Taylor J Weidman
Hi! I'm an economist at the University of Pittsburgh. These days I'm using voter panels to study information spillovers in residential networks and laboratory experiments to study coordination games. I'm also working on a few small open-source software projects.
Research
... current working papers.
Homophily Turnout: network effects and voter behavior
Voters increase their turnout when a new same-party voter moves in next door.
Panel Nearest Neighbors: A new algorithm applied to voter files
A new algorithm resolves the tradeoff between panels and kNN, applied to voter files.
Testing Models of Strategic Uncertainty
An index using risk dominance to organize cooperation across social dilemmas in the lab.
Well Excuse Me!
Three excuse-seeking behaviors replicate but show no relationship across domains.
Teaching
... some material from courses I've taught at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Richmond.
Intro Microeconomics
ECON 0100
Economic Data Analysis
ECON 0150
Applications of Economic Analysis Techniques
ECON 2823
Intermediate Microeconomics
ECON 1100
Game Theory Principles
ECON 0200
Projects
... check out my GitHub for code relating to the papers aboves and the projects below.
Geographic Voter Panel
I use voter data in some recent work. This data pipeline generates the main geographic panel used in many current and upcoming projects, and is the product of many problems solved. I'm immensely proud of this code and the number of technical solutions that make it possible.
Experiments in oTree
oTree is flexible software for running experiments in the lab and online. Here are some experiments I've written over the years, run at Iowa State University, University of Pittsburgh, and Leheigh University.
T+1 Presenter
Some ideas are better understood when animated. I started using Manim animations for my students during Covid but couldn't find open source software for presenting animations live. So I wrote a simple javascript apt I use for presenting visualizable research and course material.
Economics Animations
Some things are clearer when visualized. Animations can often go one step further. These notebooks generate animations I use regularly to present my research, as a classroom tool, and for my youtube channel.
Open Grader
I created a simple program that lets students submit photos of their work through Dropbox and automatically receive graded PDFs with detailed feedback. Built with JupyterLab, it saves me hours of grading time while giving students easy access to assignments and comments on their phones.
