This “campfire chat” (rather than a “fireside chat”) is a series of informal conversations between young aspiring economists (initially, as part of various LDI-related internships in economics and computer science) and economists who are starting, or are well under way, in a career as … economists? Participants include graduate students, data scientists (who started as economists), economists working for the private sector as well as those working for, or even leading, major statistical agencies.
Participation is by invitation only, but please do reach out if you think you would like to be invited to this or similar events.
| Week | Date | Time | Presenter | Brief vitae |
| 2 | June 4 | 4:00 PM | Meredith Welch (Cornell University) | Meredith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Brooks Policy School at Cornell University. Her research focuses on topics in labor economics, the economics of education, and consumer finance. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in economics and Spanish. She previously worked for the College Board and the Education Trust.
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
| 3 | June 11 | 4:00 PM | Hautahi Kingi (Google) | Hautahi is a Senior Data Scientist at Google. He works on YouTube's recommender systems with a focus on ML Fairness and misinformation. He completed his PhD in economics from Cornell in 2016, and has since worked as a policy research economist for IMPAQ International and as a research scientist for Meta, before joining Google in 2022.
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
| 4 | June 18 | 4:00 PM | Ian Schmutte (UGA) | Ian Schmutte is a Professor in the John Munro Godfrey, Sr. Department of Economics at the University of Georgia
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
| 5 | June 25 | 4:00 PM | Lars Vilhuber (Cornell University) | Lars is an economist at Cornell University, and has worked with and for various statistical agencies. He is also the Data Editor for the journals of the American Economic Association. This chat will be somewhat different from the others: Lars will provide an overview of the US federal statistical system, where data comes from and how it can be used for research.
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
| 6 | July 2 | 11:00 AM | Sari Kerr (Wellesley College) | Sari Kerr is a senior research scientist and program director at Wellesley Centers for Women and a lecturer at the economics department at Wellesley College. Her current research interests are in the area of entrepreneurship, immigration, and the intersection of family and the labor market. Sari is primarily interested in how labor markets along with policy and industrial conditions shape the behavior of firms and the career trajectories of their employees. She is frequently consulted by governments regarding high-skilled immigration and she testified in the United States congress on the impact of immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S. economy. Her work is also regularly covered in popular media outlets. Sari received her PhD from the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) in 2000. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the economics department of MIT, Sari spent several years as an economic consultant at Charles River Associates in Toronto and Boston. Sari has also taught economics courses at Boston University, MIT, University of Helsinki, and Wellesley College.
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
| 7 | July 9 | 2:00 PM | Michael Strain (AEI) | MICHAEL R. STRAIN is Director of Economic Policy Studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, Professor of Practice in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and a columnist for Project Syndicate. Dr. Strain is a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor
(IZA) in Bonn, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on
Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. His most recent book is "The American Dream Is Not Dead." His essays and op-eds have been published by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and National Review, among others. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell.
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
| 8 | July 16 | 11:00 AM | John Abowd (retired) | John M. Abowd is the Edmund Ezra Day Professor Emeritus of Economics,
Statistics and Data Science at Cornell University. From October 2022
until July 1, 2023, he served as Executive Senior Advisor for Research
and Methodology at the United States Census Bureau, a member of the
federal career senior executive service. From June 2016 until October
2022, he served as Chief Scientist and Associate Director for Research
and Methodology, where he led a directorate of five research centers
each devoted to domains of investigation important to the future of
social and economic statistics. At Cornell, his primary appointment was
in the Department of Economics in the ILR School.
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
| 9 | July 23 | -- | TBA | |
| 10 | July 30 | 3:00 PM | Erika McEntarfer (Bureau of Labor Statistics) | Erika McEntarfer is the newly confirmed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She is a labor economist who has served over 20 years in federal government.
Her research has focused on the consequences of job loss, wage rigidity, and the interactions between firms and workers in the economy. Her work has been published in the Journal of Labor Economics, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. She has a bachelor’s degree in social science from Bard College and a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech.
For more information, see the personal webpage. |
