The first meeting of the Spring semester of Gov 3009, Research Workshop in Applied Statistics, will be held this Wednesday, January 29 from 12-2. The seminar meets in Room 22 of the Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences. Lunch is provided. See below for more information on the Seminar. The speaker this week is John de Figueiredo of the Sloan School at MIT, speaking on "Academic Earmarks and the Returns to Lobbying". The abstract follows. A link to the full paper can be found at: http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~gov3009/handouts/UnivEarmarksjdfbss17ju… Abstract: In this paper, we statistically estimate the returns to lobbying by universities for educational earmarks (which now represent 10% of federal funding of university research). The returns to lobbying approximate zero for universities not represented by a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) or House Appropriations Committee (HAC). However, the average lobbying university with representation on the SAC receives an average return to one dollar of lobbying of $11-$17; lobbying universities with representation on the HAC obtain $20-$36 for each dollar spent. Moreover, we cannot reject the hypothesis that lobbying universities with HAC or SAC representation set the marginal benefit of lobbying equal to its marginal cost, although the large majority of universities with representation on the HAC and SAC do not lobby, and thus do not take advantage of their representation in Congress. On average, 45 percent of universities are predicted to choose the optimal level of lobbying. In addition to addressing questions about the federal funding of university research, we also discuss the impact of our results for the structure of government. *************************************** Research Workshop in Applied Statistics *************************************** Jasjeet Sekhon (Government) Garrett FitzMaurice (School of Public Health) Lee Fleming (Business School) Gary King (Government) Donald Rubin (Statistics) Christopher Winship (Sociology) The Research Workshop in Applied Statistics is a forum for graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss work in progress and exchange ideas. It is intended as a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different disciplines such as economics, epidemiology, medicine, political science, psychology, public policy, public health, sociology and statistics. The topics of papers presented in previous years included missing data, survey analysis, Bayesian simulation, sample selection, and models for election and portfolio choice. Faculty and student participants in the workshop present their current projects, and guest speakers also give occasional presentations. The workshop provides an excellent opportunity for informal interaction between graduate students and faculty from a variety of disciplines. Course credit is available for students as Government 3009. Lunch is provided. The seminar meets in Room 22, Center for Basic Research in Social Sciences (CBRSS, 34 Kirkland St., this is the yellow building across the street from William James Hall). Contact information, previous presentations, and the spring schedule may be found at the course web site: http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~gov3009/ To join the gov3009 mailing list, send e-mail to gov3009-l-request(a)fas.harvard.edu with the following text message: subscribe end Questions? Please contact the workshop coordinator, Liz Stuart, at stuart(a)stat.harvard.edu