PLEASE NOTE: Registration for Fall RA Positions is now CLOSED.
Research Opportunities Fall 2020
The following faculty members and PhD students are looking for research assistants this semester. All of these positions are for credit. Students registered for GU4996 will receive either 1 or 2 college credits and be charged for 1 – 2 credits (relevant only to students who pay by the credit). To participate in a faculty research project at no cost, GS students have the option of registering for GU4995 for 1 credit for which they will not be billed. In both cases, students will receive a letter grade on their transcript indicating that they worked as an RA. However, in the case of GU 4995, the 1 credit may not be used to fulfill the minimum credit limit of a Columbia degree. Research positions typically entail 5-7 hours of work per week. Research credit may not be used as a substitute for elective or seminar requirements in the major.
If interested in a position, please contact the researcher directly at the email address provided. If you are selected as the RA then contact me at se5@columbia.edu. Be sure to cc the person you will be working with on your email to me.
When contacting the researcher regarding a position, you should include a copy of your Columbia transcript (unofficial is ok) and a CV/resume. Additional opportunities will be posted as they arise. Check the wiki page regularly for the latest ads.
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The following positions have been filled and are now CLOSED. Please do NOT contact the researchers about these positions.
Ye Zhang (PhD Student) – POSITION CLOSED
Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship
This project studies the startup investing strategies in the U.S. venture capital industry and how the entrepreneurial finance process works as a two-sided matching process. We collaborate with incubators and startups, and hope to apply these research methods to the real business world.
Skills required: good English writing skills Skills as a plus：1. any programming languages like HTML, Javascript, R, STATA, Python, etc. 2. experience related to startups and VC industry 3. basic understanding of machine learning
Seyhan Erden (Professor) – POSITION CLOSED
Econometrics
RA will go over problem set solutions using Stata and will review literature in certain econometrics topics.
RA must know Stata well. R knowledge is also preferred.
Kyle Coombs (PhD Student)– POSITION CLOSED
Responses to expected discrimination behavior
Several experimental and quasiexperimental studies have documented hiring and wage discrimination along a variety of classes. This project aims to ask how employers and workers respond if they expect other employers to discriminate. I am developing the experimental design right now, but it will likely involve either a two-way audit study or an incentivized resume review.
- Read, write, and adapt Python and Stata code
- Develop survey tools with qualtrics or other survey design software for use with Amazon MTurk or other setup
- Build resume templates for use in experiments
- Synthesize experimental journal articles
- Review IRB submissions
Suresh Naidu (Professor) – POSITION CLOSED
Right-To-Work and Teacher’s Unions
We are looking at the effect of teacher collective bargaining provisions on NEA membership, and, in anticipation of teacher’s strikes as a result of back-to-school orders, we hope to see whether places with collective bargaining agreements that allow organizing result in increased NEA membership after Janus was decided.
We are looking for an undergrad RA to collect collective bargaining agreements for teacher’s unions from California, Arizona, and maybe other states. This would involve looking up each school district and downloading the pdfs of the contracts where they are online, and calling the school district and asking for a copy if not online.
Dian Jiao (PhD Student) – POSITION CLOSED
Product Quality and Price-Plant Size Relationship
This project will estimate slopes of quality Engel curves as a new proxy for the scope for quality differentiation. It will analyze the price-plant size elasticities using Indian manufacturing data and China Industry Survey.
- Familiar with STATA, especially regression and panel data analysis.
- Comfortable with data cleaning, merging/reshaping.
- Chinese language speakers preferred.
Dario Romero Fonseca (PhD Candidate) – POSITION CLOSED
The Perks of Losing your Colonies: The Effects of Spanish–American War on Industry Innovation
Spanish textile industry was highly dependent on the monopoly imposed to their colonies at the end of XIXth century. Under this policy Cuba and Puerto Rico were forced to buying the expensive products produced in the metropolis. In this project I want to evaluated the effects of the suddenly lost of this market due to the Spanish-American war and how this shock affected the innovation patterns in Spain.
I am looking for an RA who help with the creation of datasets based on historical digitized archives. The work involves cleaning data, categorizing the cleaned data, and doing statistical analysis. The RA will process data from XIXth century on patents and industry location that is in Spanish, so the candidate should have some knowledge of the language and being able to read the documents. Some knowledge of econometrics and Stata, R or Python is preferred, but not required.
George B.Y. (PhD Student) – POSITION CLOSED
Till Microtargeting Do Us Part: The Effect of Political Facebook Ads on Misinformation and Voting
We are running an experiment on Facebook. In a nutshell, we recruit participants through Facebook ads and incentivize them to turn political ads on or off. A follow-up survey elicits their beliefs and knowledge related to the political sphere prior to the election to estimate the effect of microtargeted political ads on these outcomes. We also focus on real-life outcomes, such as voter turnout and donations.
- First and foremost, we need help running the Facebook ad campaign. We need a US citizen (a Facebook requirement) who would create ads on Facebook according to our instructions (nothing sophisticated, you just fill out the forms with what we give you). It will be a good opportunity for you to learn a valuable but not widely known method of recruitment.
- Later on we will need help cleaning and analyzing data, so knowledge of a programming language is required. Preference is given to R, but other languages can also work (particularly, Bash). There will be a lot of tasks in front of us and we will be able to find the ones that fit your skills the most.
David Weinstein (Professor) – POSITION CLOSED
Coal and Japanese Industrialization
We are building a dataset to understand factors that may help explain why Japan industrialized before other Asian countries. We would like an RA to help investigate (in English sources although ability to read Japanese would be a plus) the importance of coal mining for Japanese development. We have described specific questions we’d like the RA to investigate below.
The RA will do research on 1. How was coal transported within Japan? 2. How was coal sold for industrial use? Was the industry competitive? 3. What new technologies were introduced in coal mining? How was this done? 4. Is there any Japanese literature on coal’s impact on Japanese industrialization? 5. Do we have detailed output data by individual mines over time?
Daniel Deibler (PhD Student) – POSITION CLOSED
What’s in a Name? The Effect of Changing Definitions of “Employee” on Worker Outcomes
In this project we aim to see the effect of being declared an “employee” on workers. We use legal cases from State Supreme Courts and U.S. Circuit Courts where workers were determined to be employees or not. We then link these cases to worker outcomes to determine whether there is an effect on workers’ wages, unionization, and employment.
RAs will largely be responsible for reading and coding legal cases. Some tasks may include reading drafts and literature review.
Ken Teoh (PhD Student) – POSITION CLOSED
Measuring firm-level attention
This project uses tools from computational linguistics to measure firm-level attention to macro risk factors. The goal is to provide a set of empirical facts useful for evaluating models of attention choice.
The position is a great fit for anyone interested in learning about textual analysis. The RA will help with collecting and cleaning text data, hence familiarity with the Python programming language is preferred. Some experience with textual analysis is desired but not necessary. Different tasks available depending on the RA’s skill sets.
Bhargav Gopal (PhD Student) – POSITION CLOSED
The Effects of Non-Compete Agreements on Labor Market Outcomes
I’m a fourth year economics PhD student, and I’m looking to collaborate with a student looking to gain experience in building a project from the ground level. I’m currently working on a project investigating the effects of non-compete clauses on worker employment opportunities, productivity, and wages. It has been argued that Silicon Valley’s growth has partly been driven by California courts failing to enforce non-compete clauses, and I’d like to investigate if the data backs up this claim.
One of your responsibilities would be to assist in building a comprehensive database that tracks the enforcement of non-compete agreements in the US since 1990. In addition, you will be reading relevant published literature pertaining to labor economics topics, and summarizing the main results. Finally, we will also be collecting and analyzing wage data by state, so statistical programming skills (preferably in R) are very useful. If the project interests you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at b.gopal@columbia.edu!
Claire Palandri (Phd Student) – POSITION CLOSED
Health impacts of industrial animal farming
Confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) generate numerous pollutants, including airborne contaminants which can induce serious health problems to neighboring communities. This project aims to robustly estimate the causal effects of poultry CAFOs on health outcomes in neighboring communities. The methodology will combine Machine Learning with a Difference-in-Difference approach, to estimate causal effects for the entire USA.
The RA will work on preparing the explanatory variables data for analysis — and will later have the opportunity to work on the analysis if they so desire. There are multiple tasks, they will choose to work on the one they prefer: running the Machine Learning Algorithm, collecting state-level data on characteristics of poultry CAFOs, confronting datasets of poultry CAFOs. The RA needs to be familiar with the programming language R.
Tamrat Gashaw (Professor) – POSITION CLOSED
1) Capital Flight
This paper investigates the magnitude of capital flight and whether the burden and type of taxes in SSA countries can determine the observed capital flight from the region to another regions. Using data on SSA countries, from 1980 – 2020, and applying a panel data analysis technique, we will assess if a) the magnitude is significant; b) if tax is one of the main determinant factors affecting capital flight.
Data and literature collection as well as some estimation/editing work.
2) Does Religiosity affect productivity
This project examines the effect of religion on total factor productivity using some proxy measures/variables of religiosity. The project will be a cross-country study as long as data availability permits.
Data and literature gathering as well as some estimation/write-up.
3) Asymmetric Risk-taking Behavior of Foreign and Domestic Banks
This project aims at investigating how foreign owned banks behave compared to their counter parts in terms of risk taking, both pre and post-crisis periods.
Data collection, literature survey, and some editing.
Naman Garg (PhD Student – POSITION CLOSED
Residential Segregation
Study patterns of residential segregation in low-income countries and consequent long-term impact on economic outcomes
Main task will be basic data cleaning and analysis. Familiarity with either R or Stata is preferred, but not required.
Michael Best (Professor) – POSITION CLOSED
Fighting Corruption in Peru
The Contraloría General de la Republica (CGR), the Peruvian government’s auditing agency, is the main organism undertaking large-scale actions to combat corruption. The CGR has been undergoing a massive reform focusing on strengthening its presence outside major cities and incorporating modern technologies in its auditing processes. In this effort, the CGR partnered with Columbia University and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to undertake and empirically evaluate the impact of two large-scale policy innovations.
The full project description, as well as the list of tasks and necessary qualifications of the RA can be found at the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bv55NuWyIBeiymUx9PwRq4CT0Qg_Bpz90N56pIZRai8/edit?usp=sharing
Lorenzo Pessina (PhD Candidate) – POSITION CLOSED
The Saved and the Probate: The trade-off between Control and Inheritance Tax Minimization
We are hoping to work with an RA who is interested in research related to wealth inequality and inheritance tax planning. The goal of our project is to look at the determinants of investors’ decisions to transfer ownership of their assets before death to a beneficiary to avoid paying taxes.
The work consists of compiling financial information of privately held firms in the UK using a database (Amadeus) made available through Columbia.
Other tasks we may ask the RA to perform include: Compiling probate records from an online database. Conducting a literature review on a growing body of research on family firms and wealth taxes, which was a hotly debated issue in the 2020 US Primary Election. Familiarity with Excel is necessary for this project.
Working knowledge of a statistical software package such as Stata or R would be useful but is not required.
Dan O’Flaherty (Professor) – POSITION CLOSED
Police homicides
Are police homicides racially discriminatory? We have a big data set but have to make it work.
Coding and gathering covariates and trying to make sense of what’s going on.
Louise Guillouet (PhD Candidate) – POSITION CLOSED
The price of quality
I have two projects:
- Looking at the price of food vs organic good in the US related to the expansion of Whole Foods. I already have the data and I have written code in Stata but I would like help running the code again and doing robustness checks.
- Looking at the price of “quality” food in Myanmar. I have some data and I am collecting some using qualtrics. I plan to run an experiment online.
I would like to work with someone who knows Stata or python, and possibly who is familiar with qualtrics and/or javascript.
Silvio Ravaioli (PhD Candidate) – POSITION CLOSED
How people decide what they want to know
Collecting information is an important stage of many decisions (voting, buying a new product, accepting a job offer). The existing literature suggests that we suffer from biases that make us collect insufficient information, or collect mostly information that is consistent with what we already know. In this project, we explore preferences over sources of information and how these biases are influenced by the choice context.
The RA will run simulations on how different agents collect information and act in different scenarios, and analyze experimental data about choice over sources of information. Applicants with programming skills (preferably Python) and interest in behavioral economics will receive priority.
Maggie Shi (PhD Candidate) – POSITION CLOSED
Health Insurance and Healthcare Administration
In the U.S., spending on healthcare administration has grown over time, and is often considered to be inefficient. This project explores a potential reason for the growth in healthcare administration: the increasing presence of Medicare Advantage and the increasing number of insurance plans that providers must accept. This project conducts exploratory analysis on the relationship between Medicare Advantage penetration and hospital administration spending by locality.
The RA will collect and clean data and conduct exploratory analyses such as data visualization, reporting summary statistics, and running regressions. Stata or R is preferred. You will be asked to complete a data/coding exercise (should take < 30 min) before being hired.
