Past Events

  • 2024 Feb 06

    Brian Highsmith (APRW)

    12:00pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    CGIS Knafel, room K354 or Online via Zoom

    Speaker

    Brian Highsmith, "Regulating Location Incentives"

    Abstract

    In recent years, a growing share of state and local budgetary resources has been diverted to a small number of firms through multi-billion-dollar location incentive megadeals, as represented by Amazon’s HQ2 search and Wisconsin’s Foxconn boondoggle. Structurally powerful companies have become adept at devising new mechanisms for extracting the public resources of local communities to secure a competition advantage over market rivals. But legal scholarship has not considered the...

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  • 2024 Feb 01

    Max Miller (Alesina Seminar)

    4:30pm to 5:45pm

    Location: 

    CGIS Knafel, room K354

    Today's Speaker

    Max Miller (HBS), "Who Values Democracy?"

    Abstract

    This paper tests redistribution-based theories of democratization using data from stock markets. Consistent with these models, I show democratizations have a large, negative impact on asset valuations driven by a rise in redistribution risk. Across 90 countries over 200 years, risk premia are substantially elevated in democratizations, similar in magnitude to financial crises. Using a shift in Catholic church doctrine in support of democracy, I provide causal evidence that democratizations increase risk premia. Successful democratizations lead to substantial redistribution: the size of the public sector grows, income inequality falls, and the labor share of income rises. A model of asset prices and political regimes in which wealthy asset market participants face redistribution risk in democratizations can quantitatively explain these effects. The model also explains the negligible asset pricing response to autocratizations. Neither an increase in macroeconomic risk nor generic political risk can explain the results.... Read more about Max Miller (Alesina Seminar)

  • 2024 Jan 31

    Introduction to Dataverse APIs

    1:00pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Online via Zoom

    Registration required. Link: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7v5uO2EMSmG7tQH-4zriRw

    While Dataverse supports file uploads through its standard web interface, there are a variety of big data use cases where the Dataverse API and tools that use it can simplify the upload process. DVUploader, a Java command-line tool, and DVWebloader, a plug-in for Dataverse, are two tools that can handle larger files and larger numbers of files, upload files from a whole folder tree (retaining the folder paths in Dataverse), and/or only upload new files. In this...

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  • 2024 Jan 31

    Sooahn Shin (Workshop in Applied Statistics)

    12:00pm to 1:30pm

    Location: 

    CGIS Knafel, room K354 or Online via Zoom

    Speaker

    Sooahn Shin, "Measuring Issue Specific Ideal Points from Roll Call Votes"

    Abstract

    Ideal points are widely used to measure the ideology and policy preferences of political actors, from voters and politicians to sovereign states. Yet, the lingering challenge is to measure ideal points specific to a single issue area. Scholars who wish to measure preferences in a specific area of interest often resort to subsetting the voting data, resulting in the loss of valuable information and rendering ambiguous comparisons across different issue areas. To...

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  • 2024 Jan 31

    Dataverse Open Office Hours

    Repeats every week every Wednesday until Wed Aug 28 2024 except Wed Dec 27 2023, Wed Mar 13 2024, Wed Jun 19 2024.
    11:00am to 1:00pm

    Location: 

    Virtual via Zoom

    Weekly office hours are open to Harvard researchers and staff to provide support for Dataverse 6.0. Demo of 6.0 will begin promptly at 11am.

    Open Hours: Wednesdays, 11AM - 1PM

    RSVP required to: support@dataverse.org

    For any questions on how to share your data with Dataverse, contact: support@dataverse.org

     

  • 2024 Jan 30

    IQSS Service Awards

    2:00pm to 3:00pm

    Location: 

    K262 (2nd floor, Bowie-Vernon room)

    At IQSS, we value our community, and our dedicated staff is at the heart of our community.

    To recognize and celebrate employees, IQSS will hold our annual celebration of long-service employees. Staff who have reached a milestone of 10 years during the previous calendar year and incremental years of 5 thereafter will be honored. Therefore, to be eligible for a service award this year, employees would have reached their milestone anniversary of continuous service with IQSS (not Harvard) sometime in 2023.

    Please join us for coffee and dessert to celebrate the following...

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  • 2024 Jan 30

    David Sutton (APRW)

    12:00pm to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    CGIS Knafel, room K354

    Speaker

    David Sutton, "Neighborhoods as Communities of Interest"

    Abstract

    Neighborhoods are the basic analytical level for many areas of social science. In particular, they serve as one form of communities of interest, a traditional redistricting criterion that lacks a formal definition. Recent research has attempted to define neighborhoods using the subjective definitions that people provide when asked to draw, define, or otherwise describe their neighborhoods. This research is highly informative about the connectedness of local areas but it is...

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  • 2024 Jan 30

    IQSS Late Risers' Breakfast

    10:30am to 11:30am

    Catch up with fellow members of the IQSS community over coffee, pastries, fruit, and more! All IQSS affiliates are welcome.

  • 2024 Jan 26

    Basic Intro to GIS

    1:30pm to 3:30pm

    Location: 

    CGIS South, room S020 (Belfer Case Study Room) or Online via Zoom

    Lead Instructor: Jeff Blossom

    Download workshop materials here.

    This workshop is offered every semester as a basic introduction to GIS. The topics covered are:

    1. What is GIS, mapping, and spatial data.
    2. GIS data types  and file formats.
    3. GIS analysis, problem solving, and case studies... Read more about Basic Intro to GIS

  • 2024 Jan 24

    Hans Gaebler (Workshop in Applied Statistics)

    12:00pm to 1:30pm

    Location: 

    CGIS Knafel, room K354 or Online via Zoom

    This Week's Speaker

    Hans Demetrio Gaebler (Dept of Statistics), "Overcoming Statistical Challenges in Detecting Discrimination"

    Abstract

    Outcome tests are a long-standing and widely used approach to detecting discrimination in lending, hiring, policing, and beyond. For example, if White loan recipients are found to default more often than racial minority recipients, the outcome test would suggest that lenders impose a double standard, preferentially lending to riskier White loan applicants. Despite its popularity, outcome tests have long been known to...

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