Women economists cluster more in certain subfields (e.g., labor, health, public economics) than in others (e.g., macro, theory, or international trade). This grant funds work by labor economists Ron Oaxaca and Eva Sierminska to analyze this gendered difference in career choices among professional economists. Rigorously analyzing why men and women make career decisions differently requires holding unchanged as many factors as possible besides gender. Focusing on career choices in graduate school allows just that. Ph.D. candidates in the same program, for example, interact with the same group of professors and advisors, expect similar sets of potential salaries, and face the same specialization options. Grant funds are supporting the creation of a public use dataset, analysis of that dataset, development of a website about the project, and the production of two research articles and a less technical policy brief reporting the results of the analysis.

According to a Sloan-funded survey, Chief Privacy Officers at major corporations like Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, and General Electric say they are willing to share private data with independent scholars under two conditions. First, they want to take risks and institute policies that are similar to their peers. Second, to the extent that shared data helps academics gain insight into important societal issues, they want to be widely recognized for the role they played. This grant funds a project by the nonprofit Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) to launch a peer-to-peer network of private sector C-suite leaders called the Corporate-Academic Data Stewardship Research Alliance. Members will collaborate in order to encourage, recognize, and honor model data-sharing arrangements between the private sector and academe. The network will hold regular phone conferences as well as quarterly in person meetings to discuss how to overcome the legal, practical, and technical barriers that hinder cooperation with independent scholars. The network will also develop and publicize a CEO-level award honoring those corporate leaders who have made pioneering data-sharing agreements with independent scholars. Grant funds will help defray operating costs of the new network for 18 months.

This grant funds work by behavioral economists Erzo Luttmer from Dartmouth and Dmitry Taubinsky from University of California, Berkeley, who are analyzing how behavioral biases might explain the annuity puzzle—the observation that annuities, as a financial product, are not nearly so popular as economic theory and people’s stated preferences would predict them to be. Of the many possible explanations for the annuity puzzle, behavioral biases are not easy to study. Consumers who avoid annuitization might have privileged information and unobserved motivations (like making bequests, for example), or they may be systematically affected by behavioral biases that result in suboptimal choices. Teasing out what accounts for what is not just difficult, but also important for devising potential remedies. Luttmer and Taubinsky have carefully designed a series of controlled experiments where real economic incentives are at stake, but where most other complications from the real world have been abstracted away, thus allowing them to isolate how subjects’ psychological attitudes toward time and risk affect decision-making. By identifying the role behavioral mechanisms play in such decisions, this research will generate new insights about the annuity puzzle in particular, and also about the behavioral welfare economics of risk taking, saving decisions, and insurance markets more generally.

Behavioral economists assume that people make decisions based on the perceived probabilities of events. Behavioral experiments, interpretations, and the policies they inform should therefore depend on information about popular perceptions about likelihoods. This grant funds work by Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon and co-principal investigator Howard Kunreuther of the Wharton School to field surveys that will collect data on public perceptions of the probabilities for a host of important events, including nuclear war, chemical attack, opioid addiction, school shootings, as well as the mass adoption of driverless cars or e-cigarettes. Opinions about more than a hundred hazards will be elicited. In addition, Slovic and Kunreuther will conduct textual analyses based on the frequency that Google News describes a given hazard using words with high emotional valence. Last, the team will field a series of experiments designed to probe how people act on those perceptions and what can be done to help everyone make better estimates and better decisions.

This grant funds a project by Till von Wachter, professor of economics at UCLA and faculty director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA, to examine how retraining programs affect employment outcomes among older workers. Four research questions are at the core of von Wachter’s work: How has the incidence of employment instability and unemployment evolved for older workers? How well has the workforce system, particularly its job training opportunities, served older unemployed workers? What are the outcomes of job training and other services for older workers, in terms of employment and earnings? Has the ability of the system to improve older workers’ outcomes increased after recent legislative reforms? To shed light on these questions, Von Wachter has gained unprecedented access to a comprehensive linked dataset covering California’s workforce at the individual level. These data include quarterly earnings records for individual workers for each employment relationship, including identifiers for the employing establishment; quarterly employment, wage bill, and detailed industry affiliation for establishments; individual Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims, with detailed information on duration of claim, benefits received, worker demographics, occupation, and education; and detailed information on type of workforce service received, including type of training and job search assistance, the dates of service, as well as information from intake and exit interviews with caseworkers. Von Wachter’s work has the potential to advance understanding of how to use training to increase labor force participation of older workers and could inform local and national policymakers interested in improving the workforce system.

This grant provides partial funding for a project led by Martin Baily of the Brookings Institution to develop a new paradigm for work and retirement that incorporates working longer as an essential tool for increasing retirement security. Baily aims to develop the case for specific, actionable policy reforms that will encourage increased saving and enable longer working lives, as well as identifying policy reforms to enable consumers to have greater access to and understanding of retirement products in the private market. First, Baily will commission a series of detailed policy proposals that will be then presented in public forums—three public forums with three papers presented at each—directed at educating federal and (where appropriate) state policymakers. Each of the nine papers commissioned for the policy series will offer practical recommendations grounded in research that can be adopted by policymakers and private-sector actors. Suggested topics include how to make jobs more flexible, training for older workers, reducing the tax penalty for working longer, age discrimination, annuities, reverse mortgages, and long-term care insurance. After the briefings, Baily (with co-principal investigator Benjamin Harris) will then author a report that will lay out a comprehensive new vision for retirement. This will include three complementary components: reform of labor market policies to accommodate longer lives; creation of more robust private insurance markets and better products; and changes to the saving landscape, particularly for the growing population without access to traditional retirement accounts (for instance, freelance workers).

This grant funds a research network of economic scholars studying issues at the intersection of aging and work. Led by Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia, the network includes David Cutler of Harvard, Ellen Meara of Dartmouth, John Shoven of Stanford, Nicole Maestas of Harvard, Arie Kapetyn of University of Southern California, and Sita Slavov of George Mason, among others. Grant funds will support an annual workshop for network members and various other convenings allowing them to set a common research agenda, share ideas, and discuss and inform each other’s research. Over the next two years, network members will address various aspects of three topics: How public policy incentives affect work at older ages; what aspects of the workplace and employer practices can sustain work at older ages; and how older workers fit into the overall labor market. Overall, grant funding will support the production of at least eight academic papers on these topics.

This grant provides three years of continued support to the American Film Institute’s (AFI) efforts to encourage young screenwriters and filmmakers to write and produce compelling, engaging narrative films that explore scientific themes or have scientists, engineers, or mathematicians as major characters. AFI’s program includes three annual award programs: a $25,000 award given to the best student film project that brings science and technology to life; a $20,000 annual screenwriting award given to the best science-themed script; and a yearly tuition scholarship worth $45,000 given to an incoming graduate student with a background in the hard sciences who wishes to become a filmmaker and to incorporate scientific themes in his or her filmmaking. In addition, AFI holds a seminar series where established actors, writers, directors, and producers talk to students about science and Hollywood, and provides access to working scientists to serve as mentors on student scripts.

This grant, to the University of Southern California’s (USC’s) School of Cinematic Arts, provides three years of renewed support for a series of activities aiming to support student engagement with science as a subject matter in their work and to spur the development and production of science and technology film, television, and new media projects by USC film students. Supported activities include a $25,000 production award, given annually to the best student film project that features science and technology as a theme; two $17,500 screenwriting awards, given annually to the best student film or television scripts featuring science and technology as a theme; a $17,500 animation award, given annually to the best student animation project featuring science and technology as a theme; an annual $12,500 grant given to the most innovative student interactive game design project featuring science or technology as a theme; and a yearly seminar that brings USC film students together with leading scientists to discuss the power and potential of science as a vehicle in narrative filmmaking. In addition, grant funds will support a host of related support activities, including faculty mentoring, industry events, and dedicated science advisors to ensure accuracy of scientific content in student projects.

This grant provides three years of renewed support to the University of California Los Angeles, for a series of activities, programs, and initiatives designed to encourage UCLA film students to engage with scientific themes in their filmmaking and to produce science-themed films and screenplays. Funded activities include an annual colloquium that brings film students together with leading researchers to discuss the newest developments in science and technology; one annual, $30,000 production grant awarded to the best film project that incorporates scientific or technical themes; two annual $15,000 screenwriting awards given to the best student scripts incorporating scientific themes or featuring a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character; one annual, $15,000 filmmaking grant for the best episodic television project that explores scientific or technical themes; and the development of a screenwriting course open exclusively to students who are working on a science-themed project. The course will help students explore both the challenges and opportunities of incorporating scientific themes into narrative film and television. In addition, this grant provides funds for dedicated scientific advisors to help students with their projects, independent judges to evaluate student submission, and faculty support and other operational costs associated with administration of program.