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The Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) is dedicated to discovering how people around the globe live, think, interact, age, invest, and make important, life-changing decisions. Our in-depth research and analysis are deepening the understanding of human behavior in a wide range of economic and social contexts.
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CESR
Upcoming Events – Seminar | Gabriella Conti | May 6
Abstract: Targeted early years programmes can have significant benefits for children’s development; however, there are many examples of early interventions that have failed to live up to their promise, particularly when delivered at scale. Understanding the inputs into a successful early years programme is therefore essential to reform existing interventions and guide investment into the most promising programmes. In this paper, we consider the role of a crucial input: workforce effectiveness. We evaluate the degree of heterogeneity in workforce effectiveness in the context of the highly trained workforce employed by a successful, at-scale home visiting programme in England. Using the quasi-random assignment of workers to families for identification, we estimate each worker’s value-added in promoting children’s physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development. We find evidence of substantial heterogeneity in workforce effectiveness; for example, a one-standard deviation increase in effectiveness leads to a 0.31SD increase in cognitive performance at age 2, and a 0.23SD increase in socio-emotional development. However, despite having access to unusually detailed data on worker characteristics and on process quality, we are only able to explain a small fraction of the variation in worker effectiveness. Overall, our results show that there is substantial heterogeneity in effectiveness even among highly skilled workers, but we are only starting to understand its determinants.
Bio: Gabriella Conti is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and in the Social Research Institute at University College London; and Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and at IZA Bonn. She is also Associate Editor at the Journal of Health Economics and at Health Economics, Trustee at the Foundation Years Information and Research, and scientific adviser of the Lancet Commission for Gender-Based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People.
Her research areas of interest are health economics, the economics of human development, and biology and economics.
Monday, May 6, 2024
12pm – 1pm
VPD 203 and Zoom
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Research Areas
At CESR, our scientists, colleagues and staff pursue compelling, data-driven research in the social sciences and economics that further understanding, policy making and quality of life. In broad terms, our significant areas of interest include:
Aging
Children & Families
Development Economics
Education Economics
Financial Decision Making
Health, Health Disparities, and Socio-Economic Status
Inequality
Mobile Health
Self-Reporting
Subjective Well-Being
Work Disability
Centers and Programs
Behavioral and Health Genomics Center
BEST – Behavioral Economics Studio
BHO – Brain Health Observatory @ USC
CARE – Center for Applied Research in Education
CSS – Center for Self-Report Science
CSHI – Center for the Study of Health Inequality
IGEMS – Interplay of Genes and Environment Across Multiple Studies
Institute for Food System Equity
HALE – Center for Health and Labor Economics
LABarometer
Program for Children and Families
Program on Global Aging, Health, and Policy
SCRAP Lab – Section on Clinical Research in Aging and Psychology
Understanding America Study
The USC Understanding America Study (UAS) is creating an in-depth portrayal of the people in the U.S. – their daily lives and their opinions. This 15,000+ Internet panel is yielding insights and information of significant value to policy makers, government agencies, non-profit organizations, opinion pollsters, social science researchers, corporations, and more.
Newsroom | Margy Gatz in the Los Angeles Times
January – Margy Gatz
Steve Lopez quoted Dr. Margy Gatz in the Los Angeles Times on Aging and Memory.
Featured Researcher – Kyla Thomas
The cultural mechanisms through which social and economic inequalities are reproduced in the labor market.
Because I believe positive social change requires rigorous empirical research.
My first class with my undergraduate mentor, Gabriel Rossman. He introduced me to the sociology of culture and later encouraged me to write a senior thesis.
Employers are much more likely to discriminate on the basis of class-based cultural traits when they are evaluating female applicants for customer-facing jobs.
Things change — Sociologists are far better at explaining why they stay the same.
The relationship between race- and class-based discrimination in U.S. hiring.
Stata
Sticky notes
Leave it all on the field.
Our tolerance for high levels of social and economic inequality.
Tap dancing
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Fax: 213.821.2716