Metcalf Summer 2023 Research Assistant, Tax Policy & Real Estate - Scott Nelson
This internship is part of the University’s Jeff Metcalf Internship Program. Please review to learn more about benefits and program requirements for Metcalf interns.
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About Your Organization
Research Project led by Scott Nelson, Assistant Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business. Scott Nelson’s research focuses on consumer credit markets, in particular how regulation interacts with information asymmetries and market structure, and how consumers make choices about borrowing, deleveraging, and default. His research uses a range of data sources including credit reports, credit card account data, surveys, court filings, and employment data together with models of consumer and firm behavior to understand the drivers of credit market outcomes.
Job Title and Work Location
Summer Research Assistant
Job Duties and Responsibilities
Seeking an undergraduate RA to join a research team studying how shocks to property tax assessments affect home values. Understanding this question is valuable far beyond the context of tax policy and real estate: understanding the rate at which these shocks are capitalized into prices helps reveal how home buyers value dollars today vs. dollars in the future, and understanding these time preferences and credit constraints is a crucial input into a number of public policy and financial policy questions, including the redesign of the Community Reinvestment Act, mortgage design, and the social value of place-based policies (e.g. investments in schools, clean air, clean water). Our research team, including PIs at Booth, Harvard, NYU, and Yale, is using a novel source of tax assessment shocks to make new headway on these questions.
Concretely, the RA would work on a subset of the following tasks based on skills and interest:
(1) using R to train and deploy machine learning models and regression models to identify shocks to property tax assessments.
(2) webscraping additional data to be used as inputs to these models.
(3) using applied microeconometric tools to study the effects of these shocks.
As of January 2023, we have completed a first pass at (1) and (2) but there is plenty of additional work to do, while (3) is anticipated to be ready to begin by the summer.
Requirements
Proficiency with R, familiarity with principles of machine learning, and/or experience with webscraping
Required Materials
A resume/CV, cover letter, and complete postsecondary transcripts attached as document.
Class Year Eligibility
First, Second and/or third year students are eligible to apply for Metcalf opportunities