Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Susan Athey

Identifying Challenges and Improving Outcomes for Labor Market Transitions Using Digital Technology

Susan Athey, The Economics of Technology Professor, Stanford University

Abstract: This talk will review several recent papers that focus on labor market transitions.  The first project analyzes worker resilience in response to layoffs, using administrative data from Sweden.  Recently developed machine learning methods identify and characterize groups of workers who are predictably less resilient to layoffs. There is substantial heterogeneity within firms and within markets in terms of worker resilience.  Two additional projects create, implement, and evaluate digital interventions that help disadvantaged workers successfully transition into growing occupations related to information technology and data science.   Finally, recent work applies foundation models based on custom-created transformer neural networks and/or large language models to model worker careers and decompose gender wage gaps.

Susan Athey is The Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her PhD from Stanford, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Duke University. She previously taught at the economics departments at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Science and is the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economics Association to the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contributions to thought and knowledge. Her current research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning. She has worked on several application areas, including timber auctions, internet search, online advertising, the news media, and the application of digital technology to social impact applications.

As one of the first “tech economists,” she served as consulting chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for six years, and has served on the boards of multiple private and public technology firms. She also served as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system. She was a founding associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and she is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford GSB. In 2022, she took leave from Stanford to serve as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. Professor Athey was the 2023 President of the American Economic Association, where she previously served as vice president and elected member of the Executive Committee.

Due to building access restrictions, if you do not have a Harvard ID and wish to attend, you must email inequality@hks.harvard.edu to receive permission.