Each summer, Joel Waldfogel and I organize a seminar series featuring research in applied economics (broadly defined) being pursued by Carlson School faculty and doctoral students entering their job market year. We organize through the e-mail list csomsummerecon@umn.edu and our Google calendar. E-mail me if you would like to be added to our e-mail list.
Lists. If you or someone you know would be interested in joining the list, (e.g. new faculty/ PhD students), e-mail me at bensona@umn.edu.
Time/place. We're meeting Monday, July 13, 2026, from 10:00 am to 3:45 pm. We'll have a lunch break and short afternoon break.
Format. Due to construction, we're compressing the seminar into a single in-person day. Guests can request Zoom.
Scheduling. Priority will be given to CSOM junior faculty, job market candidates, and last year's waitlistees doing work in applied economics (very broadly defined).
Attendance. We are open to all faculty, PhD students, researchers, and their guests at UMN and otherwise.
Date: Monday, July 13, 2026 | Location: Hanson Hall 1-102
10:00 AM – Dayton Steele (SCO Faculty)
AI as a Second Service Channel: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
10:30 AM – Weize Yin (Marketing PhD JMC)
Strategic Design of Shopping LLMs Under Prompt-Induced Evaluation Gap
11:00 AM – Vikki Yuan (SME PhD JMC)
Signal Pollution in Nascent Technology Markets - Evidence from Blockchain Fintech
11:30 AM – Short Presentations
Casey McNichols (APEC PhD) – Effects of DHS Activity on Current Population Survey Response Rates
Ethan Ellis (Humphrey PhD) – Effects of Incarceration on Employment and Earnings: The Mediating Role of Education
Carmen Armas Montalvo (APEC PhD) – The Effect of Mobile Phones on Working Conditions in the Peruvian Labor Market
11:45 AM – Lunch Break (Holy Land)
12:30 PM – Thomas Helgerman (WORG Faculty)
The Long Run Impact of Medical School Construction on the Geographic Distribution of Physicians and Health Outcomes
1:00 PM – Hyeongseo Park (IDSC PhD JMC)
The Impact of Prior Authorization Algorithms on Public Healthcare Delivery
1:30 PM – Bill Laramy (SME PhD JMC)
How Political Context Shapes Firm Responses to Antitrust Enforcement
2:00 PM – Break
2:15 PM – Joel Waldfogel (SME Faculty)
The Welfare Benefit of the Female Influx into Innovation
2:45 PM – Ryan McWay (APEC PhD JMC)
Regenerative Agriculture and Farmer Profitability: Modeling Adoption for Scalable Climate Mitigation
3:15 PM – Katherine Lim (USDA Economic Research Service)
Local Labor Market Tightness and Job Quality: Evidence from Job Changers
3:45 PM – Adjourn
May 29
Dayton Steele, Assistant Professor in SCO, presents "Consumers’ Role in Circularity Execution: Evidence from Field & Lab Experiments," joint with Atalay Atasu (INSEAD), Saravanan Kesavan (BITSoM).
June 5
Erik Loualiche, Assistant Professor, Finance, presents "Causal inference for asset pricing."
June 12
Moshe Barach, Assistant Professor, SME, presents "The Invisible Hand of AI: Coordinating Cognition in Decision-Making Process," joint with Linhui Wu, Shaker Zahra, Niron Hashai (Reichman University), and Yining Luo (Zhejiang).
June 18 (Wednesday at noon in honor of Juneteenth)
Thomas Helgerman, Assistant Professor, WORG, presents "Women in Law and the Draft," joint with Benjamin Pyle (BU).
June 26
Jacelly Cespedes, Assistant Professor, Finance, presents "Financial Technologies, Labor Markets, and Wage Inequality: Evidence from Instant Payment Systems," joint with Carlos Parra (Pontificia), Carlos Burga (Pontificia), and Bernardo Ricca (Insper).
July 10
Jianxuan Lei, PhD Candidate, WORG, presents his job market paper, "Normalizing opposition to labor unions: The impact of the 1981 PATCO strike on union organizing."
July 17
Marco Jang, PhD Candidate, WORG, presents his job market paper, "The Cost of Specialist Signaling: Visibility and Opportunity of Online Professional Profiles," joint with Alan Benson, Ming Leung (UC Irvine).
July 24
Nan Li, Assistant Professor, Accounting, presents "Accounting Entropy: Measuring Information of Accounting Classification," joint with Pierre Jinghong Liang, Jane Jae Yeon Pyo, Gaoqing Zhang (all CMU).
July 31
Mochen Yang, Associate Professor, IDSC, presents "LLM for data fitting," joint with Hejia Liu, Gedas Adomavicius.
August 7
Yasaman Asayesh, PhD Candidate, SCO, presents her job market paper "From Factories to Streets? The Impact of Ridesharing Services on Labor Turnover in US Manufacturing," joint with Anant Mishra.
August 14
Chaofan Zhai, PhD candidate, IDSC, presents his job market paper, "A Customer-Aware Recommendation Framework for the Influencer Economy with Field Experiment Validation." Joint with Xuan Bi, Angela Choi, and Yi-Chun Ho.
August 21
Jing Gao, PhD Candidate, Finance, presents her job market paper "Unseen Financing Nexus: The Role of Institutional Equity Investors in Corporate Debt Financing"
August 28
Sunasir Dutta, Assistant Professor, SME, presents "The WWI shock to industrial entrepreneurship in China, and its social consequences," joint with Caiwei Zhang.
Time: Thursdays, 12-1pm | Location: CSOM 2-207 unless noted.
5/16 – Dayton Steele (SCO)
Profit Implications of Judgmental Adjustments to Forecast Inputs: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment, joint with Saravanan Kesavan, BITSOM; Tarun Kushwaha, UW-Madison
PDF
5/23 – Isabel Pastoor (APEC PhD)
Beyond Double Trouble: Twins, Maternal Labor Supply, Family Formation, and Fertility.
PDF
5/30 – No talk – Andy Van de Ven Engaged Scholarship Conference
6/6 – Thomas Helgerman (WORG)
Continuous Treatment Difference-in-Differences with Unknown Controls: A Data-Driven Approach, joint with Elird Haxhiu
6/13 – Anant Mishra (SCO)
Health Insurance and Labor Productivity in US Manufacturing: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Medicaid Expansion, joint with Yasaman Asayesh
6/20 – Paul Vaaler (SME)
Limiting Democracy's Spread: Elections, Electorate Size, Budget Balances, and Sovereign Bond Returns, 1880-1913, joint with Rok Spruk
6/27 – Colleen Flaherty Manchester (WORG)
Exclusion of women from economics research: trends, determinants and implications, joint with Melanie Wasserman
7/11 – Weize Yin (Marketing PhD)
Optimal News Search and Reporting, joint with Yi Zhu
7/18 – Caitlin Carroll (Public Health)
Public Investment and Health Care Quality: Evidence from Rural Hospital Subsidies
7/25 – Helen Zhang (Accounting)
Social Movement and Racial Discrimination in Mortgage Lending, joint with Scott Liao, Tracy Wang, Ethan Yao
8/1 – Farzam Boroomand (SME PhD, JMP)
Children Left Behind: Charter Schools and the Privatization of Public Education in the US
8/8 – Jeremy Watson (SME)
Remote Work and Mobility Across Law Firms, joint with Moshe Barach, Paul Vaaler, Brad Greenwood
8/15 – Hailong Cui (SCO)
Title TBA.
8/22 – Erik Loualiche (FIN) – Room 1-114
Paper on demand elasticities of stocks.
CSOM SumEc Seminar Schedule
Time: Mondays, 12–1 PM | Location: CSOM 2-207 unless noted
5/18 – Murry Frank
5/25 – Yuanchen Su
6/1 – Cathy Lu
6/8 – Joel Waldfogel
6/15 – Jason Chan
6/22 – Aseem Kaul
7/13 – Thomas Helgerman
7/20 – Alan Benson
8/3 – TBA
8/10 – Avner Ben-Ner
8/17 – Mochen Yang
8/24 – Yuanyuan Ding
2022 CSOM Applied Economics Summer Seminar
Time: Thursdays, 12–1 PM | Location: CSOM 2-224
6/2 – Joel Waldfogel The Welfare Effect of Gender-Inclusive Intellectual Property Creation: Evidence from Books
6/9 – Gautam Ray Evening the Odds in a Gendered Workplace - The Empowering Role of Knowledge Repositories
6/16 – Jason Chan Room 1-132 Shedding Light on the Dark: The Impact of Legal Enforcement on Darknet Transactions
6/23 – Yi Zhu Search Prominence in a Distribution Channel
6/30 – Claire Hill Room 1-132 Employees Expenses and Externalities
7/7 – Alan Benson Learning to discriminate on the job
7/14 – Rachna Shah Product Recalls and Insider Trading
7/21 – Tracy Wang Corporate Diversity Culture Spillover
7/28 – Dayton Steele Local Fulfillment in E-Commerce: Structural Estimation of Fulfilling Demand Sensitive to Delivery Speed
8/4 – Salman Arif TBA (human capital-related paper)
8/11 – Jeremy Watson Copyright Infringement and Licensing
8/18 – Colin Ward Appropriated Growth
8/25 – Avner Ben-Ner Division of Labor and Specialization Under Different Technologies
Carlson Summer Applied Econ Seminar, 2021
Time: Thursdays, 12–1 PM | Location: CSOM 260Z & Zoom
Contact Joel Waldfogel (jwaldfog@umn.edu) to make changes, for example to update your talk title.
6/3 – Joel Waldfogel (SME) Platform Rankings and the Welfare of Buyers and Sellers
6/10 – Gord Burtch (IDSc) Managing Congestion in an Online Dating Market
6/17 – Helen Zhang (Acct) Loan level disclosure and convenience yield of ABS
6/24 – Josh Madsen (Acct) Inconsistent Disclosures
7/1 – Necati Ertekin (SCO) Strategic Visual Merchandising of New and Open-box Products: Evidence from Experiment and Retail Data
7/8 – Gurneeta Vasudeva Singh (SME) Profiting from Attention to Data Privacy? Evidence from U.S.-listed Firms under the GDPR.
7/15 – Erik Loualiche (FIN) TBD
7/22 – Alan Benson (WORG) Potential and the Promotion Gap
7/29 – Anant Mishra (SCO) Never Too Late? The Role of Visiting Delay in Crowdsourcing Contests
8/5 – Alok Gupta (IDS) On Human AI Collaboration
8/12 – Colin Ward (FIN) TBD
8/19 – Paul M. Vaaler (SME) The Price of Empire: Political Unrest, Distance, and Sovereign Creditworthiness in Tsarist Russia
8/26 – Mochen Yang (IDSc) Towards understanding federated learning in healthcare via iterative prisoner's dilemma
9/2 – Jacelly Cespedes (FIN) Title TBA
CSOM Summer Applied Econ Seminar
Time: Tuesdays, 12–1 PM | Location: CSOM L-122
Note the room and the new day.
6/11 – Joel Waldfogel (SME) Wisdom or the Crowd: Digitization and the Impacts of Elite and Crowd Reviews on Product Sales
6/18 – Vivian Fang (Accounting) Negative Peer Disclosure
6/25 – Anant Mishra (SCO) Set Asides for Small Businesses in Public Sector Procurement: Evidence from U.S. Federal Government R&D Contracts
7/2 – Gord Burtch (IDSc) Peer Symbolic Awards Increase User Content Generation but Reduce Content Novelty
7/9 – Edward McFowland (IDSC) TBD
7/16 – Brad Greenwood (IDS) The Doctor Will See You Elsewhere: Enterprise Information Systems and the Changing Permeability of Firm Boundaries
7/23 – Aseem Kaul (SME) Where there’s smoke: Global sourcing and the pollution haven hypothesis
7/30 – Mike Iselin (Accounting) Protecting Wall Street or Main Street: the effect of ownership characteristics on SEC oversight and enforcement
8/6 – Myles Shaver (SME) Dual careers and employee mobility to start-up firms, joint with Colleen Manchester and Alan Benson
8/13 – Richard Thakor (Finance) TBD * 1:00 PM – 1:15 PM: Pinar Karaca Mandic (MILI) will describe the MarketScan database
8/20 – Moshe Barach (SME) TBD
Time: Wednesdays, 12–1 PM | Location: CSOM 1-142
5/23 – Joel Waldfogel (SME) Price Discrimination with a Dash of Machine Learning
5/30 – Murray Frank (Finance) Does Finance Flow to High Productivity Firms?
6/6 – Song Yao (Marketing)
6/13 – Paola Mallucci (Marketing) Impact of Social Motives on Bilateral Negotiations: How Power Changes Perceptions of Fairness.
6/20 – Joshua Madsen (Acct)
6/27 – Richard Thakor (Finance)
7/11 – Aaron Sojourner (WOrg)
7/18 – Edward McFowland III (IDSC) Efficient Discovery of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments via Anomalous Pattern Detection
7/25 – Michael Iselin (Acct) Directionally Inconsistent Analyst Revisions
8/1 – Alan Benson (WORG)
8/8 – Brad Greenwood (IDSc) Should We Play a Game? An Empirical Investigation of Location-Based Mobile Gaming and Mental Health
8/15 – Gord Burtch (IDSc) Inferring Facts from Fiction: Accounting for Prediction Errors in Data-Mined Variables
8/22 – Ravi Bapna (IDSc)