[gov3009-l] Applied Statistics 11/16/2016 -- David Parkes

Hi all, This week at the Applied Statistics workshop we will be welcoming David Parkes, the George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science and Area Dean for Computer Science at Harvard University. He will be presenting work entitled "Long-term causal effects via behavioral game theory." Please find the abstract below and on the website. The paper can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.02315 We will meet in CGIS Knafel Room 354 at noon and lunch will be provided. Best, Pam Title: Long-term causal effects via behavioral game theory Abstract: Random experiments are the gold standard in reliably comparing the causal effect of switching from a baseline policy to a new policy on socio-economic platforms. One critical shortcoming of classical methods, however, is that they do not take into account the dynamic nature of response to policy changes and may fail to capture long-term effects. We formalize a framework to define and estimate long-term causal effects of policy changes in multiagent economies, using behavioral game theory and a latent space approach, where a model of how agents act conditional on latent behaviors is combined with a temporal model of how behaviors evolve over time. To appear in NIPS 2016. Joint work with Panos Toulis, Econometrics and Statistics, University of Chicago, Booth School. https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.02315