informational intervention
to increase student course loads by varying the intensity of information
about the benefits of taking 15 credits per semester. We find no effect
of our treatment on students’ course loads. Our null finding is of
interest because of the increasing popularity of low-cost informational
interventions. Uncovering null results like these is important for the
design of future interventions.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. 2018. “College Choice
as a Collective Decision.” Economic Inquiry 56 (2):
1202-19. Link.
Replication
files. Working
Paper PDF.
Although the choice between colleges can be
thought of as being made collectively by a family, models of educational
choice almost universally portray the decision as made by the student
alone. Using a novel experimental method for identifying collective
decision functions, I find that students have more influence than
parents over the decision, but not exclusive control. Students care more
than parents about classroom experience and future earnings. Ignoring
the dual-agent nature of the decision can weaken predictions and lead to
poorly-targeted policy designs.
Huntington-Klein, Nick, and Elizabeth Ackert.
2018. “The Long Road to Equality: A Meta-Regression Analysis of Changes
in the Black Test Score Gap Over Time.” Social Science
Quarterly 99 (3): 1119-33. Link.
Replication
materials.
This study performs a meta-regression
analysis of over 1,100 regressions in 165 studies to examine the
relationship between African American racial status and student
achievement scores in K-12 education from 1979 to 2010. The study
examines time trends in the black test score gap and estimates the
extent to which controls for confounding variables including
socioeconomic status and schooling characteristics attenuate the size of
the gap. Across the samples in the study, the absolute relationship
between Black status and achievement decreased during the 1980s and
early 1990s, but has been stagnant since the late 1990s. We estimate
that socioeconomic status alone explains more than half of the gap, and
this influence does not vary significantly over the time period of
interest. Controlling for differences in school characteristics only
reduces the gap slightly, but school-level factors explain an increasing
proportion of the gap over time.
Huntington-Klein, Nick, and Elaina Rose.
2018. “Gender Peer Effects in a Predominantly Male Environment: Evidence
from West Point.” AEA Papers and Proceedings 108:
392-95. Link.
Replication
materials
There is considerable interest in the
success of women in overwhelmingly male environments. One hypothesized
determinant of success is the increased presence of other women.
However, the theoretical direction of this effect is uncertain. Previous
studies of heavily male contexts have had mixed results. We take
advantage of random peer group assignment at West Point military academy
to identify gender peer effects in the first years in which women were
admitted. We find that women do significantly better when placed in
companies with more women peers. The addition of one woman peer reduces
the gender progression gap by half.
Goldhaber, Dan, Cyrus Grout, and Nick
Huntington-Klein. 2017. “Screen Twice, Cut Once: Assessing the
Predictive Validity of Applicant Selection Tools.” Education Finance
and Policy 12 (2): 197-223. Link.
Despite their widespread use, there is
little academic evidence on whether applicant selection tools can
improve teacher-hiring processes. We examine two screening instruments
used to select classroom teachers. The screening instruments strongly
predict teacher value-added in math and teacher attrition and weakly
predict value-added in reading, but do not predict teacher absences. An
increase of one standard deviation in screening scores is associated
with an increase of about 0.06 standard deviations of student math
achievement and a decrease in teacher attrition of three percentage
points. These results are robust to corrections for sample
selection.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. 2017. “A Method for
Estimating Local Average Treatment Effects in Aggregate Data with
Imperfect Assignment.” Applied Economics Letters 24 (11):
762-65. Link.
In some contexts, the effect of a treatment
can be estimated with easily-accessible aggregate rather than individual
data, using difference-in-difference estimation. However, under
imperfect assignment this produces intent-to-treat estimates, which may
not be the treatment effect of interest. This paper provides a method
for estimating local average treatment effects using aggregate data. I
also suggest a data source that allows the method to be applied when
treatment rates are not recorded.
Huntington-Klein, Nick, James Cowan, and Dan
Goldhaber. 2017. “Selection into Online Community College Courses and
Their Effects on Persistence.” Research in Higher Education 58
(3): 244-69. Link.
Online courses at the college level are
growing in popularity, and nearly all community colleges offer online
courses (Allen & Seaman, 2015). What is the effect of the expanded
availability of online curricula on persistence in the field and towards
a degree? We use a model of self-selection to estimate the effect of
taking an online course, using region and time variation in internet
service as a source of identifying variation. Our method, as opposed to
standard experimental methods, allows us to consider the effect among
students who actually choose to take such courses. For the average
person, taking an online course has a negative effect on the probability
of taking another course in the same field and on the probability of
earning a degree. The negative effect on graduation for for students who
choose to take an online course is stronger than the negative effect for
the average student. Community colleges must balance these results
against the attractive features of online courses, and may want to
consider actively targeting online courses towards those most likely to
do well in them.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. 2016. ““(Un)informed
College and Major Choice”: Verification in an Alternate Setting.”
Economics of Education Review 53: 159-63. Link.
Replication
materials
In their recent paper “(Un)informed College
and Major Choice: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data,”
Hastings, Neilson, Ramirez, & Zimmerman (2016) provide an informal
costly-information model, linking family background to students’ beliefs
about educational costs and benefits. They verify predictions of their
model using a data set of beliefs about college institutions and majors
among Chilean college applicants and students. I test some of those same
predictions using a data set of beliefs about college institutions and
different levels of college education among high school students in the
United States. I verify their predictions, with some exceptions,
supporting the use of their costly-search model.
Long, Mark C., Dan Goldhaber, and Nick
Huntington-Klein. 2015. “Do Completed College Majors Respond to Changes
in Wages?” Economics of Education Review 49: 1-14. Link.
In an analysis connecting labor market
earnings to college major choices, we find statistically significant
relationships between changes in wages by occupation and subsequent
changes in college majors completed in related fields of college study
between 1982 and 2012. College majors (defined at a detailed level) are
most strongly related to wages observed three years earlier, when
students were college freshmen. The responses to wages vary depending on
the extent to which there is a strong mapping of majors into particular
occupations. We also find that women, blacks, Hispanics, and students
with low test scores are less likely to respond to wage changes. These
findings have implications for policy interventions designed to align
students’ major choices with labor market demand.
Huntington-Klein, Nick. 2015. “Subjective and
Projected Returns to Education.” Journal of Economic Behavior and
Organization 117: 10-25. Link.
Recipient of 2013 Storer Award for Labor
Economics.
There is significant heterogeneity over
high school students in the wage and employment rate returns to
education. I evaluate this heterogeneity using subjective returns
derived from a data set of high school juniors and seniors in Washington
State. Variation over observables in projected returns estimated using
observed data is uncorrelated with variation in subjective returns
elicited by directly asking students about their beliefs. These results
mean that returns estimated using observed data are likely a very weak
proxy for student beliefs.
“causaldata: A package with example data
sets from causal inference textbooks.” 2021. causaldata on GitHub.
causaldata
on CRAN. causaldata
in Stata. causaldata
on PyPI.
This package offers data sets for
running code examples from causal inference textbooks.
“did: A Stata package for running the
Callaway and Sant’Anna R package did.” 2021. did.
This package offers a Stata-syntax way
of using the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2020) estimator for estimating
difference-in-differences with staggered treatment timing. It calls the
R package did written by Callaway and Sant’Anna.
“SafeGraphR: A package for reading,
processing, and normalizing SafeGraph data.” 2020. SafeGraphR.
This package is for the purpose of
working with SafeGraph data. It provides
functions that make it easy to read in the data, process it, normalize
it, and present it.
“MagnifiedIV.” 2020. MagnifiedIV for R on
GitHub, MagnifiedIV
for Stata on GitHub.
These packages help to run the
super-local-average-treatment-effect identifying estimators described in
“Instruments with Heterogeneous Effects: Bias, Monotonicity, and
Localness.” (2019). CSUF
Department of Economics Working Paper 2019/006.
“MLRtime: A Stata package for running
Machine Learning commands in R.” 2020. MLRtime on
GitHub.
Stata does not have native methods for
most machine learning techniques. However, R has many. This package
offers a portal through which Stata users can run many common machine
learning commands in R, using mostly-Stata syntax, and returning results
to Stata where they can be further worked with in Stata.
“suncorr: A visualization tool to create
‘sun and moon’ visualizations of correlation matrices.” 2019. suncorr on
GitHub.
Sun and moon correlations offer a new
way to visualize correlation matrices, by positioning each variable
radially as a ‘sun’ in the solar system, surrounded by each of the other
variables in the same order, with correlation direction and size given
by color and moon size.
“pmdplyr: Panel Maneuvers in dplyr - An R
package for cleaning and manipulating panel and hierarchical data.”
2019. pmdplyr on
CRAN. pmdplyr
website.
pmdplyr is an R package for the purpose
of manipulating panel data. It introduces a flexible panel data object,
the pibble, and functions that respect the panel structure of the
pibble. All pmdplyr packages work with hierarchical data, or in other
contexts where there is more than one observation per individual/time
period.
“CVRoller: A Python program designed to
automatically generate and update CVs.” 2018. cvroller.com.
This is a general-purpose automatic
document generation language tuned specifically towards the generation
of academic CVs. Multiple different CV variants can be updated at once
from centrally updated CV data. CVRoller allows CV generation in HTML,
PDF, and Markdown formats, and was used to make the CV you are reading
right now.
“vtable: A quick and easy variable
browser for R.” 2018. vtable on CRAN. vtable
website.
This is an R package for the purpose of
viewing information about data while working on it. vtable()
automatically generates and displays a table of information about the
variables in a data set, including name, class, range, labels, and
summary statistics.
Please email me at nhuntington-klein@seattleu.edu if you cannot access these papers.
“State ‘Free College’ Programs” with William
Zumeta. 2020. Council of Independent Colleges. Link
This analytical report responds to the
current policy interest in some states in offering “tuition-free
college” to income-eligible students attending certain public colleges
and universities. In most cases only public two-year colleges are
covered, although New York State’s Excelsior Scholarship program also
covers public four-year colleges and universities. In Section One, we
use the latest available empirical data to assess the early effects of
the Excelsior program and the two longest-standing state “free community
college” programs, Tennessee Promise and Oregon Promise, each of which
is only a few years old. We also contrast these largely single-sector
“free college” approaches to college affordability policy with the
approach of another state, Washington. This state also makes a
commitment to cover college costs for low-income students, as well as to
give generous help to more moderate-income students, but without
distorting aided students’ choices among higher education sectors
(two-year vs. four-year or public vs. private). Sections Two and Three
of the report analyze alternative approaches for states to create
cost-effective incentives for increases in college enrollment and degree
production.
“A Study of West Point Shows How Women Help
Each Other Advance” with Elaina Rose. 2018. Harvard Business
Review. Link
This Harvard Business Review article
summarizes work by myself and Elaina Rose on the performance of women at
the West Point military academy in the early 1980s. We look at the
progression gap between men and women, and whether women tended to do
better when randomly placed in companies that have a heavier
concentration of women.
“Student Courseload at CSU Fullerton” with
Andrew Gill. 2018. Report for CSU Fullerton.
This report details a pair of studies
performed at CSU Fullerton. The first uses administrative data to
examine the effect of an increased student courseload on student
performance. The second examines an experiment performed with the goal
of increasing student courseload.
“Assessing the Effects of Tuition-Free
Community College in Maryland” with William Zumeta. 2017. Maryland
Independent Colleges and Universities Association.
This report examines the likely financial
impact on students and the state of a potential plan for Maryland to
implement tuition-free community college.
“Utilizing Independent Colleges and
Universities to Fulfill States’ College Degree Attainment Goals” with
William Zumeta. 2017. The Council of Independent Colleges. Link
America’s diverse higher education
landscape includes more than 700 four-year nonprofit colleges and
universities that focus on baccalaureate education. These private
nondoctoral (PND) institutions are located in almost every state and
collectively enroll about 1.6 million students and award nearly 150,000
degrees annually, with the majority of these being bachelor’s degrees.
As this report will show, these independent colleges and universities
are effective and efficient academic enterprises and, as such, are a
valuable resource to the states in which they are located, as well as to
the nation.
“The Cost-Effectiveness of Undergraduate
Education at Private Nondoctoral Colleges and Universities” with William
Zumeta. 2015. The Council of Independent Colleges. Link
This study examines key aspects of the
cost-effectiveness of PND colleges as providers of baccalaureate degrees
and explores how states might feasibly make better use of these colleges
to produce more degrees efficiently. The study looks at degree
production and cost in the PND sector relative to other higher education
sectors, focusing on the most comparable public institutions. PND
colleges and universities have a 22 percentage point edge over
comparable public institutions in four-year graduation rates and a
nearly 12 point advantage in six-year graduation rates, and they hold a
significant advantage for all subgroups. Moreover, PND colleges retain
students initially interested in STEM and health to degrees in those
majors at rates (41 percent) approaching twice the rates of public
doctoral and nondoctoral institutions (24 and 23 percent,
respectively).
“Understanding Sub-baccalaureate Certificate
Production and Incidence in Washington’s Labor Force Through 2023” with
William Zumeta. 2015. Washington Student Achievement Council.
This report describes the production of
sub-baccalaureate certificates in Washington State, and projects the
growth of certificate production through 2023.
“It’s Selective, But Is It Effective?
Exploring the Predictive Validity of Teacher Selection Tools” with Dan
Goldhaber and Cyrus Grout. 2014. CEDR Policy Brief 2014-9.
Evidence suggests teacher hiring in public
schools is ad-hoc and often does not result in good selection amongst
applicants. Some districts use structured selection instruments in the
hiring process, but we know little about the efficacy of such tools. In
this paper we evaluate the ability of applicant selection tools used by
the Spokane Public Schools (SPS) to predict three outcomes: measures of
teachers’ value-added contributions to student learning, teacher absence
behavior, and attrition rates. We observe all applicants to the
district, both those who are and who are not hired. We find that the
screening instruments predict teacher value-added in student achievement
and teacher attrition, but not teacher absences.
Please email me at nhuntington-klein@seattleu.edu for working PDFs if not linked.
“mlrtime: A package for running machine
learning algorithms in R, using Stata”
mlrtime is a package that offers
Stata-syntax access to machine learning algorithms written in the R
language, using rcall (Haghish 2019). While there already exist Stata
packages or commands offering access to, or native-Stata implementations
of, some machine learning algorithms, machine learning software
development is often more active in other languages. mlrtime offers
access to three R packages: grf for a range of ``honest’’ causal and
predictive random forests (Tibshirani et al., 2021), gsynth for
generalized synthetic control and matrix completion (Xu, 2017), and
parsnip for multiple different estimation engines for a long list of
methods like support vector machines, regularized regression, neural
nets, and boosted trees (Kuhn and Vaughan 2021). In this article, I
introduce the mlrtime package, discuss some of the algorithms it allows
access to, and demonstrate a generalized process for writing R package
wrappers in Stata, which will also allow mlrtime to be easily expanded
in the future.
“The Changing Importance of Earnings in
College Major Choice” with Elizabeth Ackert. CSU Fullerton Department of
Economics Working Paper 2018/006. PDF
Prior studies find that undergraduate
major choices are responsive to earnings associated with those majors,
but weakly suggests that responsiveness has dropped over time. Using
data on college graduates from 1973 to 2013, we find that responsiveness
of major choice to labor market returns has weakened over time. The
weakening response is due to changes within demographic groups rather
than demographic changes in the college graduate population over time.
If the goal is to maintain or increase the alignment between college
major and labor market returns, incentivizing undergraduates to select
high-earning majors is necessary.
“Student Preference for Guidance and
Complexity in College Major Requirements” with Rachel Baker. CEPA
Working Paper 04/2018 and CSU Fullerton Department of Economics Working
Paper 2018/005. PDF
In order to graduate with a bachelor’s
degree, students must determine which classes they must take in order to
satisfy the requirements of their major. These requirements are often
complex and difficult to comprehend, leading to some policy
interventions that aim to reduce complexity by either increasing the
amount of student guidance in course choice or by reducing the amount of
complexity-increasing choice. We perform two student preference
experiments on students at two large four-year universities to determine
how students might respond to increasing guidance or reduced choice in
their course-taking options. We find that students do not respond
strongly to increases in guidance such as grouping courses into
meaningful categories or removing cross-cutting requirements, but
strongly reject a reduction in options, even when given a rationale for
the reduction. These results suggest that increased-guidance policies
have some avenues to operate in without student push-back, but that
strong reductions in choice are unlikely to be popular.
Can Heterogeneous-Treatment Estimators Uncover Structural Heterogeneity?
Student Ability Revelation, Race, and Instuctor Standards with Tyler Ransom
The Complexity of College Course Requirements with Rachel Baker
The Development of a Woman-Friendly Culture: Evidence from West Point with Elaina Rose
The Effect. New Books Network Podcast: Economics, Aug. 4, 2022.
Interview with Dr. Huntington-Klein. Scholarly Spark Podcast Episodes 8-14, Oct. 29, 2021.
What Happens When Researchers “Clean” Data?. Edward Hearn, BuiltIn, June 4, 2021.
This Century’s Roaring 20s Includes Changes for Retail and Restaurants. Robin Rothman. Colorado Real Estate Journal, May 2021.
One Study, Many Results Matt Clancy, New Things Under the Sun, May 4, 2021.
The Influence of Hidden Researcher Decisions in Applied Microeconomics Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution, March 29, 2021.
A Replication Crisis in the Making? Jorg Peters, Elephant in the Lab, March 22, 2021.
Current State of the Stimulus Package. Kali Herbst Minino, The Spectator, February 18, 2021.
We’ve been cooped up with our families for almost a year. This is the result.. Andrew Van Dam, Feb. 16, 2021, Washington Post.
eigenrobot vs. nickchk The Eigenfriends Podcast, Feb. 10, 2021.
Hudson Yards Is Open For Business - but Who’s Coming?. Michael Herzenberg, January 31, 2021. NY1.
Black Friday Foot Traffic in 2019 vs 2020. December 4, 2020. SafeGraph Blog.
Rural Americans Stopped Staying In. Then Covid-19 Hit. Andrea Fuller and Tawnell D. Hobbs. Nov. 24, 2020, Wall Street Journal.
Gambling, gardening, and keeping the lights on: cell phone data reveals where Mid-Southerners go. Jeni Diprizio. ABC Local 24. November 6, 2020.
Foot Traffic Still Down More than 90% in Seven NYC Zip Codes. New York Spectrum 1 News, September 25, 2020.
CIC Report Reviews States’ Tuition-Free College Programs. Inside Higher Ed, September 1, 2020.
Anything But Dismal: Online K-12 Education. Anything But Dismal, July 26, 2020.
My (usually uncredited) work with SafeGraph has appeared in a long list of media outlets. A subset includes multiple times on CNN and Fox News as well as in text outlets including Bloomberg, New York Times, and NPR.
As States Start to Reopen, Here’s Where People are Going. Bonnie Berkowitz and Kevin Schaul, Washington Post, May 29, 2020.
Job Market Slows As a New Decade Begins, According to Bureau of Labor Statistics Data. Daniel Coats, Mihaylo BizBlog, January 23, 2020.
IPA’s Weekly Links. Chris Blattman, October 26, 2019.
Congress must address gender gap in nominations to military service academies. The Hill, Liam Brennan, August 18, 2019.
New journal provides outlet for research not deemed sexy enough. Stuff, June 6, 2019.
New academic journal only publishes ‘unsurprising’ research rejected by others. CBC Radio, May 27, 2019.
The faiV: Week of May 17, 2019: The Causality Edition. Fai, May 17, 2019
This Economics Journal Only Publishes Results that are No Big Deal. Vox, May 17, 2019
Inflation Raised CSU Prices. The Daily Titan, May 10, 2019
These Open Resources Will Help You Master Statistics. Forbes, February 28, 2019
Study of West Point Cadets Shows How Women Help Each Other Advance. CSU Fullerton News Center, January 25, 2019
Chico’s, Unilever GSK, ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Sequel: Broadsheet November 29. Fortune Magazine, December 1, 2018
The faiV: Week of November 26, 2018: The Astounding Edition. fai, November 30, 2018
Do Women Actually Help Other Women Succeed? Ask the Army. Fortune, Claire Zillman, November 29, 2018.
High-Five Your Work Wife: New Study Shows How Women Help Each Other Advance. PureWow, Sarah Stiefvater, November 29, 2018
On Caplan Educational Signaling (#6). Tuesday Assorted Links, Marginal Revolution, November 27, 2018
Killing Colleges in Massachusetts. Inside Higher Ed, August 29, 2018
Cal State Fullerton professor wonders whether major course requirements could be made simpler. The Daily Titan, February 26, 2018
Private colleges can partner to solve issues. The Edwardsville Intelligencer, May 8, 2017
Findings on Education Finance and Policy Discussed by Investigators at University of Washington. Education Letter, May 3 2017
The Value of a College Degree. The Inter-Mountain, April 27, 2017
Incentives to Attend Private Colleges Could Save States Money and Raise Graduation Rates. The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 14, 2017
Hiring Successful Teachers - Two New Studies Point to What Works and What Doesn’t. EdSurge, October 3, 2016
CSUF researcher studies how stereotypes affect higher education decisions. OC Register, May 12, 2016
How Will Your College Degree Pay Off? Mihaylo College Bizblog, January 4, 2016
Facing growing scrutiny, colleges set out to prove their value. The Hechinger Report, January 22, 2016.
Is Robert anti-teacher? The Education Gadfly, November 5, 2014
Study: Teacher hiring should be more scientific. Associated Press, October 29, 2014
A Smarter Way to Use the Strengths of your Instrumental Variables. Nick Huntington-Klein, Causal Science, April 27, 2021.
47 Million Americans Expect to Miss a Credit Card Due Date in 2021. John S. Kiernan, Feb. 16, 2021, WalletHub.
Ask the Experts: Cheap Car Insurance. Jan. 25, 2021, WalletHub.
I am responsible for a number of entries in the SafeGraph Blog.
I am the founder of the Library of Statistical Techniques and am responsible for many of its entries.
Last updated: September 12, 2022